Tis' finally here my letter loving friends, our 8th annual holiday card exchange!! You know what that means right...? 2020 is almost outta here!!!
As much as this year has been a real bear (and that's a disservice to bears), it's also taught us a lot of lessons. One of them is that we're realllly scrappy. And that we're a tight knit team.
The most fun part of 2020 for us has been re-launching our YouTube channel and dreaming up fun, inspiring and informative videos for all of you. So...let us announce officially the 2020 exchange with this festive video for your viewing pleasure!
We hope you enjoy it! It certainly brought some joy and cheer to us while making it. And those things are MUCH NEEDED this year.
So
why don't we exchange some holiday cards? This year, we've chosen to
use one of our new cards of the season, our Cactus Seasons Greetings Sticker Card. Our addressing this year is fun, coordinating with the card to look like a present! As always it will be hand addressed by our in house expert,
Bailey Amon Rivera.
Here's the scoop: You add us to your mailing list and send us a hand addressed(practice that calligraphy and handlettering folks!) holiday card and we'll have our resident calligrapher, Bailey Amon Rivera mail ours back from US! Sound like a plan?
The details: Mail your card to Bailey at:
Antiquaria
℅ Bailey Amon Rivera
5654 S. Prince Street, STE A
Littleton, Colorado 80120
Be sure to include your preferred return address (in addition to the one on the envelope-you know how the mail can be) so that we can mail ours in return!
We are SO looking forward to hearing from you. Now it will actually be FUN to check the mail:) Yay! Let's make 2020 the BEST exchange yet!
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
Find
us on Instagram @antiquariadesign @antiquariabailey and @antiquariaemma
and tag your pics #longlivesnailmail and #antiquariaholidayexchange2020
Where has the year gone! Seriously. 2019 has been a crazy year for us - with a ton of change! Bailey had her first child in February and we opened our Flagship store in June! We have also been hard at work designing new products for our next release for January! There's always something going on over here. WHEW!
One of our favorite aspects of the holidays each year is our annual Holiday Card Exchange! Can you believe this is it's 7th year? Have you participated in the past? We absolutely love it!
See 2013's Holiday Card Exchange here, 2014's here, 2015's here, 2016's here, 2017's here and 2018's here. It is so fun to see your families each year, hear your thoughts and see what holiday cards you picked! And it's fun to look back at all of the cards we've chosen and calligraphy styles & ink colors we've picked! We're always SUPER EXCITED by how many of you write to us! This year, we hope to feature the cards & envelopes that get sent our way in our Instagram stories!
We think getting snail mail is the bee's knees and we have a feeling that you do too! We know it brightens our day. Like, a lot ;)
So why don't we exchange some holiday cards? This year, we've chosen to use one of our new cards of the season, our Lights Merry Everything Card. Our addressing this year is fun, with added holiday light flourished. As always it will be hand addressed by our in house expert, Bailey Amon Rivera.
Here's the scoop: You add us to your mailing list and send us a hand addressed(practice that calligraphy and handlettering folks!) holiday card and we'll have our resident calligrapher, Bailey Amon Rivera mail ours back from US! Sound like a plan?
The details: Mail your card to Bailey at:
Antiquaria
℅ Bailey Amon Rivera
S. Prince Street, STE A
Littleton, Colorado 80120
Be sure to include your preferred return address (in addition to the one on the envelope-you know how the mail can be) so that we can mail ours in return!
We are SO looking forward to hearing from you. Now it will actually be FUN to check the mail:) Yay!
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
Find us on Instagram @antiquariadesign @antiquariabailey and @antiquariaemma and tag your pics #longlivesnailmail and #antiquariaholidayexchange2019
We are BEYOND excited to announce our debut Online Calligraphy Class, Script Design, taught by our own expert calligrapher, Bailey Amon Rivera is open for registration through Acorn Arts! This class has been a LONG time in the making and we are thrilled to see it come to life.
Join
us and expand your calligraphy skills in the month of September! Our
brand new class is not your same ol' calligraphy class. It's chalked
full of Bailey's knowledge about designing your OWN style of
calligraphy.
If
you've been feeling stuck in your practice and want to brush up on your
skills or need new styles for your products or clients, this is the
class for you.
This
class is well suited for all calligraphy enthusiasts from complete
novice to the more experienced and professional penman. The course
material will start with the basics so that everyone can participate and
learn together, no prior experience necessary.
