'TIS THE SEASON!

The Edmonton Calligraphic Society http://www.edmontoncalligraphicsociety.ca/ held it's annual Christmas Party on the 1st Thursday of this month and that always gets me kick-started into the season. This year we had a finger-food potluck social at the home of our president. It was so cozy and festive; just wonderful for socializing. By the tree infront of the fireplace sat 30-some white paper bags, each adorned with our names which Wendy Spiers had calligraphed. Into these we dropped our cards, and mine was filled with with such beautiful handmade creations.

Here's a look at a few for now.

* A very MERRY Merry Christmas by Gail Fournier. How cute is that!
*O Beautiful Star in Neuland by Jeanine Alexander. Jeanine used a star from the layering technique we learned in Nadia's "Missing Pieces"class last month.
*A new member of our guild, Carol Thomas-Bain, used her wonderful lettering to advantage on an ornamental tag inserted into a folded envelope.
*Sonja Idema's cards always blow me away with their creative presentation and this years snowflake-themed tag & folded envie with her fun monoline letters are no exception.
*I really like how Monica Robertson puts her heart & soul into her cards. This year her idea came from a meditation course she took; brown for the monk's garments, a zentangle around 2011, and a haiku about the experience of meditation.
Click on the images to enlarge.
And the Edmonton Calligraphic Society has a Facebook page now...check it out! And breathe....

Summer Lettering

I don't know what's wrong with me. I've got Marv's work pants hanging on the line (yes, people still do that), I've got a stew cooking in the slow cooker, and now I'm ready to blog!

Every once in a while someone asks if I still do calligraphy.

I do, but on my own terms. For example, our nephew Roger married Sarah in Dawson Creek,BC this summer. We were camping & fishing for the 2 weeks leading up to it making our way up there, so as usual, I was creating their wedding present on holidays. We swung by their place before leaving so I could scope out the colour scheme & I packed a small box with supplies. (Keep in mind our trailer is only 18' long and when you camp in the foothills the last 2 weeks in August you got to pack clothing, shoes & boots for all 4 seasons!)

I took:

• 8 x10 velvet mat with 5x7 opening
• a few papers, including tracing, cut to size
• black Pigma pen (felt tip) for outlining & names
• watercolour pencils
• a few good round brushes
• small containers for water
• silver & gold gouache
• sumi ink with old brush
• pencil, eraser
• 8x10 foamcore for backing
• clear plastic envelope 'sleeve' for presentation
• small pizza box (unused) to pack the present in
• a fishing tackle box full of fishing tackle
  
  Left- Aren't Sarah & Roger cute?
  
  Above- We also spent time there with our son Dale & his girl Tara (I love this girl!) who spent 17 hours driving from Vancouver across the province to Dawson Creek, JUST TO SEE US!
  
  

(They went to the wedding too.)

So on our way there, we camped at the Brazeau Dam where the fishing is great. It rained for 3 days.

On the dam overflow picture that has a swamp in the middle, look carefully near the left side at the bottom of the picture for the very top edge of a post. That's the post (& wire) I climbed over to get a better picture, except I tripped & fell. Luckily I skidded only a few feet. And that's not a path at the bottom of the picture; that's a road!




I never took any meat out of the freezer for dinner because we were having fish.
Here's Marv trying to remove the fishhook from his finger.

And here's Biskit attempting amore direct approach to fishing.

That didn't work either.

Bisky had a great time frolicking in the wildflowers along the top edge of the dam, though.

When we got back to our campsite the trailer awning was hanging like a hammock...we had to remove a few buckets of hail before we could open the trailer door.

So we decided to move on, driving up towards the McLeod River to exactly where Marv's work buddy, who does "a lot of fishing", goes fishing, sometimes even with other fishermen.
Marv decided to pull over to the side of the road to remove his rain jacket.

That didn't go so well.

Like I said, it'd rained for 3 days.
A couple 20-year olds with their big honking double cab truck and bigass fat trailer with brand new ATV's pulled us out, and we only lost one part off the Blazer.

That was the part Marv had welded onto the front of the truck for pulling us out of sticky situations. Duh.

We found a wonderful site for our next stop...just a few yards to the right of this lake.

Doesn't this look like a professional photo?

Marv spent the evening fishing...


apparently fish don't grow in a gravel pit with no stream feeding into it.

Here the Biskinator decide's he's had enough & goes hunting for his own fish again.

We threw the rod a few times in the river, hoping to catch something.

(That's right, the rod...not just the line.)
Nada.

There's a pretty looking mountain stream in the centre there tho if you look hard enough.


If you're still reading at this point, you'll see some exciting lettering. This is the Alaska Hotel in Dawson Creek, which is at Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway.
Which gets me wondering, wouldn't Edmonton or even Calgary be at Mile Zero too? If the highway hasn't started yet?

Don't you just love this old place!? It just blew me away.

