Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts

Saturday, June 9, 2012

ITALIAN PASS DA PIZZA PARDEE
























Our Edmonton Calligraphic Society's http://edmontoncalligraphicsociety.ca/ Spring Social has come & gone! And us Italianos (true, & temporary), we know ow do pardee!!!
In keeping with the colours of the Italian flag, we had tables full of decorations, which had taken the 6 of us about 6 work bees to create.


The excitement of the evening started off with the talented accordionist Heinz Frank playing a number of tunes from 'the old country'. What a treat! Meanwhile our Social committee members, Nadia, Jeanine, Barb, Wendy, Deb & I greeted everyone with green "Calligraphers Do It With Their Hands" t-shirts, Italian chef aprons with additional lettering by Barb Keir and of course painted on moustaccios, which i had fun creating using Caran D'Ache water-based pastels (they look like crayons but they're not...but they are non-toxic!) You can find them at The Paint Spot in Edmonton.
http://www.paintspot.ca/cgi-bin/paints.pl?t=5&g=71; Moustaccios...a necessity when using de accenttas, no?
Just because we're a little weird & crazy Nadia & I even painted the colours of the flag on our nails!

An yo notta gonna believe dis...one of our membersa, she show uppa ina da darka rainacoata, ana she pullsa outta da gun!!! Ma sacramento! She give ussa da bigga scare...we taught she come fromma da wrong famiglia!! Dat Judy, she'sa somting elsa!!!
Arrivederci Wall Flag
Mini bottle dessert labels
The food....mmm mmmmmm!!! Ze potluckka, she was excellentte - i had no idea what some of those dishes were, but they were all so good, tasting just like they came out of Mama's kitchen!
For beverages we'd supplied iced coffee (with an optional scoop of ice cream), along with 3 flavours of italian sodas.

On top of some , which was out of this world!!! Nadia, being an actual Italian &deliccioso desserts brought by members, Jeanine's daughter Dayna created red Strawberry-Rhubarb sorbet, cream-coloured Zabalione gelato, and green Basil ice creamamp; even speaking the language, had made some special pistachio cookies & soma Italian pastries; sorry i don't recall the names.


Table center bottles show table numbers

Calligraphically, we had a wonderful display of artwork by members of the guild, who had used the 25 papers from Mary Brault's stash that we'd handed out at the Christmas Social. Plus papers that Betty Locke assigned to her challenges class on Vancouver Island! How cool is that! It was all so beautiful.
They'll all be displayed again, along with those that forgot theirs,at the September meeting for another showing & draw.

As a fundraiser, we had a basket full of items to create a true huge Italian meal, a pile of calligraphic treasures, and a piece created for us by the artist Barb Close http://www.bcdezigns.com/index.html , who had come from California to teach some courses for ECS this year.
I even won one of the draws; a bottle of ink, and a Noodler Pen(how appropraite is THAT name!)  from Stylus in Edmonton. http://www.stylusfinepens.com/pens/noodlers-ink/flex-nib-fountain/
I'd just like to add that's one of the pens i've been NEEDING for a while now, hahha! It's a fountain pen that you can actually put a little pressure & release into, with a result almost like pointed pen/copperplate lettering, but not quite as distinctive; not bad for practising, tho.
Pizza boxes for raffle tickets and draws

Close-up of some of my lettering
Such a fun time!! I'd like to thank Jad, who showed up early to help us set up, and Gail & Mary who stayed late & helped clean-up. That was so sweet of you girls!
I didn't take any pictures at the actual party, so will be relying on others & hope to post those later.

And if YOU would like to be a party animal too, join the Edmonton Calligraphic Society! We meet the 1st Thursday of the month from Sept-May, where we do fun stuff at each meeting, with the months of December & June being our Socials!
Next meeting 7 p.m. Sept 6 @ Southminster Steinhauer Church on the South side.
CIAO!!!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

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.