Today's fleurish was inspired by my clematis vine. It definitely could use some color! 
Our sideyard arbor is pushing 20 years old. At this point, the ivy is holding the arbor up, rather than the other way around. The poor, old thing should probably be taken down for safety's sake, but I just can't bear to dismantle it.
Especially when the clematis is so beautiful!
Happy Fleurish Friday!
I just finished this piece for a client today. It will be a wedding present. These signs are a tradition in her family. God Bless This Home in three languages. After the line in English, there is a line representing the groom's heritage and then a line representing the bride's heritage. In this case Spanish and Polish heritages.
Then the couples names and wedding date are lettered in Holbein gold at the bottom.
My client's mother-in-law started the tradition years ago because she had a friend that was a calligrapher. Sadly, the calligrapher died within the past few years and my client was in search of a calligrapher to carry on the tradition. I fell in love with the project, as I had never seen lettering done this way.
I love the rough look of the brush letters and the blending and layering of the colors.
Here is the first sign I did. My client wanted to give one to her in-laws for Christmas last year. Her mother-in-law had always had them made for other family members, but she had never had one lettered for herself. I heard she was overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness of her son and daughter-in-law's gift.
For today's Flourish Friday, I thought I'd show you a piece from the invitation suite I've been working on for my niece's wedding. She fell in love with an invitation she saw in an issue of Martha Stewart Wedding magazine. You can see it here. My niece has very good taste! The beautiful script was done by Master Penman John DeCollibus. You can see more of his beautiful work on his website here. Above is the original work I did with sumi and pointed pen on Canson Pro Marker layout paper.
I scanned and reduced my original work. I knew I was going to use my B6 Print Gocco to print the invitations. I learned on one of my Gocco groups that certain HP Vivera printer inks contain enough carbon to burn masters on the Print Gocco. I checked my HP printer, and sure enough, my printer used a carbon based ink. I was thrilled! No more begging my brother to lug over his old, carbon based photocopier to my house! The above is just a test sample I printed on black paper. My niece's colors will be gold and seafoam. I was very happy with the results of the HP-Gocco combination, especially that the hairlines were not lost.
This is the front of a little card I sent to Master Penman Bill Lilly. The paper was a bit too textured for my liking. My thoughtful husband had contacted Mr. Lilly about purchasing his book and DVD on Engrosser's Script in order to give them to me as a surprise. Mr. Lilly is a graduate of the Zanerian College of Penmanship where he studied under E.A. Lupfer. My husband very much enjoyed his conversations with Bill, and he'd like to meet Bill (me too!) the next time we go to visit family in Ohio. You can visit Bill Lilly's blog here. 
Once we got home, my loving, logical, left-brained husband, Tom, kept asking of each item, "What's it for?" To which I replied, "Well, ummm, hmmm...." The truth is I don't always know at the moment of purchase for what purpose I'll use a particular item. I just get that you could use that in your art feeling. Which is why this bag of acrylic tags found its way into my basket.
A few nights ago I woke from a deep sleep with the idea to use these acrylic tags as necklace pendants.
The wonderful Kathy McCreedy of Love Letters sent me a "Paper Salad" full of delicious paper swatches several weeks ago. You can read about her Paper Salad here. I took one of these terrific, little gems and traced and cut out an area to fit the shape of the tag.
Then I lettered a "K" with sumi and pointed pen on top of Kathy's paper and brushed the edges with a black stamp pad.
I punched a hole, added some of Mike Meador's double-sided Miracle Tape and affixed the acrylic tag.
I added a cord and a lobster claw clasp and now it's ready to wear. So now I can show Doubting Thomas "What's it for." 
I had just a bit of time to play in my Moleskine last night. I don't think the quote and lettering style work well together, but oh well. I like the flourishy border. I tried playing with the 0s. I'm a calligraphy geek, I guess. I liked the o in this post by Lori Vliegen of Elvie Studio. (Which I just now "got" that Elvie is LV for Lori's initials. Obviously, I am not the brightest scribe in the scriptorium.) 
