david to klaus

another landscape. here we can marvel at the loveliness of black lines. and the simplicity of one spot of color. i think this is the 5th envelope from david and so far, all landscapes.

EBW madonna

ooops, i was wrong. this one is not better than the first one i posted yesterday. this one is dreadful. i really hope i find time to replace this....

here is a teaser for a whole series that will start in a few days. jeri let me borrow and scan a whole stack of her envelopes. this one says *jeri* if you look closely. it was done by her sister. 

i decided to add an envelope, rather than replace the dreadful one above because i like that madonna stamp a lot.

julie's pennants

the earlier scheduled post today is lame, so i added this one. her mom had me do a dozen for an upcoming birthday. i don't think they are even mailed yet, but, i don't think julie knows about the blog....

i had so much fun coordinating stamps with the designs. i'm sure i have said this before, my dream job would be sitting in a booth outside the greeting card store and doing custom envelopes to go with cards. i guess i could just set up in the card aisle at the grocery store. then, when i was hungry, i could barter my services for food.

and the grocery store devotes one side of an entire aisle to cards. doesn't that seem like a huge amount of space? i wonder if anyone can find out how much money is made in the card aisle. i already know that cosmetics are by far and away the most lucrative department in any department store. maybe the card aisle is the most lucrative aisle in the grocery store. help me out here, readers....please research and let me know.

EBW frugality

me being frugal
did not want to waste the envelope.
scribbled out something and wrote her name on top.
i honestly hope i find time to replace this...
but, if not...there will be something better tomorrow.
the notes tucked inside are just as goofy as the envelopes....

EBW pinkpink

oh, the pink envelopes. ten years ago a bride had me order a carton of these (1,000) then she called off her wedding. i decided to just keep the envelopes. it took about ten years to use them up. and they were an odd shade of pink. it was called bisque. then the color was discontinued.

this has nothing to do with lettering. but, there isn't much to say about this envelope....just one of the many i sent to ellen in chicago. i like the square *o* in wilson that is standing on a corner. i like the way it repeats the stamp shape standing on its corner. it would have been fun to have the openings on the E and W, squares, standing on their corners, but that would have taken time and precision...

EBW white hairline

i wish we had more black and white stamps.

also, i wish i knew what kind of ink and nib i used. this is much finer than anything i am currently using.

EBW tea bag teddy bear

i had made some invitations that were folded and tucked into teabags that were made out of organic waxed paper. i made a little note for ellen and sent it along. not the best brushlettering. but not the worst either.

david mckee to klaus

another landscape. way back in the archives is a simple dog shape with the mouth open, shouting the address. there are unlimited possibilities with the right facing creature with a mouth.....all we need is time...
swipe-worthy feature: the red shading on the address. he did not take time to really fill in the land and sky. the shading is sufficient.

EBW navajo

another one that used the typewriter font. this one is in pale color. not much to say about it....if you have not learned how to put in the shadow lines, this one shows how the shadows are on the right side and bottom of each stroke. mostly, i leave a little white space. you may put the shadow right on the edge of the letter, but that takes more concentration.

EBW sloppy dots

the last in our dot series. sorry i left the worst one for the end. should have ended with a good one. it is a cute stamp. i'm sure i was just in a hurry. i might have saved it if i had just put wheels on the name....or ruined it.

EBW square dots

yup. dots can be square.
this name would be improved if some of the letters touched. maybe.
maybe not.
there is something wrong with the letters...
but i can't put my finger on it.
maybe someone will leave a comment ??

EBW few more dots

in our series on dots, here is one with more dots. not much to say about this one except that i could sit and write with a white gel pen over the top of dark marker all-day-long. i like these dots because they go off the edge. i would have to do a sample where they did not go off the edge to show that this way looks better. but, you should just believe me. there are so few things that i can say with such authority....but, dotting off the edge is one of them. OK, that's a challenge, to you-know-who to make something pretty with the dots not going off the edge and prove that it can be prettier...or just as pretty.

EBW few dots

yesterday i mentioned how much i like dots. here is an example where there was one dot on the stamp, so each letter got a dot. the PO cancel adds to the composition.

notice where the letters touch and where they do not touch. it looks so much better to have some of the letters touching, when you are making the name into an element. but, there are times when you have to leave some space or you mess up the legibility.