"Creating
your own lettering style is fun and easy when it's based on the
foundation of traditional letterforms. As a calligrapher and stationery
designer, Bailey has made a name for herself over the years with her
unique and varied calligraphy styles.
Besides
it being fun to experiment with and design new styles, this process has
been crucial to developing our business and makes her work stand apart
from other lettering artists. In this four week course, we dive into the
process used to create different styles, whether they're traditional,
modern or somewhere in between. By focusing first on the "nut and bolts"
of letter construction and traditional letterform variations, we offer
students of all levels a unique opportunity to both train their skills
and develop individual variety at the same time."
New classes are posted once per week but you do NOT
need to be online at that time. The videos may be watched at whatever
time is convenient for you! Each Wednesday there will be new worksheets
available for you to download with an instructional video.
The
Classroom Forum provides a wonderful place to share your designs with
the other students and it is always such fun to take the class with
students from around the globe. There is no homework for this class, but
a project will be suggested each week.
Ruling guidelines can be a bit mind-boggling when you first start out in calligraphy, but is doesn't have to be! It's really just a formula and it's all about ratios; your x-height in relation to how tall your capitals are.
We've made a short and sweet video sharing how we rule paper for our in house script. Different script styles use different ratios so play around and find your own style. This may seem really basic but it's the key to well proportioned words! Even if we don't use lines, this ratio is still in play because we've trained our eyes to see it and write that way.
We hope this is helpful! Feel free to reach out with any questions you may have.
One of the most fun parts of the holidays for us each year is our annual Holiday Card Exchange! See 2013's Holiday Card Exchange here and 2014's here. We're always THRILLED by how many of you write to us! It is so fun to see your families, hear your thoughts and see what holiday cards you picked!
We just LOVE
getting snail mail and we have a feeling that you do too! Who doesn't
adore finding a gorgeous piece of mail in their box amongst the bills
and flyers? We know it brightens our day.
So
why don't we exchange some holiday cards? This year, we've chosen to use our new Handkerchief Holiday cards...which we think are the perfectly festive for the season!
Here's the scoop: You add us to your mailing list and send us a hand addressed(practice that calligraphy folks!) holiday card and we'll have our resident calligrapher, Bailey Amon Rivera mail one back from US! Sound like a plan?
The details: Mail your card to Bailey at:
Antiquaria
℅ Bailey Amon Rivera
2441 W. Rowland Avenue
Littleton, Colorado 80120
Be sure to include your preferred return address (in addition to the one on the envelope-you know how the mail can be) so that we can mail one in return! We are SO looking forward to hearing from you. Now it will be FUN to check the mail:) Yay!
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
Find us on Instagram @antiquariadesign and tag your pics #longlivesnailmail
We thought it was HIGH time to share some of our favorite resources in a new mini blog series, Additional Tools for Lettering. This is part two...all about the surface that you write on! By now, if you're reading our blog, you're probably already obsessed with lettering and stationery. We too are, of course, as well! We try not to buy EVERYTHING that comes out, but we do have a few luxe favorites that make our day to day practice even more enjoyable.
A more recent find for us is one that we would now not want to live without, a leather desk blotter writing surface! Writing with a dip pen is so different than normal writing - as anyone that's practiced the art-form well knows. One thing that is very different is that you NEED to have a good writing surface so that the edges of the nib connect properly with the paper, giving you lovely letters. @antiquariabailey's blotter is shown above.
For beginners, we suggest writing on a stack of paper, so that you have a nice padded surface. This is a good, inexpensive option (it's basically free). Another option is using a craft foam pad, like this one. This is what we used for years...until discovering the GORGEOUS leather ones that are shown in this post, made by craftsman Mr. M.G. Ward.
We had to custom offline order one when we found out that he was making them on Insagram...but luckily, he just opened an Etsy shop for the leather blotter writing surfaces (and some of his rad calligraphy)! Not only is this upgrade beautiful, it is actually a BETTER writing surface than the ones mentioned before. Throughout time, scribes, calligraphers and penman wrote on leather surfaces, as it was the optimal writing surface for lettering.
One of Bailey's FAVORITE things to-date was watching Michael at IAMPETH, burning this custom signature for @everlycalligraphy one evening on her blotter, shown above! It was pretty incredible to watch in person. Luckily, Michael occasionally posts videos of him burning script into leather on his Instagram account, @mrmgward. Lucky us!!
