I’m not much of a writer, but when Lindsey asked me to share a tutorial for floral calligraphy flourishes she found on my Instagram, I thought it was time to give it a go. The biggest reason I want to share is because I feel like learning to draw these flowers really changed my art life! That might sound dramatic, but before that day I never really believed I could make anything so pretty.
Continue Reading about Fabulous Floral Calligraphy Flourishes: Guest Tutorial by Jodean Cooper
Last year, Molly Suber Thorpe wrote a guest tutorial here on the TPK blog. Afterwards, I resolved to send her a gracious thank you card, which I’ve been sitting on doing for five months. Yikes! Today, I made up my mind to create something that’s worthy of the artist who literally wrote the book on modern calligraphy. As I worked, I realized that you might like to make a similar card! Here are my instructions:
Continue Reading about Traceable Calligraphy Flourishes Card Tutorial
A couple of months ago, I created a twist-out card tutorial for Christmas (you can see it here). Recently, a TPK reader emailed with a great idea: make a similar tutorial, but for Valentine’s Day! Today, I ran with that, and I love the results. If you’ve got some free time before Valentine’s Day, I highly recommend creating a card like this one!
Continue Reading about Stunning Valentine’s Day Twist-Out Heart Card Tutorial
Today’s holiday card tutorial was inspired by something I came across in a thrift store book called Make It With Paper. At nearly 30 years old, the book is a bit dated, but I found some great ideas in it! One of them is “twist outs”: paper that’s cut to twist a certain way to give a project dimension.
Continue Reading about Tasteful Twist-Out Tree Holiday Card Tutorial
The other day, I received a marketing email from a company trying to sell me their electronic envelope addressing services. “Stop hand-addressing invitation envelopes!” it said. “The latest envelope printing technology lets you print handwritten quality envelopes at speeds of up to 5,000 envelopes per hour.” Despite the marketing claim, I don’t think that printed envelopes can truly reach “handwritten quality”. Why? Well, besides the small but appealing imperfections that hand-written calligraphy can produce, there’s flourishing.
Continue Reading about Calligraphy Flourishing for Beginners + Free Worksheet
Ever since I released the Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills: Garden Edition, I’ve received several requests for instructions over how to make the flourished bee on the front. I love that bee, and I think it doubles as a beautiful piece of artwork and a killer calligraphy drill! So, today I went ahead and made a free printable Flourished Bee Calligraphy Tutorial. It’s a four-page calligraphy tutorial with step-by-step directions over how to use a dip pen to make that cool little bee!
Continue Reading about Free Printable Instructions – Flourished Bee Calligraphy Tutorial