Blah,Blah,Blahg

AND THE WINNER IS.....

Today was the day I got to find out who the winner of the Danae Hernandez calligraphy giveaway was going to be.  This was so exciting!  My heart was racing as I went over to the number picker and I got all excited when a number came up, even when I didn't know who won yet, it was just so thrilling, someone was going to be a winner and I was flush with anticipation!

The number picker picked '9'.  I went to my list to see who was 9, (remember I didn't count my comment), and who won? The lovely that made this comment: "I just had to leave a second comment...my luck runs in 2s!"  Hello?  She wasn't kidding?  So our very lucky winner is:

Yea!!! Miss Ashley congrats!  I'll email you to get the details!!!! So, just so you know, I had so much fun doing this, that I am going to try to do a contest each month. I'll keep you posted on the next one, stay tuned...

DON'T BE JEALOUS....

This my lovelies is the hand of the extraordinarily talented calligrapher Danae Hernandez.  I found her on Etsy and to be honest I was going to keep her to myself, but I have this recessive PR gene in me and I could not resist shouting her praises from the rooftops, okay the Blahg (close enough).  I am turning this into a rubber stamp and can't wait to start  stamping up a storm--bills will now be a heck of a lot more fun to send! 

What does this have to do with you?  Well, Miss Danae in an act of complete curiosity, uhm, I mean generosity has agreed to do a calligraphy address for one of my lovely readers!!!  AND I in turn will make it into a wood handled stamp for you, so you too can send bills with pleasure!  I know it's almost as good as getting new shoes, right?  So, how is this prize winning going to go down?  Just leave a comment and where your comment falls is your number (following me?)  I will then use this super duper random number picker here and generate the winner.  Yes, of course you can leave more than one comment and I will keep this open until next week and announce the winner next Friday.

If you can't wait and need a calligrapher a.s.a.p., I am sure Miss Danae would be happy to oblige.  You can find her here.

Because I couldn't resist here's another sample of her swoon worthy work...

OLA!

   I can't believe I didn't have time to post yesterday,  because I received the package on the left and I was about to burst with excitement!  It was a package from the very talented San Francisco calligrapher Billy Ola Hutchinson.  We are collaborating on a project for an upcoming issue of 'Country Living' , the  name of the magazine doesn't seem to fit the actual guts of the mag, which had plenty of modern ideas that were clean and sleek, nary a dried floral arrangement in sight... Anyways, the magazine will be doing a silhouette story and will be using a custom silhouette flat like this
but had the  fine calligrapher Mr. Hutchinson add his talented hand to the flat.  If you have been reading my little blahg, you know that I am a sucker for beautiful calligraphy and this my fine friends is as close to nirvana as it gets 'round here.  So to see my name in his hand on that manila envelope made me swoon.  I have begged (not too proud) Mr. Hutchinson to be The Bella Bella co. calligrapher because he is too darn talented to keep to myself.  Can you  imagine having something anything written out in this beautiful script?  Even this pedestrian warning is made into an elegant alert in the hands of this artist:

Unfortunately, Mr. Hutchinson doesn't have a site (yet another reason I would like him to be our calligrapher)  I would love to get his work up on the site for all to view/drool.
I promise to put up the mention in the magazine as soon as it's on the news stands because I am soooo looking forward to that day....

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT...

  I have always, always LOVED great calligraphy, I suspect typography in general (although up into a few years ago I didn't know it had a name). 
    No offense please to people that do Italic calligraphy, it just rubs me the wrong way, in a sort of avocado 70's green sort of way, something that I am trying to withdraw from my memory bank. I digress..BUT  beautiful antique penmanship, Copperplate and Spencerian make me swoon.  I decided that being the 'Miss Everything' that I am I had to get in on this, so I signed myself up for a local one night class at Paper Source, of course one evening of lessons will not get you very far, but it may point you in the right direction and my direction being the obsessive that I am pointed me straight to addiction edge.
     I MUST learn this, I must, there's not a computer generated font that will do even though this one  is quite satisfying.  You really can take this into the 21st century by developing your own style of this gorgeous type of writing such as Rebecca Trawick has done , which she aptly describes as hand lettering and is just magnificent!

     I doubt that one gets to point B (Rebecca's very own style) without at least a little information on how to use at the very least the oblique pen and how to get the darn ink in there.  May I suggest some sites that may help you on your road to developing some fine lettering skills?

Spencerian Micheal Sull has courses on DVD which I will be asking for my upcoming birthday (it is difficult to shop for an Everything girl after all) also this site is a great resource for FREE, yes FREE videos although I don't know how far you'll get, although they do have some great lessons available via pdf...  Okay, one last image of some mouth watering script and I need to go, because evidently the key to perfecting this skill is practice...