Have you guys read this AWESOME post about Jake Weidmann's top calligraphy tools? It's pretty good. He also mentions how he uses a leather blotter to write on...and his work is beyond good!
We're just SO excited that the option is now out there for calligraphers! It's something that Bailey has been searching for, for years! We're not even joking.
What do you guys use for your writing surface? We're so curious!! Let us know in the comments or over on Instagram at @antiquariadesign.
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
P.S. We were not paid for this post or given the product for a review...simply big fans of it!
*all photos except from the top two are copyright Michael Ward
We thought it was HIGH time to share some of our favorite resources in a new mini blog series, Additional Tools for Lettering. By now, if you're reading our blog, you're probably already obsessed with lettering and stationery. We too are, of course, as well! We try not to buy EVERYTHING that comes out, but we do have a few luxe favorites that make our day to day practice even more enjoyable.
It seems like every time we post a photo with one of Bailey's pens on Instagram, we get questions about what pen it is and who made it. Compared to some others, her collection is really, really small. But the holders that she has are for a reason...and I'm sure that there will be more on her desk in the future!
So, besides being GORGEOUS, why would you have different pens?
The biggest reason for us, is to have pens adjusted the the different nibs that we use (more on that later). Nibs are like people, all made in different shapes and sizes, so it makes sense to adjust your flange (the brass piece) once so that you don't damage it. The other reason is that different pens have different grips and weights. It's really hard to know what you like until you try lots of different holders, hold them in your hand, and write with them.
It can be VERY hard to buy a pen online, especially at $100++ so that's why Bailey attends workshops and conferences, such as IAMPETH (more on that later too) where they sell them in person. Once you get an idea of the feel that you like, you can compare the measurements to the one that you have and use. That way, you're more likely to invest in a pen that really suits you.
Pens can be very simple (and really only NEED to be simple) or they can be very elaborate, like Bailey's hummingbird, shown above. But really, they should mostly be balanced in your hand and the flange should be adjusted correctly. If you order a pen from an artisan, you should be able to request that it be fitted to a particular nib before you receive it. Or...you can do it yourself!
This article, written by Chris Yoke, is one of my favorites for selecting a pen. And the video below, also by Chris is an excellent tutorial in adjusting your flange.
We hope that this shed some light on some of the more expensive and FUN penholder options out there...and why you would choose to upgrade or add to collection as your practice grows. There are SO many other lovely craftsman (and women) out there too! Just trolling Intsagram these days shows how many new, beautiful options there are!
Who's your favorite pen by?? Leave us a comment or tag us in a photo of your own pen collection on Instagram @antiquariadesign.
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letter,
Emma and Bailey
Today, you're in for a treat! Not only is this blog post in conjunction with a DIY tutorial on the lovely Oh So Beautiful Paper, Bailey has filmed a Calligraphy In Action video to show you exactly how it's done! So, we hope you enjoy the video below and be sure to pop over to OSBP for the step by step instructions as well as a full materials list!
We're so happy to be back with more calligraphy videos for you. It's been QUITE a while and there are a lot of reasons for our absence. First and foremost, our resident calligrapher, Bailey, has been moving across the country, from Los Angeles to her new home in Denver, CO.
It's so nice to be back with you and sharing our love of calligraphy, design and stationery. We hope you enjoy the demo and please let us know if you have any questions!
We're here today with our second episode of our new series Calligraphy in Action! Yay!! We've had a lovely response to the first episode...so thank you! Missed the first one? You can find it here.
Today, Bailey demonstrates her signature modern calligraphy lettering in white ink (Dr. Martin's Bleedproof White) on a Paper Source A9 black envelope. Black and white is ALWAYS a stellar combination, and white ink really pops off of the page. She's using a Nikko G nib...the same one that comes in our Calligraphy Started Kit!
Every calligrapher has days that they struggle with ink...and this was one of them! You can tell throughout the video that the ink just doesn't want to flow well off of the pen. Bailey fought it for a little while, and then ended up adding more water to the white ink. It's always amazing how much those little things make a HUGE impact!
We hope you enjoy the video & that itLOTS of practice, so be patient with yourself, the letters will come.
helps in your calligraphy practice! Always remember, calligraphy takes time and lot and
The day has finally arrived but the practicing never ceases! We've finally reached the end of this series of capital letters...the capital letter "Z." Like the "X," you might not use this letter very much unless you or a loved one has it in their name. It's fun none-the-less and might we add-praciticng the word "Zoro" is pretty fierce!
