Not the best of envelopes to use – this looks like it was handmade paper, which was quite hard to get my pens to work on.
I want to work on my brush pen calligraphy skills, just to see if I can get those upstrokes evenly thin and the downstrokes nice and wide!
Rather than sticking with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, I thought this envelope needed a change…. so I flicked through my book of how to draw dragons until I found some inspiration.
This one was coloured with fine liners, but I also added in some random dots of metallic gel pen just to give the colours a little lift when the light catches it.
Tigger was nice for a change, but Winnie the Pooh is a little easier to draw…. or maybe there’s just more pictures online of Pooh, so it’s easier to get inspiration?
Either way, this envelope was coloured with some glitter gel pens I bought from Hobbycraft (unfortunately they don’t have them online), so Pooh catches the light really well.
I started drawing this birthday card, but struggled to get the candle to look right…. then I realised the candle looked quite like a “1”, and as the recipient was celebrating her 31st birthday, I added a “3”, and made the original candle look even more like a “1” – problem solved!
Admittedly the colouring looks rather sketchy, but it does look a lot better from a distance (and I think it also gives Pooh more of a furry texture).
Ok, I will start by saying I made this card after the one that’s scheduled to appear on my blog in a couple of day’s time, , but this birthday just happened to come first!
This was for a “young at heart” relative, who loves handmade cards – I couldn’t resist drawing Winnie the Pooh with a giant cake for her!
….is that they make for a really good envelope! Although it would’ve been improved a little more if I’d not accidentally used my orangey yellow fine liner to colour his eyes.
Just for a bit of variety, I decided to draw a picture on my Puzzler competition entry this month. I google searched pictures of Winnie the Pooh until I found one I thought I could copy without too much trouble.
I’ve taken a week or two off from sewing, so instead of a current UFO (unfinished object), I’ve got a little calligraphy project to share.
I don’t like the idea of practising for the sake of practise, so my calligraphy practise is usually envelope art!
I hope it also brightens the postie’s day when they see the colourful envelopes 🙂
How do you make a really good looking Halloween card, that isn’t just full of witches, cats and spiders? I was completely stuck until I came across a book on Zentangles – that gave me an idea…. what if I was to write out the letters, then do a Zentangle style pattern in the middle of each one?
Some black card a white gel pen and a white pencil later, this is the end result:
The outside of the card, with a Zentangle-inspired look
The white gel pen wasn’t as opaque as I’d hoped, and some of the patterns needed going over a few times to make them stand out, but it still has a really striking effect on the black!
Inside the card – copying a Hobbit font
But for the inside, I wanted to use an orange gel pen…. so I cut some white paper to line the card, and copied a Hobbit-themed font from my computer screen to make it look a little more unique!
I knew I wanted to send a gift with the card, and I’d found the bat pattern from BeeZee Art a little while ago. I made the mistake of buying some nice thick fleece to make the bat…. and ended up having to hand crank the sewing machine, as even with a denim needle, it struggled with the thickness of the fabric layers!
I’m pleased with how the bat came out though – although the black fleece was a nightmare to work with, it gives Batty a nice plush feel, and the orange lining for his ears and wings (remnants from the polycotton lining of the Trendy bag‘s second version) lifts the black.
My topstitching on the wings came out surprisingly well, even though his nose is slightly crooked! But his new owner loved him, and that’s the whole point 😀