Adam is going on an archaeological dig next Monday to Belize, so I figured I might as well procrastinate some more and make a card and put my calligraphy to use. Too bad I had a really hard time to find a working calligraphy pen; I blame it 100% on not having any time during the school year to make anything. I definitely do not neglect my calligraphy supplies. Once I get paid for my lab work I'm going to make a trip down to Curry's on Dundurn to get more cartridges and ink, and maybe pick up some of their mixed paper grab bags.
As always, cards can be found on the Cards page. That is where I will be keeping all of my cards, since Blogspot doesn't seem to be as customizable as Tumblr. I'm actually thinking of transitioning over to Weebly just because they make designing the layout so easy. We'll see, I guess.
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Safe Travels - May 2014
Base - blank card, blank parchment card
Belize - cardstock paper & scrapbooking paper
Fish - scrapbooking punch-out shapes
Fedora - cardstock paper
Lettering - scrapbooking punch-out shapes, gold metallic marker
Outlines- gold metallic marker
Calligraphy - PIGMA Calligrapher felt-tip marker Words (interior) - fineliner Envelope - parchment envelope & gold certificate seal
So this card was quite an adventure. At first the base was just the parchment card (see top-right image). It had a helicopter as well as the cut-out of Belize and the fish, but when it was time to do the lettering, the only calligraphy pen I had was a super cheap one that bled and fuzzed everywhere. The card became unusable, but I managed to salvage the cut-outs and transfer them (with the additional layer of parchment underneath) to the blue card. Then I decided to continue using the scrapbooking pack I had and added the letter embellishments on to the blue card. I also got rid of the helicopter because it looked super childish and it didn't fit in with the other elements.
Then it was time to do the interior. Luckily, one of my three PIGMA markers still worked (and it was the right width too, thank goodness) so I used that to ink in the main message and added the extra words in with fineliner. The thing about calligraphy is, it's a) hard to write consistently for a long period of time, especially with felt-tip markers, and b) is hard to read/fit on to the page. The envelope was initially the blue one that was paired with the base, but after consideration I used the parchment envelope instead because it fit the theme of the card more and because the blue envelope had enough wax on it to render the felt-tip ineffective. The gold seal was left over from a certificate pack I bought last year as part of a club event hosted for middle school students, so I added that as the finishing touch. I only wish the lettering on the front was better; if only I had a gold metallic calligraphy marker instead of a fineliner, then it would have been perfect. This card easily took a huge chunk of time, as with any card that involves calligraphy. However, this one took the most time (apart from the poinsettia card) solely because I had to scrap the parchment base idea, and because I spent a lot of time looking for a calligraphy pen that works. |