EBW kells-ish

this letter E came from some book that i no longer have. it is the only book i wish i had kept as it had some wonderful exemplars of very old styles of writing, in color. i'd love to time travel and ask these people *what's with the dots?* i love dots and i don't know why. they are mesmerizing. i put kells-ish in the title because the E reminds me of things you see in the book of kells. but i could be way off on that. i have not studied the book of kells or that era. if anyone who is a serious student wants to leave a comment and enlighten all of us, please do so.

another very nice cancelling job by the PO.
i love how they lined the circle up with the margin on the address.

david mckee to klaus

last week, i mentioned how nice a horizon line is for starting a composition. i should review all of david's envelopes and see if any of them are not landscapes. then go to his books and see if they are all landscape-ish. i remember when i taught children that they were always agreeable to drawing landscapes. drawing an interior landscape is also fun, where the floor is the horizon line.

EBW candles

i might have too many examples of candles on the blog. but, there might be people who have not gone back and looked at all 1300 ideas, and they need to see candles. these were probably the fastest ones. it is safe to say that in this example, speed was not a good idea. but, she was probably happy to have some mail. and it was done without a ruler. i always liked these better when the base line was done with a ruler.

EBW Sharpie neuland

the style is a lot like neuland. i used some large sharpie markers that have a chisel tip. in this case, i like the bleedy quality. it forces you to work pretty fast and not think too much. i will repeat the tip to find one person and send them a lot of mail. you get good ideas when you write one name over and over and over. you start to see different ways to fit the names together. same with the address. you start to have fun making it fit. and, i don't think sharpie comes in pink, so that must have been a ZIG. i wish i would have had the names touching. that white stripe bothers me now.

EBW pale blacketter

yesterday i didn't like the postmark position. this one is nice. i like the way the tilted box in the advertising portion of the cancel hits the stamp. looks like i planned it. i was actually centering the stamp over the name WILSON.

i hope my blackletter student is remembering to check the blog. we were talking about how to do this style and i could not find a good example. not that this is the finest lettering, but the idea of doing chunky blackletter in a delicate pastel is something i think works very nicely on envelopes.

using your guidelines as a design element is a fabulous idea. it is one started by people who wrote books for a living in a scriptorium. apparently they charged extra to draw guide lines, so their clients would like to have the guidelines left on the page to let everyone know that they paid extra for the straight lines. that is what i have heard. it may be an urban legend. or maybe there is a different name for urban legends from the middle ages.

that green is not the best color....  i probably did the envelope before i found a stamp. 

EBW Houdini

i'm fine with the idea. if i were to do it over, i would make the rectangle the same proportion as the stamp. it is taller and skinnier which bothers me. but, i like the name being in a script and bursting out of the border. i am not big on matching every little detail.

then....the way the address is done in script. ugh-mo.
it should have been block lettering that looked more like the HOUDINI, only tiny.

the postmark is distracting, the way it hits the corner of the rectangle, but i like the venetian blind over harry's face. and the placement of the large rectangle is way off. it would have taken a lot of planning to get this one right. many of the envelopes to ellen were done in haste and with the knowledge that she would not be nit-picking at the design.

EBW apple

she always liked the fonts that look like old fashioned typewriter fonts. they are easy to do. big bold printing, short caps and add a few random serifs.

design tip: you do not need to be literal and draw apple shaped letters. if it's red and has a leaf, it's an apple.

yesterday, i said these were from college days. this one was her first apt after college. so, i guess these will just be the chicago years.

EBW Ogden

this is my sloppy fast writing from about 10 years ago when i was sending lots of mail to my daughter while she was in college in chicago. the next three weeks will be mostly scans of my early works. they are pretty rough, but they have ideas that i still like.

this idea came from the stamp, but you could use it any time you wanted to practice your penmanship. just fill the envelope by writing the address over and over in a light shade. then write the address one more time in a dark shade.

david mckee

david mckee again, in the series from klaus. horizon lines are instantly wonderful on any envelope. i need to make a list of the top ten instant ideas for envelopes. this person took a lot of time filling in the land and sky. i need to figure out a way to get that done very quickly.

we will continue to have one international envelope per week, usually on tuesday or wednesday.

bonnie

i think i was playing around with white ink at the convention. i left the i out of bonnie. and i don't remember who bonnie is. so, this is filler until i get back in the groove and make something new and fun. i used the farm stamp because the letters reminded me of the big round bales of hay.

the second N was all blobby. i tried to clear it out with an Xacto knife.

axel scheffler to klaus flugge

axel scheffler's envelope to klaus flugge on wed (international day) - idea to appropriate, make an envelope into a landscape. i like how the stamp seem to be interacting with the image. queen liz is waving to the squirrel who looks like he is not really interested.

elizabeth stamp-ede

isn't this fun? the cut out letters are some kind of very ridge-y paper. they are cut out and adhered to the envelope. it looks like walnut ink? very pretty. thanks so much, elizabeth. (a true penpal, as we have never met in person ...we just exchange envelopes)

to jeri

jeri and i were at a penmanship convention a couple weeks ago. we were sitting in the back of the class. jeri was paying attention. i wasn't. the teacher was from italy, so she had an accent and at one point said *quit with the dot* but it sounded like *qweet weeth thee dot* i didn't spell all the words the way they sounded. but, i am sure jeri will remember to qweet weeth thee dot.

