Another card

I was asked to send a sympathy card to Katharina Pieper on behalf of Letter Exchange – I was the only one on the committee who knew her and Jean Larcher. This is not as easy and digging out discards. I wanted her to feel that it really did come from the society and not just from me (although I popped in a personal note as well)

I usually try to do my cards in around 15 minutes to half an hour, but of course on occasions such as this, it will take a morning!

I got the membership list of full members off the website and laid them out in Indesign, all in capitals – using Carmina Medium – a lovely font designed by Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. (Herman’s wife) Then I printed this across the high quality watercolour paper – in light grey, did a couple of trials in calligraphy on layout paper and wrote it in a Speedball C-0 pen. The speedball does well on rough paper as there are not sharp edges on the nib that ‘catch’.

This sort of thing is NOT about impressing other calligraphers or perfection or showing off. It’s about blessing people with something that you have taken the trouble to make by hand. When you have that attitude, you can just relax and chances are, the results will be better than something painfully and embarrassingly labour intensive. But good materials make a huge difference.

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