Italic Calligraphy Envelope Art

Hi everyone, this is Vivian. Welcome back to my channel. Today, I'm back for another envelope art video. This is a project I do every month with my email subscriber. So if you're interested in receiving some tips and tricks on calligraphy and hand lettering, you can sign up to my email list. Or if you just want a chance to receive one of this envelope, you can also do that. You can find a link in the description box below. So today I'm using a navy blue envelope and first thing first is to draw some guideline because God knows I cannot write down straight lines. And I just have this grid line underneath that I made up. It's really just a grid. It just makes it easier every time I need to draw some guideline. So obviously you can just measure it, use a ruler and then decide however, you know, where you want to position your address and names. And today I'm using Dr. Ph. Martin's bleed proof white paint. It's a really opaque paint. It's very good for a variety of projects and since I'm going to use it on the nib, I need to water it down a little bit. So the consistency I'm going for is a little bit like a heavy cream and that should help it flow better on this broad edge nib that I'm using. The broad edge nib I'm using today is Michel No. 2. And since I'm not dipping the nib into an inkwell, I don't need to use a reservoir. That's why you don't see a reservoir attached to this nib. And what I'm going to do is to use a paintbrush and then brush on the paint onto the nib. It's a little tedious. So I just have the paintbrush on the left hand and just have to constantly load the nib with white ink. And for the first envelope, I'm going for a sandwich style of the layout. So the first name and last name is going to sandwich the address. So I'm writing in italic calligraphy today. If you're interested in learning italic calligraphy, I have a whole series of videos on that topic. There's a video for choosing pens and there's a video for preparing the nib and fixing the nibs and drawing the guidelines and so on. So make sure you check out those videos in the description below. So after the paint dried, I'm going to use this white Gelly Roll gel pen to write her address. The address is just going to be a simple block letter style. And what I did here is I want to make sure it's long enough. So instead of abbreviating the avenue into AVE, I write out the whole thing. So that way I can fill up the space that I wanted to. And on the bottom, I'm just going to draw some trees to embellish it. For embellishment, what I usually do is I just go on Pinterest and then look for bullet journaling or just clipart and find something that's not too complicated that I can easily create my own. So I just draw some trees and just a couple of different styles of trees by repeating them. And this can easily just make your envelope a little more special. And for the second envelope, I'm going to do some flourish because there's a Y in her name and I like to play with descender whenever there's an opportunity. So I'm going for a flourish for the descender of Y. But as you can see, since the ink doesn't flow that easily and also the paper is a little rough, it's a little tricky. But I think it turned out okay. So what I usually do for envelope is I'll give the name a little more thoughts to make it however fancy that I can. And for address, I would just do a simple block letter. So really, you just need to pick one element or one word or one phrase, in this case, the name of the recipient, make it special. And then for the rest of it, you can just go for a very simple block letter. That way you don't have to write everything in a very fancy style. Unless you want to. And for embellishment, I'm going to draw some cloud. I think it goes well with the flourish style. I'm not sure what's the logic there, but that's what I'm doing. I'm also going to fill out the cloud with some patterns, just some random stuff like swirls and dots and stripes. So again, bullet journaling is a very good place to start if you just search for bullet journal. People who do bullet journal are very creative. They have a lot of ideas on just embellishment and doodling. That's usually where I steal their ideas from. So for the third envelope, I'm going for all capital letter style. So the good thing about writing capital letter is that you don't have to worry about descender or ascender. So the whole thing will look very unblocky, if I can say that. But the tricky thing is actually capital letter is not that easy to write. Or maybe I just didn't practice enough. Straight line to me is actually trickier to write than curvy lines. For the address, I'm doing something that's opposite to the first envelope we did, which is having the name sandwich the address. This time, I'm going to have the address sandwich her name. So I'm drawing out the border lines and now fill up the address. In this case, her address, the first line is quite long. Her address has like a number, street, and then also some sort of like apartment number or something. So that means for the second line, I need to not abbreviate everything. So instead of writing SLC for Salt Lake City and UT for Utah, I'm spelling out everything just to make up all the space, you know, I need to fill up. And for the embellishment, I'm drawing grass or leaves, weed, something, some greenery stuff. And then it still doesn't look quite finished. So what I did is I fill up with dots. Dot is like a really useful embellishment. If you need to fill up some space, just sprinkle some dots. Usually it works well. And finally, we need to put on stamps on the envelope. So I have these very pretty stamps. And in addition to the forever stamps, I also have these vintage stamps. It's totally not necessary. It's just purely for decoration purpose. But I find them really cute and just makes envelope, you know, look even more special. Especially the color also matches, you know, to the envelope. And they're only like three cents or four cents. It really doesn't do anything except to make your envelope prettier. I got these stamps from eBay. You can find them on eBay or also Etsy shop and also, you know, various places on the internet. Just search for vintage stamp. So after I put on the stamps and address stickers, I'm going to rub on this Distress Glaze. And what it does is kind of like putting a protection layer to it. And actually, you can just rub it on with your finger. But I'm going to use this blending tool to kind of just go in like a circular motion to apply this glaze onto the envelope. And I'm going to avoid the stamp area because it does give it a glaze. That's what it does. And if you have a glaze on it, then the postal office won't be able to cancel the stamps. So I'm just applying to wherever there's white paint. You can use this on any art project, you know, wherever you need some kind of water protection. So if you're doing watercolor or some, you know, other kind of water-based lettering that you want to give it a coating, you can use this Distress Glaze. So all the material I'm using, you can find the link in the description box. So here are my three envelopes for October. I hope you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to give it a thumbs up if you do. And if you're interested in learning italic calligraphy, don't forget to check out those other videos in the description links. And if you want more tips and tricks on hand lettering and calligraphy, consider subscribe. I'll see you next time. Bye.