New Lightpad

I got a new lightpad to replace my giant easel with a light underneath.

This is 9"x12" and has an LED light instead of a traditional bulb.  This means that hopefully it will be easier on my eyes, is a nicer color of light and is much easier and less expensive to replace.  It's about 1/3 of the size of my old one, so it takes up a lot less space and since it lays flat on the table, it's not a big eye sore.  

It's a Lightpad by Artograph.

10th Birthday Party

I just finished up some menus for a 10th birthday party.  It was an afternoon tea and the colors were pink, purple and turquoise.  I did pink cardstock and then wrote with turquoise ink.

I used one of my new fonts from IAMPETH.  It's called "thick and thin".  I think it was the perfect font for this type of event.

Fonts

I recently did a sheet of all of the fonts that I'm able to offer to clients.  The last one is one from IAMPETH.

Patterning and Borders

One of the classes that I took at IAMPETH was on patterning inside of letters.  It was called "Zenspirations".

My best friend asked me to make something that she could frame for her baby that is due in November.  She wanted something that had the details of the baby on there and was fun and had some color.  Here is a sample of what I came up with.

It's hard to see, but there is some pink and purple in the "B".  They don't know what it is going to be yet, and I did a boy version too, but I'm posting the girl version because I'm pretty sure it's going to be a girl.

Ink, It's Everywhere

So for awhile now, I've been trying to figure out how on earth I get ink all over myself.  At IAMPETH, most people stayed relatively clean and tidy, while I was always covered in ink.

Yesterday I picked up my pen ONCE, and next thing you know, I have ink all over my hand.  AND, it's not even my right hand, it's my left hand.

How does this happen?  Who really knows.  But, I have a feeling that it has something to do with this one.

Correction on Studio Renovations

I have to make a correction on the studio renovation post.  I believe that I used the word "I" in some places when it should have been "my sister".  My sister is the queen of redecorating and rearranging and she and my mom came over one weekend to make sure that my space was clean and well organized.  So, my apologies Kate for not giving you the proper credit.  

"Studio" Renovations

Well, not really renovations, and it's not really my "studio" but I think I'm going to start calling it that because it sounds more important and more professional.  

I rearranged my studio to clean it up and to add some storage space.  I finally mounted a bookshelf to the wall so that I can actually put things into it, which helped to get rid of a bunch of junk.  

I put the white storage boxes on the floor instead of on the desk and that opened up a lot of room.  It was so clean the other day, but I have 5 jobs that I'm working on this week so it got messy pretty quickly.

I also wanted to include a picture of my "studio dog", Olive, who keeps me company while I'm working.  She's not too much entertainment since she's usually sleeping.  And contrary to how that picture looks, she does actually have four legs and four feet.  She's not very photogenic.

IAMPETH Summary

I got home from IAMPETH on Sunday morning.  It was a great conference and I'm excited to do it again next year.

I still haven't taken photos from my last two classes, I'll do that later this week with a better camera.  I did want to post a picture of the actual classroom setting.  We were in hotel ballrooms sitting at tables classroom style.  They use a special video camera to tape the instructors hand as they write, and you can zoom in and out to see more or less detail.  It's a pretty fabulous set up.

It's kind of hard to see everything in the photo.  The instructor is all the way up at the front (in this case it was Don Tate doing Spencerian capitals) and then I was probably in the 4th row back taking the picture.

There averaged about 50-75 people per class, so it was a pretty large group.  The only unfortunate thing is that with a group that large, it's hard for instructors to come around to help you with your work, so you are going off what you think is right.

I'll be sure to post the remaining pics of my work from the last two classes very soon.  I'm also getting ready to start testing some new fonts on envelopes and other things and getting a new scanner, so I'll post those things when I've got them done too.

Looking forward to IAMPETH 2011 in Phoenix!