that is a good tip. too often people just trail off. it is more interesting to have a precise stop. knowing you are going to add a dot helps you stop at a good place. this is a way picky tip. if it sounds ridiculous, just ignore it. but pay attention to work that you think is really nice and see if you can see how precise the starts and stops are.

elizabeth

how cool is this. elizabeth made an envelope out of a page from a magazine. sometimes models look a little overly dramatic, swooning over whatever the product is. but this one knew she was destined to become an envelope, which is swoon-worthy. ok, that's just goofy. but, last week was one of those overly complicated weeks and this envelope arrived at a time when i needed a little ray of sunshine. i might not mention it often enough, but, mail is one of the easiest way to brighten a day.

david mckee (to) klaus flugge

david mckee is probably the artist on this envelope. as i was surfing and looking for examples from other countries, i found about 20 and i thought i kept track of where i found them, but, now i can't find that link. i will do further research and get back to you.

the wed = international envelopes lined up until feb of 2013

blob

this is a place card. it was supposed to be for Bob, but, obviously, there was a blob on the B, so, I just made a word. i forgot to post a second one that has no blob. this is a style i learned in a class at the IAMPETH convention i attended in early aug..

i might be posting more things that are not envelopes. but they will be rectangles with names, so you can imagine they are an envelope. i got waaaaay behind on my blog postings...

marji

i attended the IAMPETH convention a couple weeks ago. this was the envelope that was in the goody bag they handed out at registration. one lady did all 220 envelope ( i believe she did ...someone leave a comment if i am giving marji too much credit)
anyhow, marji is a powerhouse and she does some very nice italics.
this looks like walnut ink.
very nice, marji. thanks for writing out all 220 names. i feel like such a slacker for only doing 135 for your guild (those were the ccc envelopes that i have been running since january and just finished  :-)
but, i had so much fun doing those that i was thinking of sending an envelope to the 220 people who attended the convention this year....except i only do fake addresses...decisions decisions. do i really want 220 more envelopes in my OWN collection.

tags

these are not envelopes. they are tags that will tie onto wedding programs. they asked for *a bunch of different styles* so, i used 4 different pens and did 25 different styles so that technically, there are no two that are alike...

garden of love - 10 of 10

last one in the series.
i like the way her hyphenated last name has been re-oriented to like, DaVisellwein.

ccc trudy

this might be the last ccc envelopes. i started them in jan or feb. the point was to make one envelope for each member of the cream city calligraphers guild. it's been fun.

i like using the spaces between the letters and within the letters. sometimes the names work out perfectly. there are 7 letters in her last name. if there had been 8 or 0, i could have put the other letters right befoe the t or after the y.

garden of love - 9 of 10

my comments today will be about dawn, rather than the envelope. she signed up for my class called art for the intimidated because she had turned 70 and was excited to have retired and looked forward to learning to paint. her own mother had started painting when she was 80 and had quite a few years as a successful painter. so, dawn felt like she was getting an *early* start on her next career. she dove into every project and actually took my advice. i was very impressed with how well she did.

recently, i saw an article that told of some company luring her back to a job. i hope it is just part time. i suspect she was very good at her first career and probably enjoyed the work. hopefully she has been enjoying the painting, too.

foreign

david mckee - i think that is the artist. i forgot to write a blurb to go with this one. i'll try to research and edit thts post.

ccc trudy

the t is not a tall letter. this is one rule that i don't like to break. i do break it once in a while. then i make a mental note that it doesn't work. i like the exaggerated shapes. this was all freehand. it will count only as a rough layout. then it goes in the file the needs more work. it is also a clunker in how the elements are arranged. there are too many things wrong to even begin a list. this one only made it onto the blog because those tall skinny shapes have some possibilities.

garden of love - 8 of 10

i really enjoyed drawing this particular flower, but, i like having it as the focal point. the tiny little hearts are fun, dotted in and around the tiny scrolly-doodles.

garden of love - 7 of 10

if you have a small enough pen, you can fit a long address into  a really small area.

i did not have this stamp in mind when i wrote the name. but, i like how the shape of the O in monica is a little bit like the shape of the bird. and it might have been cute to put two little red hearts on top of the O, or it might have been too-sweet. i guess when i put in yellow stars, i was thinking that i did not want any more red. it is tricky to balance the letters. i do not have rules before i write. then after i write, i remember rules.

