A little something for my Mum

It's my Mum's 70th birthday - we're throwing her a party at the weekend and I've been inspired to get my pens out to do a couple of little pieces for the guest book. After 18 months of no calligraphy I genuinely have no idea how I've survived without it. It's been wonderful to spend the last few days rediscovering my love of Copperplate, and I've really had to struggle to tear myself away from it!

Anyway, here are the pieces - I hope she likes them.

Birthday Bonanza

After a long and not-so-hot summer, September hits our family with a quadruple-whammy of birthdays in the first week alone. This can get expensive (admittedly one of the birthdays is my own, so I can't complain too much :-)) but it's also a great time to try and get creative. After spotting one of the envelope exchange jobs I'd done for my most recipient, my sister requested a hand-made card for her own birthday and I was happy to get scribbling with a few experiments.

Pencil sketch of the flourish

 After a little consideration of my efforts, I settled for a simple 'Happy Birthday' in gold gouache on front front of the card with a little hand-designed flourish (more of a doodle) underneath (see right).

Final 'rough'

As usual the final practice version of the card turned out to be the best one *sigh*, but I set about making four usable cards, each slightly different for the other.

The finished version sent to my sister looked a little like this:

Final version: Schminke Gold Pearl Gouache on Purple card, done with a Brause 66EF nib

(in fact it looked suspiciously like that!) the final four can be seen here in the gallery.