Session Eight: Forms of Address

Rick Muffler, one of the White House calligraphers, lead this discussion regarding how to address envelopes, place cards, escort cards, for social correspondence.  It was a really good session where he went through all of the different ways to properly address envelopes to people.  We went through Judges, Doctors, Pastors, Priests, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet Members, American and Foreign Ambassadors, etc.

Things that I learned.  "The Honorable", "The Reverend", etc. gets its own line.  So an envelope would read the following:

The Honorable
       Mark Smith
      and Mrs. Smith

The "and" goes on the second line, not on the first line.  I've always put it on the first, so I've been wrong all this time.

Mr. Mark Smith
and Ms. Jane Jones

You do NOT have to write out directionals such as NE, SE, NW, SW.  You can if you want, but it's not a requirement, especially on a little envelope.

All in all it was very informative and I have a lot of notes that I took that I'm sure will come in handy.

The only bad news of the day, it's storming and I really wanted to go to the pool.  I haven't been to the pool yet, and I'm leaving tomorrow.  So sad.  This cloud is just hanging right over the hotel.

Session Seven: Zenspirations

This was an interesting class.   It was more about drawing and patterning than actual lettering, which was a nice departure from the past few days.  It was actually a lot of fun.  I can't draw worth a darn so it was nice to see the other ways that you can add some variety to your work.

My pictures are pretty poor quality on this one, but you get the idea.

We used gel pens to fill in and decorate our letters.  I really liked this class.  I think it would be fun to make some monograms using this style of lettering and patterning.

Session Six: Vertical Ornamental Penmanship

Ok, so this was a cool class.  I really enjoyed it.  First of all, I like it because you are writing everything at a 90 degree angle (straight up and down) and I'm much more comfortable working that way.  You are also using a straight pen holder as opposed to an oblique pen holder.

We quickly went through the lower case letters because they are a mix of Spencerian and roundhand, which we already learned.  It's the capitals that are tough.  Sorry, this pic is a little unclear.

The capitals have a lot of flourish on the bottoms of them.  It's a very interesting look.  I'm anxious to try it on place cards, I think it would look really lovely.

I tried my address out to see how it looked.  After I tried it, I asked the instructor if he could show the best way to do the directionals (SE, NW, etc).  He asked me if I lived in DC.  Very funny.

This was definitely the most outside of the box class.  I think tomorrow morning's will be equally out of the box.  Stay tuned.

Session Five: Weddings, Ink

So, no pictures because I didn't actually do any writing in this session, besides a little note taking.  It was more or less a panel discussion about running a calligraphy wedding business.  Nothing too terribly new to me, but a few tips and tricks that I think are helpful.

I've learned that I'm definitely one of the more modern calligraphers, when it comes to website design, and just general design.  The more well-established calligraphers can get away with less marketing and advertising since they've been in the business for 20 plus years.  It did inspire me to do a better job with keeping my website up to date and with new ideas.  It's nice to have something that you can refer potential clients to.

 

Session Four: Spencerian Part II

Holy smokes, my brain is fried.  I can hardly even type.  Four hours of deep concentration learning Spencerian capital letters has nearly killed me.

Here are some samples.

Another page that was more towards the end.

One thing I will note.  You start running out of new words to write when you are just practicing.  Typically people suggest that you go through the alphabet and do cities and states, spices, all women's names, all men's names, etc.  But, you'll see a lot of repeat on my practice sheets.  Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to come up with original words to write.

Session Three: Spencerian Part I

This morning's class was learning Spencerian script, but just the lowercase letters.  This afternoon we'll do capitals.  This is the one script I've really been wanting to learn and come to find out, it's actually quite easy.  At least the lowercase letters are.

Spencerian is a big flowy script, fairly similar to some forms of cursive.  It takes up a lot of room on a page, so I made it through 5 practice pages this morning.

The bottom rows are pen exercises that they like you to do for warm up and to test how fast you can go. And, the top part is where he asked us to work on our address, but since mine is mostly numbers and we won't learn numbers until later, I had to improvise.

