Tag Archives: Lettering & Calligraphy
Happy 2014, everyone! What has happened to 2013? How did it go by so quickly? It was a total blur, yet it was a great year. For me, it was the year of change. I’ve quit my job and enjoyed spending more time with my precious little family. I am still working out my resolutions for this year but I know for sure the top priority is to focus on my family. I also want to get my life organized, get rid of clutter, exercise and eat better, spend less time in front of computer, and just start fresh. I am ready to take on the new year. And this year I will follow my dreams.
Cheers to 2014!
I’m a bit behind on this update but wanted you to know that the newest line of my holiday cards is available at HelloPrints.com.pl. If you/or anyone you know needs a card in polish please head over to the website. 
Hooray! As of today, Calligraphy Love – my holiday gift wrapping paper is available for sale! You can customize it with names, family photos, unique messages and more! It’s printed on luxe matte paper and available in sets of 5 sheets; each is 20″ x 28″ and costs $15.00. I’m dying to have this in my hands and cannot wait to use it for our Christmas gifts this year! This is going to make wrapping gifts this year SUPER fun! Kids will go bananas!
You can purchase it here.
You can also add the perfect finishing touch to all of your holiday gifts with these chic and customizable gift tags.
Or those adorable little stickers. Available here
.
Calligraphy love personalized wrapping paper comes in 3 different color ways. Below in raspberry and mint.
I have more good news this week! Please meet Calligraphy Love – my holiday gift wrap that will be available exclusively at Minted.com. It was an Editor’s pick in Minted’s Outside the Box Holiday Gift Wrap challenge. I feel lucky to have itpicked out of 464 submissions! Minted launched it’s inaugural collection of unique, personalizable gift wraps for the upcoming 2013 holiday shopping season and I’m excited to be included! I took some time off from working on my website redesign and submitted 2 designs for this challenge. I practiced my calligraphy, experimented with custom ink and obviously it paid off ;) Now, I can’t wait to buy my own wrapping paper! I’ll let you know as soon as it’s available for purchase.
UPDATE: You can purchase it here. 
This past weekend we took a day trip to the Hood Canal to spent the last sunny weekend outdoors. Hood Canal
is only 20 miles west of Seattle, however getting there from the Seattle area takes a couple of hours as you have to take a ferry. Of course, our day got thrown off as we missed it (we just assumed it wouldn’t be busy on
a off-season weekend) and missed the low tide. Instead of enjoying fresh oysters on the beach our children and
us spent the morning gathering shells and looking for crabs. We visited one of Luke’s clients who lives in the area and had fun running around and enjoying the fruit in his garden. Don was very generous to send some with us and we came home with bags full of the sweetest plums, pears, raspberries and strawberries. It’s probably no secret now that I really enjoy home canning. I rolled up the sleeves and got to work on making the most delightful plum jam or powidła (in polish.) This jam, so deliciously European, is my my favorite – naturally sweet and so aromathic! I knew, before I even made the jam, that I wanted to dressed them up with custom labels.
I calligraphed these labels with black ink on a heavy cotton paper and glued to the jar with a double stick tape.
I couldn’t help but add cute little branches with plums illustrations and some swirly doodles. I love how easy they’re done with a good calligraphy pen and nib. I’m so pleased with the results, in both aesthetics and taste! Yeah, I could eat this plum jam by the spoonful…
I’m super excited about the new Skillshare class The Art of Modern Calligraphy. The incomparable
Molly Jacques just announced on her blog that she will be teaching this online course, which btw is a total steal for only $20 (plus you get lifelong access to the entire course)! She will cover the basic tools and knowledge of modern, pointed pen calligraphy and you’ll learn how to create a unique alphabet of your own. I can’t wait to start the course. The Art of Modern Calligraphy begins September 25.
This week was pretty crafty. I took on a challenging project, designing and calligraphy of the day of the wedding stationery. I had been wanting to try artsy, hand painting project in a while and I was finally able to do so with watercolors. I was also able to put my calligraphy skills to use on place cards, table numbers and signs. They turned out great considering I have ways to go before I master the art of the pointed pen. I’ve been practicing it for a while and the whole process takes a whole lot of time and patience. Here is a little peek at all the watercolor and calligraphy I’ve done so far.
These watercolor place cards were done on an uncoated heavy Mohawk stock (just had some laying around the office) with just basic watercolors in beautiful shades of pink. I used black and gold calligraphy inks to add a little sparkle….
In order to improve my letters, I try to practice calligraphy every single day on several surfaces with different
nibs and inks. Below is today’s scribble, an interesting quote by Oscar Wilde. My calligraphy is still rough but
I definitely see an improvement from few weeks ago.
I have always admired calligraphy and I have been wanting to try it for a while now but I wasn’t sure what types of calligraphy pens or nibs to purchase. And then yesterday, while walking around the Anthropologie store, I found this delightful calligraphy kit by Linea Carta’s Diva Pyari! I bought it since it has everything I need to get started and now I can’t wait to play with it. Kit includes one lettering chart (with Diva Pyari’s signature calligraphy), practice sheets, one jar of natural oak gall ink, and wooden dip pen with metal nib.
Stay tuned to see my calligraphy experiments.
Learning proper calligraphy is definitely on my agenda and I would like to learn from a professional calligrapher. If you know of one in the Seattle area, please let me know.
You can buy this kit from Anthropologie or directly from Diva Pyari’s Etsy Shop.