Putting Pen and Paint to Paper

Throughout these months of isolation paper, paint, and ink have become my new best friends. I have created a lot of note cards over the last four months. My lettering still needs practice. Layouts are the hardest thing to master! There are a few obvious mistakes in the cards in the photo, but they are fine to send to family and friends. I need to purchase some good card stock, for now I am using some flimsy stuff that I have on hand. It's fine for practice work. At this point I prefer to spend my money on pens, something that I have always had a weakness for... now I have a good excuse to buy them!

Your never too old...

to learn new things!

Last year I promised myself that I would learn to do modern calligraphy. I have been making cards and mostly using stamps for greetings because I am not too confident with hand lettering. I found some basic info on youtube and played around a little. Last week I found an online course on the "teachables" platform. The first month to learn basic strokes is free. The next few months of lessons are reasonably priced and you can pay as you go. So now I have all these practice drills on nearly every surface of the house. Jeff patiently refers to them as my "sheet music". He is right... it does look like sheet music. Leave it to a musician to see that.

If you are curious, here is a link to the course: The Happy Ever Crafter

Now that I look at a photo of my drills I can see that my ovals on the left hand sheet look wonky. I guess I better get back to practicing those!

Be Merry!

I spent a few nights last week painting Christmas cards and I had so much fun doing them! I bought some affordable watercolor paper from Arteza and used gouache instead of watercolor. Gouache uses less water, therefore I didn't have the problem of the paper buckling. Yesterday, while the kiln was firing, I took advantage of some down time and assembled them on card stock and gave them their final touches. To save time I stamped the lettering using clear silicone stamps on an acrylic block. The clear stamps are so much easier to use than the traditional rubbers stamp  mounted on wood. The stamp set came with some cute borders, so the bonus was decorating the envelope flaps.

If you recall, I bought the gouache paints in the spring or summer, but really struggled with them. I watched a few youtube videos and decided they would be a good option for card making. Working on multiple small paintings gave me the opportunity to experiment and learn more about the medium.

Now all I have to do get out my card list and get these cuties in the mail!