Session Two: Sickles Alphabet

So, session two was pretty awesome.  It was on the Sickles Alphabet, which is an alphabet that used to be used a whole lot in the late 1800s/early 1900s on posters, in newspapers, etc.

The session was taught by Michael Sull, who is pretty much one of the world's greatest calligraphers.  He mostly does Spencerian script.  I even have his Spencerian DVD (yes, you read that correctly, a calligraphy DVD, and trust me it's just as good as it sounds).

Anyway, it's basically an alphabet drawn in boxes.  Here are my three worksheets from class.

The fun part about this alphabet is that there are no rules.  Sometimes I do better with no rules.

I want to test this out on an envelope sometime.  I think the writing on a curve is pretty awesome.  And, we used pencil, colored pencils and micron pens to write.

So towards the end, Michael came around to see everyone's work.  When he got to me, he saw my Washington, DC pictured above and said, "WOW, that's amazing.  You really are having fun with this." I'm pretty positive that I blushed and pretty positive that I also almost fainted.  What a compliment.

Session One: Engrosser's Script

Three and a half hours.  That's how long session one was.  And, I have two pieces of paper to show for it.  Now, they are pretty good looking, but goodness, I thought we'd plow through a lot more.

Clearly I need to work on the numbers a little here.  Not my best work.  

These are just initial strokes and letters.  Now, I took a class with Fairfax Co Adult Ed back in the fall on Engrosser's Script, but it wasn't quite like this.  This was way better.  In 3 1/2 hours with Bill Kemp, I learned a whole lot more than I did in 6 weeks of classes.

These classes are interesting.  The instructor sits on a podium and has a camera on his hand that is broadcast on a large screen.  There are about 100 people in each class.

Thankfully, I brought my glasses, or else I wouldn't be able to see the screen.  If I hadn't, I'd been in serious trouble.

Only one ink spill

So, I did pretty well.  I only had one ink explosion, wait, I take that back, I just opened another bottle and I actually had two.  Thankfully, both were soaked up with paper towels and protected in plastic baggies.  Here's the damage.

I guess it could have been worse, it could have spilled all over my clothes.  Depending on how things go, I may need to buy more ink.  Thankfully, they have a whole store downstairs of calligraphy supplies.

I've set everything out on my extra bed in my room, to plan for each day.

They gave us a goodie bag, a binder with instruction sheets and a name tag.

OOops, it's upside down.  You get the idea.  It's sitting on my ink rag.

More to come tomorrow after class one and two!

On my way to IAMPETH

I'm sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for my flight to Orlando for the IAMPETH conference at the Hilton Disney World.

I will hopefully be taking photos of what I learn at each session and posting each night to show what we are learning/doing.

Stay tuned for reports from the conference!

Putting the Sexy back in the RSVP

This post is more commentary on a growing trend that I must say, disappoints me in so many ways.  It's the lack of the RSVP.  Everyday people are getting invited to various events and not responding if they will be there or not.  My guess is they are waiting to see if they get a better offer, which I can kind of understand, but can't anyone commit to anything anymore?  Don't people know that it's polite to RSVP? Miss Manners and Emily Post say it is.

I'm a calligrapher, so seeing invitations is part of my job.  I'm addressing all of these beautiful invitations for lovely events and every time I send them out, I tell the clients that they can be sure that at least 10%, if not more, won't reply by the deadline.

I'm also a wedding planner with Pineapple Productions.  This is something that we tell our clients we are happy to follow up on if people don't respond by the date if they'd like us to.  Or we tell them to divide it up among family/friends and just start making follow up calls.   This can take a LONG time.  The last thing someone wants to do, three weeks before their wedding is call a bunch of people to see if they are coming.

I'm also someone who likes to host a party or two.   My friends and I are always trying to figure out new ideas for social gatherings and we invite people we know, some we don't know, and tell people to bring people if they want.  When you are preparing all the food and drink, it's nice to know who is coming.

