wedding gifts

I had planned on saving this for another day when I didn't have anything to post, but I just can't help publishing it now. I'm so excited about how these turned out.

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I needed to make wedding gifts for two sets of friends, and last week I finally got it done. Part of the reason I was dragging my feet was because I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do calligraphies of I Corinthians 13:4-8a for both couples, but other than that, my ideas for design were very foggy. Finally the perfect idea popped into my head, and I sketched a master design which I used for both final calligraphies. I finished them up on Saturday.

The hardest part of this design was that it's not a simple left-to-right and top-to-bottom pattern. The script faces all directions and wraps around, making it difficult to write some areas without smearing other areas that were already written.

For one of the calligraphies I used a similar pearly patterned paper as I did in my last project. It's a fun paper to work with. The ink glides smoothly onto the surface and the pearly finish is blessedly forgiving of smudges: if I catch a smudge early enough, I can simply wipe it cleanly off. These benefits more than make up for the small inconvenience of needing to work on my improvised light board (a glass table with a lamp underneath) due to the paper's thickness.
I am pleased with how it turned out. The pattern on the paper is almost distracting, but I think the overall effect works. I paired the finished calligraphy with a dark green mat and medium tone wooden frame. The final result is artsy and elegant.

I chose a crisp parchment paper that strikingly contrasts with my black ink for the second calligraphy. Parchment is a quiet backdrop that doesn't compete for attention with the calligraphy showcased on it. While I love experimenting with new papers, there's something about classic parchment that never gets old.

I finished this calligraphy by surrounding it with a black mat in a dark reddish wooden frame. In some ways this simpler version packs more punch than the version on the more ornate paper. However, I think they are equally nice in their own ways, and I enjoyed making both versions tremendously. I hope that the happy couples like them too.

p.s. If you click on the photos, you can get a larger view of the artwork.