ccc sue

this is a cousin to the *line of infinite beauty.* i can't remember if we have talked about that particular line. it is a variation of the infinity sign. as you loop around, instead of hooking up the end, you drop down and make another set of loops, so it just keeps going, back and forth as long as you care to continue.

design lesson, use your whole arm as you make letters that are this large. i guess that is not a design lesson, it is a lettering lesson. learn to move your whole arm and don't just wiggle your fingers.

garden of love - 6 of 10

i think the names in this alphabet are easier to read when the vowels are small and the consonants are large. but, i would have to do some research to figure out if there is any validity to that theory.

garden of love - 5 of 10

i have tried several times to put the flowers on these stamps onto stems. it never works. you'd think i would stop trying after while.

sorry i messed up your envelope, eric.
but, i do like the dots

england

binette schroeder - that might be the name of the person who made the envelope. this one has been sitting in the list of pre-scheduled envelopes.

can you see how the stamp is the lady's face and the rest of her hat and body has been added.
i have had postal workers here tell me that you must never write on the stamp. so, i would be very careful about even writing this close to the stamp. it would be best to draw the image and put the stamp on top. of course this idea could occupy me for hours. something as simple as making a design where the stamp adds to the design when it is layered on top. how could i have not thought of this previously?

ccc ruth

not the best stamp choice. why? the stamp is curvy and the lettering is boxy. however, i like the letters that form the channel between the first and last name. it is stem like. hope i remember to do some variations on that idea. it was not an idea when i did it. i was just dong random stacking and that space looked inviting.

in answer to the frequently asked question...where do you get your ideas?
i just mess around stacking things and see what happens. i look for spaces.
the space between things is just as important as the things. that is pretty much a *law* not a rule.
does anyone want to debate that statement?
probably not, because as mary jones says:
that is just my opinion, but i am right.

garden of love - 4 of 10

one of the new ideas i had when i finally got around to finishing this series was to use the style of writing of the word *love* that is on the stamp, for the address. mine is not quite as loose, but, i like the contrast of the script with the elongated block letters. looks like i forgot the second *i* in alicia and had to tuck it in. i never would have made it that tight if i had written the name correctly to begin with.

here is something to note. with the two ascenders on l and d...they look better fanning out than they would if they were tilting towards each other. i do not think about these things when i am writing, but, after they happen, i can see that i like them better.

tilting open looks happier than tilting together. i probably do not have to think about these things now, but when i first started, i was always careful to make a couple practice names in pencil on a scrap of paper so that i knew what the overall shape of the name would be. now, i automatically *fan* out the name. although, if you are hanging from a clothesline, it will fan the opposite direction. i'll have to make some examples to show you.

the l in alicia is tilting too much for me. it is not awful, but more than i would like. when teaching, i try to remind people that less in more, subtle is better. beginners tend to put way too much tilt into their letters. they only need to be slightly off. when there is too much tilt, it becomes hard to read. and it also looks more chaotic rather than just playful.

garden of love - 3 of 10

another one with the scrolly background. i enjoy drawing scrolls. and i love the colors in the butterfly. again, this one is rather busy. maybe too many ideas piled onto one envelope.

ccc patricia

i can't remember if i have shown anything like this before. it is fun to make really tall skinny letters and put all the details at the top. then, when i wrote her name the second time, i put all the details on the bottom.
this is another in the finish-up-the-ccc-names. no, the po does not want the stamps down in the corner...but, as i keep saying, they better just appreciate any business that they get.

garden of love - 2 of 10

this stamp has no flower. i have not done many envelopes that are really inspired with this stamp. this one might be the best so far. i like the address stuck in the g. and i like the scrolly pattern. and i like the hearts. maybe there is too much going on.

garden of love - 1 of 10

this is the first in a series of ten envelopes i did for 10 students in one of my classes. i did not get past writing their names in sage green and outlining in hunter green, because i was uninspired. *today, i saw that i needed to get some envelopes lined up for the blog and - voila - inspiration shot into my head.

i like this style of writing although the t-h-y in kathy has too many letters in a row that are the same height. i used the numbers for visual interest rather than draw more flowers. this is not the best of the group. might even be my least favorite.

*when i say [today] i am saying it a week ago when i saw that i only had about 7 posts lined up. i now have about 50 posts lined up and i even put in a *final* post at the end of the list of scheduled posts so that if i die in an accident or bonk my head and am in the hospital, you will know that the blog has come to an end. i did not want it to just end mysteriously without giving you some kind of explanation. i am counting on some of my followers who will probably hear about what has happened to me to post comments in the comment section so that you can learn the specific details, if you are interested. however, i would encourage you to be more interested in other things. like ...what's for supper?

vintage

a really nice vintage envelope.