Hopefully you've enjoyed and learned a ton from this Capital Letter series! We've loved sharing it with you. It may be the end but it's only the beginning...stay tuned for more fun calligraphy challenges and tutorials to come!
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
Howdy folks! Today, we're bringing you the capital letter "Y." This letter is fun and quite pretty! Experiment with different ways of flourishing the tail and the options for this beauty are endless.
Hopefully your practicing is going really well! You know we love to see it over on Instagram...tag it with #letterschool so that we can take a peek! We're almost done with the capital letters...one more to go.
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
Howdy folks! We wanted to pop in today to let you know that we just released summer and fall calligraphy workshop dates for Austin, Texas.YAHOO! In July, we'll be teaching a mini Intro class - the perfect thing to take if you're brand new to calligraphy.
We'll also be having our Script 101 and Script 102 full day workshops in early October. We'd love to see you there! Please feel free to reach out if you have questions about any of the classes.
After a little hiatus...we're back with the capital letter "X"! This is one that you certainly don't use often unless you're lucky enough to have it in your name or in a loved one's name. It's fun and pretty closely related to the lower case "x."
The first option is by far the most difficult to master. You'll need to balance the counter-spaces and make sure that the middle touches just enough to not make it an "H"...but if you touch too much it will turn blobby! Probably not the best one to start on! Option number 2 and 3 are much more simplistic.
We'll be back next week with the Capital Letter "Y"! Almost through the alphabet folks:)
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
Howdy folks! We're back today with the tutorial for the capital letter "W"! This letter can be a little tricky and illusive but practice your "U's" and "V's" along with the "W" since they're all so closely related.
The first and last options are all made in one stoke, whereas the second option has four separate strokes to create it!
We're thrilled that so many of you are learning along with us! Be sure to tag your practice with #letterschool if you'd like us to take a peek.
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
After a bit of a hiatus due to travel, we're back today with the capital letter "V". Pay close attention to this one as well as "U" since they are closely related to the next letter we'll cover...the "W."
The trick to the letter "V" is keep the axis (as opposed to the downstroke) in line with the other letters in the alphabet. Imagine splicing the letter down the center....that's your axis. That center line should be a the same angle as the other letters (most telling are the "l" and "t" in the Valentine examples above).
Happy practicing!
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
We're picking right back up where we left off and bringing you the Capital Letter "U" today! This letter isn't used too much in writing but is great to practice since it's closely related to the "Y" and the "W!"
It' can be really nice when you let the last down stroke go below the base line, like in #2. It lends the word a lovely balance...don't you think?
Hopefully we'll see some of you in our sold out workshop this weekend at Urbanic!
As always, tag your practice with #letterschool so that we can take a peek at your progress!
Until next time...
Peace, Love and Letters,
Emma & Bailey
We are so, so excited to be teaching in LA! There will be 2 classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon...so you can pick which works best for you!
We'd love to have you join us if you'd like to get your toes wet in the world of calligraphy. See you there!
Spring has come in a hurry. Today it was a whopping 93 degrees! Can you even believe it? More like summer!
Today's post is for the capital letter "T". It's such a useful letter, it will pay you in dividends to study it carefully. It's pretty simple though, which is great. The main key and the only suggestion we'll give is to make darn sure that the main downstroke is on the correct angle. If it's off from the rest of your letters, it can look WONKY! Take it from someone who's been there.
Hope your practice is going well! Make sure to tag it with #letterschool if you'd like us to take a peek.
Happy April 1st everyone! No pranks here...we're positively thrilled that it's arrived. Today, we've got a good tutorial for you...the capital letter "S."
It's a fun letter but can go OH-SO-WRONG if you're not careful. The key is to get the axis of the letter on the correct diagonal. So imagine splicing through the center of the letter...is it on the same diagonal as the rest of your downstrokes? We hope so.
It can definitely take time to get this one right, so be patient with yourself. The most important thing is to keep practicing and writing real things! Are you taking the #WRITE_ON challenge? It would be a great way to practice some calligraphy AND make a loved one happy!
As usual, we'd love to see what you're up to! Tag your practice with #letterschool so that we can take a peek!
