Dreamweaver Calligraphy has proudly participated in the Graceful Envelope Contest sponsored by the Washington Calligrapher's Guild for the past two years. A theme is set and they ask that your decorate and design an envelope to correspond to that year's theme. It has to have hand-lettered calligraphy and they encourage incorporating your stamps into your finished design.
This year's theme was "A Mailable Feast". My husband is a Yankees fan, so I liked the idea of using the Mickey Mantle baseball stamp on my design. And when you think baseball, you think peanuts and Cracker Jack! This was all painted with watercolors and the hand-lettering was written over the artwork.
I encourage people to check out the website of the Washington Calligrapher's Guild to view the winners. The contest is open to anyone, even children, and is just a fun way to express yourself through art and creativity!
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This year (2007) I also had my son Colin, age 5, enter the contest. His entry was called "American as Hot Dogs and Apple Pie". He drew the hot dog and the pie by himself, colored his design with watercolor pencils and did all of his own lettering! I think it is pretty good for a kindergartener!
*click on image above to enlarge*
The theme for the one above was "Anything to do with the letter P". My design is called Painted Patchwork Postage. I took a love stamp theme and made it into a log cabin quilt pattern and the whole thing was painted in watercolor.
*click on image above to enlarge*
This year's theme was "A Fine Line". Many people designed envelopes with clotheslines, felines and even spider webs. My goal was to incorporate the fonts designed last year to honor the gentleman who wrote the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". My envelope is decorated with a glittery image of Emerald City and a variety of lines from the Wizard of Oz, starting with "I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" and ending with "There's no place like home".
