Textured Letters with Barbara Close

Photo by Laura Bernabei

Some catching up to do!  The last weekend in March, the San Francisco Friends of Calligraphy sponsored a workshop by Barbara Close, whose store of techniques and enthusiasm seem absolutely boundless!  I always appreciate an organized, yet flexible teacher, and Barb was certainly all that.

Within the framework of creating textured letters, we played with watercolor, collage, paste paper, embossing, shadows and doodles. 

Photo by Laura Bernabei 

Photo by Laura Bernabei

Photo by Laura Bernabei

Photo by Henry Silva

Photo by Henry Silva

Photo by Henry Silva

Photo by Henry Silva

We even made a lovely little folio in which to keep our creations.  (And always happy to find a use for my Czech glass button collection!)

Photo by Henry Silva

It was one of those more-process-than-product workshops where you leave with just a handful of creations but a veritable truckload of techniques and inspiration!

As an added bonus, Ruth Korch--my awesome table-mate and partner in crime--and I dashed over during lunch to the furniture sale in another building at Fort Mason and with Ruth's encouragement I scored this fabulous chair, covered abundantly with French calligraphy!

Photo by Laura Bernabei

All in all, a fun and relaxing way to spend a weekend.

Lemon Blackletter: Tim's Cake

I didn't get to see/taste this one in person since I was on my way back to beautiful Enders Island;  I dropped off the finished stencil to Wendy on my way out of town.  I do know that there was lemon, marzipan, buttercream, almonds and limoncello involved...yum...

More Calligraphed Confections: Marian's Cake

Wendy and I so much enjoyed making the "K" mandala cake that we decided to do it again, this time for my friend Marian,  a self-professed diva who is turning 75.  My idea was to work a stylized treble clef into the design because she is, after all, a soprano--but treble clefs are so, I don't know, ordinary.  There was a lot of trial and error involved, so I worked in pencil on this one.

This time I cheated a little bit and when I finally got the motif right I just made seven copies and pasted it up.  I added the leaves freehand for some finer contrast.  The dots were punched from black paper and glued, making much better circles than I could have done by hand.  Again I taped the design to the table, placed a piece of glass over it and then the stencil blank over that.  With my handy "burner" tool I cut the stencil in no time at all.  Then I headed over to Wendy's to test it with "old gold" lustre dust on parchment paper.

Wendy decided we should do the sides of the cake as well (a 14" creation!) and sent me home to make that stencil.  Again, I copied, cut and pasted using elements of the round top design.

By the time I got back to her house, she had applied the gold to the top of the cake, a perfect disk of white chocolate.

Just imagine:  layers of almond-flavored cake alternating with layers of raspberry mousse and lemon cloud illusion (lemon cream made with lemon curd).  To die for!  We stenciled the sides on two slabs of homemade marzipan (Wendy skinned the almonds herself!).  It was a more subtle look than on the white chocolate, probably because of the moisture element.

Here's the first half applied:

And here's the master pastry chef herself:

Back into my studio I set to work making a matching card for Marian with my trusty Zebra G nib in Aztec Gold Finetec on Opal Stardust cardstock and envelope.

By the time I picked up the cake the next day for the party, Wendy had worked her magic with piping, fresh raspberries and marzipan leaves.

At the party, the beautiful birthday diva serenaded us with her amazing voice (and we serenaded her back with "Happy Birthday")...

...candles were added for "past, present and future"...

...and then it was time for cake!

Wendy and I are having so much fun with this collaboration!  Stay tuned for the letter "T"!

Silk Purse from Sow's Ear

So after four-plus years of Blackletter classes at Atelier Gargoyle, I had acquired an impressive pile of butcher paper practice sheets that it seemed wrong to throw away.  One of my classmates had suggested I use them for wrapping paper, which was fun and different--very cute when tied with string.  For some reason I thought to grab a few sheets as I went out the door to an evening collage class with the inimitable Anna Corba, incongruously but delightfully being held at Knitterly, a favorite local yarn store.  We were provided with kits and lots of boxes of ephemera to dig through, and I thought my walnut-inked specimens were a nice contrast to the image elements.  (Don't look too closely at the letterforms, Linnea & Ward--the sheets are really old, okay?  That's my story anyway.)

