Hand Made Wedding Card - Concertina Wedding Card Gift Idea

This is a simple Wedding Card for Nathan and Alexis. The brief was Sage Greens and Silver.

Left Side ease Click To Enlarge
Right Side Detail: Click To Enlarge

Of all the jobs I get at the studio, concertina or accordian style card/Books are the most common. Possibly becasue of their novel construction. The long thin horizontal construction make for an interesting layout.

Hand Made Baby Birth Card - Concertinba Book Gift For Baby Boy

A simple Baby Birth Congratulations Concertina

Gorgeous baby blue's and the covers have an overlay of very thin Japanese Tissue paper with silver and gold threads
Simple, subtle and cute

Hand Made Books and Journals

As I was in between jobs and waiting for a paper delivery so I could start with a commission...I made 3 more 'Inspiration Books'.
The idea of these is that they will appeal to the person of which the quotation 'Speaks'.

First off is this gorgeous Blue and Turquoise one with the wording:
Be Still,
And Listen to the truth

Then this one:
Let the Beauty of what we love,
Be what we do.
Inspirational for any artist or creative person
And the last one:
Blend with the tune of nature,
it's magic is everywhere!

All books are:
A5 sized,
Quality Cream Laid Paper,
Hand Bound
200 Pages
and have a beaded decoration to the spine and a lucky charm.

Birthday Idea - Concertina Card

Although this was made for a friend who is seriously ill in hospital, it would work just as well as a novel Birthday Card/Book.
It is the usual construction of a concertina card with two single section books sewn in the front and back folded section.
I wanted to write a little greeting at the beginning and added a secret to the back section. Writing the whole thing in a long concertina would have spoiled the surprise.
Quite a twist on the usual construction.

Baby Christening Album

On of the joys of my career is making special gifts for special people. Claire rang me at the studio and asked me to make a Baby’s Christening Journal for her 6 month old daughter Connie Violet (what a beautiful name) like I had made for her son Oscar James some 3 years before..

The opening page had her name, date and place of Christening on it….

The following Page had a 16 line poem….
Then further pages were added with spaces for the Grandparents photos with comments, Godparents Photo with comments and the rest of the 30 page book was given over to the guests.

The outside covers were white with a splash of pink Japanese Silk paper and a black and white photo of Connie was added.

I added 4 charms to the Japanese Sewn Binding. A butterfly for transformation, a little dolly, A dragonfly for peace and tranquillity and another spiral charm saying ‘Follow Your Dreams. Hopefully this will be a lasting reminder of a very special day.

The Lettering was done in a baby pink to match the outside. Click on photos to enlarge.

If you would like more details of how to commission a book yourself, please feel free to email me at inspiredbyscript@yahoo.co.uk

Hand Made Wedding Stationery Website

It's been all hands on deck at Inspired by Script and I've been concentrating heavily on my Wedding Website North Yorkshire Weddings
Theres still a huge amount of work to be done on it and this has to be somehow fitted in around the many commissions that seem to be coming in at the moment.

I decided to develop a few new ideas for Wedding Stationery, this time with a more contemporary feel. Perhaps they will be slightly off beat for some but I'm sure the days of Cream/Ivory and Gold are numbered. We need something fresh and appealing.

The bright Light Selection follows.....

The envelope or card (if you choose to still put them in an envelope, can be left square or cut into a point. The outer cover is a 3 fold construction and inside is a picture of the particular flower you want (or could be something you provide us with if preferred) and the invite and the photo is then mounted on a bright coloured Canson, textured, cover stock.

The card can then be sealed with a photo stamp and sent as is....without the need for an envelope, thus the card doubles up as the envelope.
Choose a contracting colour for the card against the inner mounted photo and invite. The choice is yours and we have a large selection of colours to choose from....one is sure to match you theme.

Here I've shown the purple on green and the green on purple idea, both of which compliment the lavender flowers perfectly.

Choose from mounting your cards portrait (running top to bottom) or Landscape (running side by side)

You can also choose from Small, Medium or Large Photos, making the whole card personal to you and you alone. It depends on your taste.

Of course there is still the option to go more traditional and incorporate a more subtle colour theme if that suits your taste better...
Remember all our designs are tailor made to suit you! And if you are happy, we are happy... so give us your ideas
You can also choose to have your name printed in beautiful calligraphy on the front.... a guaranteed eye catcher!


You can choose the picture at the bottom and the invitation at the top....

Or the other way round....the choice is entirely yours.

For further details please visit our website at www.northyorkshireweddings.co.uk or email Sue direct at inspiredbyscript@yahoo.co.uk My studio phone number is on the website.