So, I'm going to try to put the sexy back in the RSVP.  I'm going to try to get my RSVPs in as quickly as possible and not only that, I'm going to encourage friends who I know are attending the same event to RSVP as soon as they can too.  I'm going to make it cool to commit to an event.  Just decide if you are going to go and tell the person.  It can't really be that hard, can it?
  

Amanda and Jon's Wedding

It was a real pleasure working with Amanda's mom Gail on the calligraphy for Amanda and Jon's wedding at River Farm in Alexandria, VA.

I did the envelope calligraphy for them, for their beautiful invitations

I also did the escort cards for the wedding, which were placed in wheatgrass at the table.

And, finally, I did a sign for their Soda Float Bar at the end of the night.  What a cute idea for a summer dessert bar, old fashioned soda floats!

Many thanks to jan michele photography for letting me use the beautiful pictures.  And congratulations Amanda and Jon!!

Layout

I recently took some photos of a layout that I did for a sample wedding invitation.  There is a lot involved for doing the set up of something like an invitation or a menu.  First, I write everything out on graph paper. Then, I cut out each word.

Then, I use a piece of layout paper and put some grid paper on the back of it so that I can see some guide lines.  I then tape each word with draft tape to the layout paper.

Once I have the layout the way that I want it, I will then write it on nice paper.  Or, I will turn it into a pdf and then it can be printed onto paper.

Preview

Here is a quick preview of the "Just Married" sign that I did recently.  It turned out really well!

More to come on my website!

IAMPETH Countdown

I've started the countdown to my conference in Orlando August 9-14th.  I'm going to a calligraphy conference hosted by IAMPETH (International Association of Master Penman, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting).  I'll admit, I'm a little nervous about this as I've never done one of these types of things and I'm not sure what it will be like.  I know that each day there will be two instruction sessions one in the morning and one in the evening but beyond that, who knows.

And, let's just say I'm not thrilled about going to Orlando in August.  I've had plenty of people say, "Well, you can at least go to Disney!"  Well, in theory, that is true, but in reality, I've been to Disney 9 times in my life and while I like the mouse, I've been there and done that.

The best part of all of this is that in the end, I'll have learned 4-5 new fonts to use for clients.  I'll be learning Spencerian script, Sickles Alphabet, brush up on my Engrosser's Script, and learn a few modern fonts for some fun new projects.   I also get to learn from some of the world's best calligraphers including Pat Blair and Michael Sull.

I'm hoping that this will help me to expand my business when all is said and done.  I'm hoping to blog a little in the days prior about how to pack ink to take on an airplane (learned about this from the IAMPETH newsletter) and while I'm there about the people I'm meeting and the classes I'm taking.

Color

I've been working a lot with custom ink colors lately.  The theory behind color is that any color can be made with 6 basic colors plus black and white.  The colors are warm and cool blue, warm and cool red, and warm and cool yellow.

In theory, this is fine.  In execution, for someone who is not an artist, this proves to be a little more difficult.  In most cases it takes multiple tries and a whole lot of muddy looking olive green attempts before the right color is reached.

The top green is a nice sage green that I did for a recent wedding that I think will use again as sage is a pretty popular wedding color.

The pink in the back is more like a salmon color that I used for a rehearsal dinner.  I've used this a lot more, mostly for samples.

In all of the mixing I've been doing, I also discovered Panatone color guides.  These are decks of color swatches that tell you the correct parts of color to mix to achieve the desired color.  It's made my life a lot easier.

What a mess

So, this past week, I've been working on the samples that I talked about in an earlier post.  My plan is to have my friend Ashlee, of Documentary Associates, take photos of them early next week.  Well, this of course, has turned my work station into a disaster zone, not to mention that it's also migrated over to my dining room table.

The leaves are for apple escort cards for a Labor Day wedding outside of Boston.

The chalkboards are for the same wedding.  The rest is for the photo shoot.  Should be interesting!

Headshots are here!

After much discussion among many people, I chose two different headshots for my website, etc.  My friends all agreed that head on shots of me are better.