We made collages on two pieces of matboard, then coated them with melted beeswax, which gave them surprising depth and dimension.  The covers were assembled with the notebook elements and bound together with ribbon.

 A fun project and a nice mid-week escape!

Let Them Eat Cake!: Karen's Cake

I had already asked my dear neighbor Wendy Remer, an amazing chocolatier, to make a cake for my friend's 50th birthday celebration.  Then we saw the latest issue of Martha Stewart Weddings...

...and were inspired by the wonderful creations of Nan Deluca, Patricia Mumau, Dana Cochran, and Xandra Zamora. We decided to collaborate and create something unique for the occasion.

Having admired the work, and especially the mandalas, of Jane Farr, I was delighted to find her outstanding step-by-step instructions for creating them.  I penned my first mandala around the initial "K", then headed to Fedex Kinko's (or whatever it's called this week) to make a few enlargements.

With luck (and a 40% off coupon) I found an electric stencil cutter at Michaels--I didn't even know such a thing existed!  What a dream to work with!  It's kind of like a woodburning tool with a very fine tip.  It seems to work well on .003 and thicker acetate sheets, as well as the stencil blanks that are sold for this purpose.

I taped the design to my work table, then a piece of glass over that, and the blank stencil on top.  With a little practice I was able to keep the tool moving smoothly enough.  (I did have my husband improve the insulation, though--it gets very hot!).

The pieces popped out easily with a craft knife.

I set the stencil over a piece of black paper to make sure I hadn't missed any sections...

...and on a whim, took out my pan chalks and a cotton ball to give it a test run.

Then it was time to head over to Wendy's for further experimentation!  She had seen a video on using stencils with royal icing, which specified that the icing should be the consistency of mayonnaise.  She tried out the stencil on her Silpat mat with mayonnaise and pink food coloring.  Voila!

Encouraged by success, I cut and pasted elements of the mandala for a stencil to use on the sides of the cake.  We ended up not using it after all.

Though next time we'd make it a bit stiffer, the apricot-tinted royal icing was quite striking over the chocolate fondant, and Wendy added some touches of gold dust to dress it up a bit.  I made a little matching card to go with it (but forgot to take a picture of it).

The Birthday Girl was glowing and gorgeous!

The Merry Year is Born...

Couplet by Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849)

Everything Old is New Again

I was walking through West Elm on my way to somewhere else when I spotted these dishes and snapped some photos with my phone.  West Elm is a little too trendy for me, but if Offhand Flourishing is hip, I guess I'm cooler than I thought!  I haven't sleuthed it but the bird looks suspiciously like something out of E. A. Lupfer's  Ornate Pictorial Calligraphy.

The deer and the horse don't have the same graceful thicks and thins, but the idea is definitely there.

I didn't notice it in the store, but according to their website they also have a snowflake, mandala-like design:

 West Elm photo

So I guess it should come as no surprise that Pottery Barn, which is also owned by Williams-Sonoma, has also used calligraphy in their holiday bedding design.

Pottery Barn photo

In this case the flourishings are relegated to the background, but I think they really make the design:

Pottery Barn photo

Pottery Barn photo

And for the truly obsessed dedicated, you can complement the ensemble with scribbly sheets!  Couldn't name the hand, but it looks to be French.

Pottery Barn photo

Pottery Barn photo

So I wondered if this was a running theme in the corporation, and headed to the Williams-Sonoma website.  Sure enough.  Napkins, tablecloths, mugs, glasses, plates, and even a cookie jar with calligraphy--some recognizably Spencerian--woven in.  We're taking over!

Williams-Sonoma photo

Disclaimer:  West Elm, Pottery Barn, and Williams-Sonoma have no idea who I am;  just thought these were fun and wanted to pass them along.