Wedding announcements

All wrapped up and ready to go!

Ready for pick up

Return Addresses

Gold on Lettra

This is Dr. Martin's Copperplate Gold on Crane's Lettra envelopes.  I tried to capture the texture of the paper, the raised quality of the ink, and the glittery sparkle.  Nothing compares to holding the envelope in your hand and turning it to the light, though.

Burgues script, flourished

Envelopes in Citadel Script

To Save an Envelope

There is nothing more frustrating than to discover small errors when proofreading finished envelopes.  Thankfully, though, most of the time small errors can be repaired and the envelope saved.  I'll show you step by step how I do it:

In this case, I've misspelled the last name.  Tushscherer should be Tuchscherer, so the 's' has got to go and it must be replaced with a 'c'.

The first thing is to gently shave the letter off the paper using a curved exacto blade.

Like so:

After brushing away the fibers, it doesn't look to good, does it?

This is what it looks like after the Pentel Hypereraser does its magic!

There's still a bit of a smudge we'll have to take care of, though.  Bring on the Staedler Mars Plastic eraser!

Last step is to gently burnish the spot to get the disturbed surface of the paper ready to receive ink.  I use a piece of glassine paper and a bone folder to gently rub over the surface.

Now it's ready to be lettered over!

Voila!  Only your calligrapher knows for sure!  ; )

My Favorite Things: Happy Brides

I've been working on a seating chart for a very special bride.  The lettering is all done and today I've been sketching in leaves and vines onto an overlay of tracing paper and painting some test leaves on scrap paper.  My sweet bride and her fiance' stopped to peek before I start inking and painting and they loved it!  They were so excited and so happy!  So was I.

I love this job.  I get to do what I love and make people smile.  And that makes ME happy!

Update on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 4:09PM by Kim