We didn't go in here.

We could've, but it was noon when we stopped for these pictures & it's almost a 7 hour drive home & Marv had get up before 6 a.m. to work the next day.

This place is across the alley next to the hotel.

If you look closely (you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them) there's a mural on a building at the end of the alley. Cool, huh?

We got home around midnight, fishless.

After I'd caught 2 fish that broke the line & got away, Marv wondered if perhaps we should replace my line... because it was his dad's old fishing gear (who passed away in the early 90's & I don't recall him EVER fishing), maybe the line might be a little weak...? Ya think?

Oh, and Marv landed one that squiggled back & slipped into the water.
"It was thhiiiiiiiiiiissssssss big!!!"

ECO watercolour fairie quote

I chose to do this quote from Peter Pan by JM Barrie for a baby gift, and being a lover of fairies (who isn't!) I went for a light-hearted colourful look.

After sketching the rough out, I found

in my paper stash a colourful scrapbook paper with a splashy watercolour design to use as a background border.

I chose ECO liquid watercolours

to match it.

The colours for the bouncy "laughed" was dropped in with a brush.

To get the bleed on "and they all went skipping about" I used a pointed nib and with a multitude of brushes handy continuously fed the nib with a different colour, occasionally dabbing a paper towel when the nib got too full.

Locker room graffiti card

Here's my attempt at some "train art" in a birthday card for a 15 year old. Poor dude's BD is in September, so I went for a school locker theme, with for some added graffiti.

Enjoyed using various felt markers, gel pens and a Pilot Parallel Pen on a textured grey Laid-like piece of cardstock that was laying around.

Like most rush jobs, I kinda made it up as I went along.

This would've been before I got my pan pastels...that would've helped.

Marc Kennedy, Martin Rink Soars

WOW! DID THEY EVER

14 Gold medals! What a thrill!

Congrats to all Olympic athletes for achieving their dreams!

And to all their parents for believing in them!

Saturday night after the Martin rink won gold, Marv & I looked to each other and said "Ya! We shook that young man's hand!" And he was so gracious... he surely must get that from his parents.

Proud to be Canadian!

Albertan!!

(St.Albertan?)

Marc Kennedy & Kevin Martin rink- my Olympic heroes

TO ALL OUR OLYMPIC ATHLETES

Kevin Martin, John Morris, Marc Kennedy, Ben Hebert

Ya!!!! Going for GOLD!!!

Marc Kennedy's the blonde cutie, 2nd from Rt.

OK, if you've followed the blog for a while I previously mentioned my personal connection; I was friends with Marc's mom Connie Leblanc in Jr.High, and had classes throughout jr. & senior high school with Connie & Don Kennedy (he called me metal mouth in Grade 9 when I wore braces which I'm over now so I won't mention it- I was walking down the glassed in slope from the library to class & he was just a couple feet behind. It's oK, I'm over it now. Not the braces tho; wore them from Gr.7-10 & my overbite is back!!! Life is so cruel..if not cruel, expensive!)

Connie & Don were involved in a number of school sports & starting a St.Albert teen club of which curling was a part. I had a chance meeting with Marc in '08 & he was just so friendly & humble, & it was so great to see Connie, ever so graceful, (& Don) after all these years. (And if I were 13 again & walking behind Don & not so insecure, maybe I'd say "hey, Chubbs, not so cute anymore, are ya?" heehee). Thanx Ed.Journal for not suing me for copy & pasting your photo of our Alberta champs.

The CALLIGRAPHY:

TOOLS- 1/4" or 3/8" metal Techniquill flat edge pen with Higgins Eternal ink. LETTERING STYLE- Neuland, with pen at 90 degrees. Some strokes double stroked or touched up with a pointed pen nib to create that bit of a curve at the beginnings & endings.

The 'fishtails' on the crossbars of the H, A & flourish of the Y: Created by sliding the nib along & lifting the outside edge of the nib while the inside edge continues trailing on to. Think of a plane taking of as it goes into a turn. You can have a lot of fun with Neuland by lengthening some strokes & touching & bouncing letters.

The OLYMPIC COMPUTER addition:

This was done playing around in a Microsoft Word Doc; there are just SO MANY CHOICES in their WordArt option.

A MAGICAL bookmaking structure & experience!

Spend only 6 minutes watching this amazing video as the books are discovered and opened. (Sweet musical accompaniment as well. F)

http://vimeo.com/7694315
For those of you who are interested in bookmaking, here's a wonderfully made video that displays Patience, the puzzle-like work of paper artist, Randi Parkhurst of the Pacific Northwest. I found it mesmerizing to watch how each book fits perfectly into place.
It's even more impressive when you keep in mind that Randi made all of the individual papers that compose each book.
http://www.parkhurstpaperarts.com/

Thanks to Margaret L. for the heads up & write-up on this one.

Isn't it cool?