They also decided that the black and white shirt that I chose to wear in the studio shots was NOT the right choice.  :)  I compiled all of the votes and these are the two that won.  Stay tuned for them on my website.

Thanks again to Joe and Anne Sachs of Artful Weddings.

Ideas

I've been trying to come up with some new and innovative ideas for calligraphy projects and ones to expand my business.  After talking with a few people, expect to see some of the following ideas coming soon.

"Just Married" signs.  These are on the top of my list and I'm hoping to come up with two options that would work for couples to put on the back of their getaway cars.

Favor tags.  Little tags that say thanks from the bride and groom and what the favor is for.

Painted quotes.  A friend of mine has a gorgeous painted Bible verse on her wall.  She had it done about 20 years ago and the woman who did it was a calligrapher.  I'm trying to figure out how to best show examples of this, I think I am going to try to just do some samples on canvas.

Monograms.  Various kinds of monograms for couples, singles, whoever.

Canvas bag prints.  Putting those monograms on a canvas bag, or things like welcome bags for destination weddings, etc.

I've also already been doing some other things that I've been already doing that I think are a bit different.  I did a set of escort cards on magnolia leaves.  They were pretty amazing when all was said and done and I must admit, I was one of the biggest skeptics.  I've also been doing quite a few menus written in chalk on various sized chalkboards.  They have turned out really nicely.  Who would have ever thought I'd do chalkboard calligraphy?

Weddings By Windows

In my previous life, and let's face it the life that made me love calligraphy and weddings, I worked at Windows Catering.  I was there for almost 4 years and did both corporate events and weddings.  I left Windows in late 2008 to have a "normal" 9 to 5 job, but still kept a relationship with everyone from Windows (it's a good thing).  So, when my sister got engaged in May of 2009, I knew who we'd have to call for catering.
My sister got married on October 10, 2009 at my parent's house in Woodbine, MD.  We put up a tent in the backyard, brought in restroom trailers, farm tables, a photobooth, furniture and other equipment.   Being a calligrapher, I was in charge of all paper goods.   I addressed her envelopes, I created signage, and I did all of her hang tag escort cards.

Windows put together a fabulous photo collage of the wedding to use for Weddings By Windows.

We were all so thrilled with the day and it was gorgeous and fun and everyone had a great time.

It was also profiled in the Winter/Spring 2010 issue of Washingtonian Bride and Groom magazine!

Headshots

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go to Baltimore for some headshots.  They were originally supposed to be pet portraits, but after really thinking it through, I figured that Olive wouldn't be the world's best subject and generally hates to have her picture taken.

So, instead, I opted for head shots of myself.  I'm not really sure when I'll need them or if I'll need them, but I figured I could throw one up on the blog and on my website.  

I met with Joe and Anne Sachs of ArtfulWeddings Photography.  I was very impressed with their set up and enjoyed working with them.  As soon as I get them, I'll be sure to post.  

My Work Area

So, I thought as my first post, I'd show everyone what my work space looks like.  It's nothing fancy, it's more or less a little spot along my hallway where my sister perfectly placed my desk.

I work on a light board most of the time, so that I can see guidelines through the envelopes or whatever else I'm working on.  It takes up a large portion of my desk and is a little cumbersome, so I'm currently trying to figure out a way to downsize that.  They have light pads that are 8x11 that might be a better option.  When you live in a basement apartment with not a ton of room, you have to improvise.

I also took a close up of some of my pens and my latest ink mixing escapade.  I've been asked to do a lot of matching inks to invitations, linens, flowers, etc lately and so I feel a little like a mad scientist.  It actually looks pretty clean considering my mixing skills.

Notice the microscopic writing on the lid of the green ink.  It took me about 5 tries to get the right color of green so I figured I should probably write down for future use how I actually did it.

The paint pen and jelly roll pens probably look a little out of place, but they are for some upcoming projects.  Stay tuned.......