Thursday, March 5, 2015

Lettering

I have always been in love with handwriting. I can remember the last day of fifth grade when everyone got their science notebooks back and the teacher said we could keep them or throw them away. There was a girl whose handwriting i loved that said "does anyone want this"? So, I totally snatched up the opportunity (probably looking like a total weirdo) to better analyze her writing. That night  my parents took us to the drive in movies and i sat in the backseat with the girls notebook and a blank notebook and mimicked her handwriting font until i mastered it.

 In seventh grade i met a boy who wrote in the most perfect copperplate font. I loved the look of it so much i stuck with it, made a few changes, and it became my handwriting as an adult. I am glad i've had 18 years to perfect it because i do quite love my handwriting. 



My Mother and Aunt both learned the palmer method in school and i always (and still do) love the graceful and classic look of their writing. 



Social media site like instragram and pinterest have reawaken my love for handwriting and i have been playing around with modern calligraphy and hand-lettering for the last few years. My Christmas cards are a task and take me about a week to finish but i love being able to put my creative twist on it. I feel like when the recipient opens their mailbox, and not only receives snail mail, but has it be personalized just for them it makes it even more special, and that is what i love. Each person i send a card to  gets ten solid minutes of my time to focus solely on them, think about them and how they may be doing, wishing them well wishes on the future year and hoping my card will find them in a good place in life. 

When good friends of ours got engaged i hoped that i would be able to do some kind of writing project for them. As luck would have it i was able to take on the job of both creating the shower invitations and addressing them.  I took a few pictures of the process of creating a hand written envelope and would love to share it today. 

The first thing i do is sketch out the template. This invitation in for the bachelorette party and includes a fun little banner at the top, followed by a thick margin for the name, and then three skinnier lines for the address. 


Sorry but i get sick of writing my own name and address when designing a template so my whovian flag tends to fly a little. Although "fun and fab" is not quite how i would describe Clara. 




 Here is one of the envelopes all done. The banner is done in a fun silver and the lettering is done in navy blue to match the Penn State theme. The name is also overlaid in a clear silver glitter on the thick downstrokes.



 For the shower invites, i created an oval template that had the name written across the top, address in the middle, a banner including the zipcode on the bottom, and small hearts that helped hold the oval shape. These babies were a labor of love and took over 13 hours to complete all 90 of them.


The actual color of the purple is a shimmery lavender, very pretty! 


There is always a lot of music, coffee, and snack breaks when working on a project this big! 



For fun here are the last two years of christmas cards that i have done. So so fun! I love seeing them all laid out.





So there you have it, one of the many hobbies i really enjoy doing! I think this post also gives you insight into the new blog name of "flourish" grace :-) I am a sucker for a good flourished font! 

Since writing the draft of this post my best friend since kindergarten has asked me to do her wedding invitations! I am so excited and honored to be entrusted with the task!! Yay for lettering!!!