Valentines and other work

There were a few Valentine’s floating about the studio this week. But, more on that later.

A friend on Facebook referred another friend to me. She had been at a Chamber dinner and the speaker was very inspirational, so much so, that she wanted one of the woman’s quotes done in calligraphy. It’s a great quote, really.

"If I am going to drown I don’t want to waste time in shallow water."  — Clara Arbiser

I wrote this out a couple times on gridded layout paper, and my muse must have been with me because I was happy with the lettering right away.

Now, for colors, I made some suggestions to the client after I took some inventory of my massive stock of paper. The obvious imagery would be to use blues, but the client also wanted to incorporate some of the lady’s personality into the piece. She is from Argentina, and was very vibrant and passionate, and wearing the color red. So, I suggested doing the lady’s name in red, but much smaller to not over power the other wording.

I chose a piece of paste paper that had bold blues and greens with subtle spots, from what, I’m not sure, but thought it could look like drips of water. The client really couldn’t visualize the white lettering that I suggested, so she wanted a more subtle blue for the paper. So, I chose a plain light blue paper and did the lettering twice. On one of them I added some pastels to look like calm water. I also did the white lettering on the paste paper just so my client could see it.

I scanned all three examples, and sent them off to the client to see if she liked one of them. She liked more than one and wants to have 2 of them, the paste paper with white lettering and the light blue one with the pastels. Bingo! But, I’m just glad she liked my work. This has happened more than once for me, so I’ve found that it’s always a good idea to give the client choices.

As for the Valentines, I made some simple cards that I saw a design for at Archiver’s this time last year. It started out that I just wanted to send a couple to my nephews from Evie. But, ended up making them for other family members to thank them for their baby sitting services.

Then I had a thought of a use for all the baby food jars that I saved after Evie was finished with them. Broke out my doily punch, (see my last blog post for more on that) and made strips to wrap around the jars, tied a ribbon around it, added flowers and viola, Valentine bouquets. They look very spring-like, don’t you think? And since it was almost 60 degrees today, we can only hope that spring is right around the corner. But, personally, I'd like a few more pretty snow days to cover all the gray & brown of the trees and grass.

Happy Valentines Day!