Loreena McKennitt - Dantes Prayer Calligraphy Inspired By Music

CJ posted a very valid question about whether I listen to music while I work, which ties up nicely with this post… so thanks CJ. I thought I would write about my latest piece of work Dantes Prayer by Lorreena McKennitt. I suggest that after you have read the blog post you go back and click the link and listen to the music and lyrics (in a separate window) while you read the lyrics on the photo graphs. They ‘should; be able to be enlarged…I say ‘should’ because one never knows with google! Hopefully his will give you some idea of the ‘Spirit’ and ‘Essence’ that ends up being contained within the piece. First off I type out the lyrics. This makes it personality-less, quite dead and without preconceived ideas. Then while listening to the song over and over and yes over again, I make scribbles on the sheet that probably make no sense to anyone but me. This enables me to get a feel and flavour of the song. Which words need to be large, which words need to be strong, which are quiet, loud, subdued or even extended.

Then comes the colours. Listening through the track again I scribble down the colours that the words bring to mind. This particular piece evolved colour wise all by itself. I must admit I wasn’t expecting a rainbow! A chalk pastel background was laid down and blended carefully. I should tell you at this point that the sheet of paper is a full sized sheet of Saunders Waterford.

It always pays to do a test piece. (Thanks Suzi for reminding me of what I preach to my students!) In this case I had bought new chalk pastels (caran Dache) and it was disastrous! I usually use Inscribe for pastel work and have never ever had a problem. These were greasy and oily and a right pain in the asse to write on. Never mind, we calligraphers have tricks up our sleeves to enable us to write on most surfaces. I cut the pastel back with pumice powder and it seemed to work, albeit with extreme difficulty still and the writing was painfully slow. After starting to write it out I lost patience very quickly and shelved the whole thing and decided to rework the background and start afresh.

When writing the piece out I play the CD, line for line, checking and rechecking for those loud parts and extended words while I write, stopping the CD at every line….just to make extra sure. I don’t always get it right, but that’s all part of being human.

The final touches are when you then incorporate the background music and instruments as part of the whole piece. In this case the piano was symbolised by watercolour squares and the no verbal vocal (don’t know what else to call it!) was shown as a silver thread, running upwards at the rise and downwards at the fall of the ‘whatever you cal it’.

My son has bought a DVD burner and has a video recorder. I really want to have him to video the words, play the music over the top and then edit it as a whole piece. This way the music and the calligraphy become one… and hopefully the effect will be amazing. Overall I love this piece. It’s still new, so it’s my baby and not for sale. It’s proved to me that I can still do large pieces of work despite the difficulties with my eyes and I know that through the music I can make my letter live. This kind of work is specialist. As calligraphers and Lettering Artists we get used to doing the mundane, run of the mill but keeps wolves from the door kind of jobs. This is what we trained over 10 years for! Yes folks you can become a brain surgeon in less time… and it’s a long standing joke with calligraphers. So go on…. What music inspires you? Have you created art to music and if you have, can you link to it on the comments and direct everyone to your blog? Go on, put on some music, pick up your paints, pens or whatever medium you use, dance like a deva and create!
And the next 3 pictures are the detail of the whole song, preferably looked at while the song plays in a seperate window..... here's that link again Loreena McKennitt Dantes Prayer.... ENJOY!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Personalised Baby Girl Poster - The Goddess and the Butterfly

Way back in February I blogged about my newest prints: A personalised Prayer for a baby Girl or Boy. I have been fortunate enough this week to have been asked to do one for a Christening Gift for a little girl ‘Freya’. The advantage of part print, part original is twofold. Firstly from a cost point of view it is much cheaper than commissioning one from scratch, although this can be done if wishes, but secondly and more importantly it gives you scope to add details and specific items that would be meaningful to the recipient, in this case ‘Butterflies’. (Click photo to enlarge)
Freya is the Goddess of love, beauty and fertility. She was said to have blond hair and blue eyes and is reputed to be the ‘fairest’ of all the Goddesses and people prayed to her for happiness in love. She was also called on to assist in childbirth and for the kindness of the seasons. The symbolic meaning of the butterfly is similar across most cultures and time. Invariably, this beautiful Celtic animal symbol represents transformation, inspiration, and rebirth. The concept of rebirth with the Celts is particularly of importance in terms of recycling of life – both in the spiritual and physical realms. Perhaps the bible and the Byrds extol the concept best: "To every season, turn, turn turn." This was an intimate concept with the Celts, and the butterfly – in its miraculous way symbolizes transformation and rebirth.
Further enquiries about this or other items on my blog
contact me at:
inspiredbyscript@yahoo.co.uk

What is love?

We all love a good quotation that gives us the AHA factor. This is a commission completed last week as a wedding gift....
Love is....
The magical meeting of two souls

Two souls do not finally meet
They knew each other,
all along

A concertina Book which magically transforms as a hanging.

A concertina Book which magically transforms as a hanging.

Walnut Ink on Saunders Waterford Paper.
Silver/Aluminium Leaf and gold pen.