Author: callibeth

Click the title of this post to go to a YouTube video which morphs a 500-year history of female portraiture. It’s mesmerizing.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

This luscious image of the earliest example of miniature Sumerian writing illustrates an interesting article entitled “A Minor History of Miniature Writing” at Cabinet. Cabinet is a quarterly magazine that looks so interesting I’ve just subscribed for a year to check it out.

This brings to three the total number of magazines I subscribe to; the other two are Letter Arts Review and Bound & Lettered.

Anybody got any magazine subscriptions they can’t live without?

Thanks to Notebookism for the link.

A quick photo of my light table, still set up for the broad-edge calligraphy I was doing on some wedding invitations earlier this week.

The easel is lightweight and adjustable, and folds down so I can take it to classes and workshops. (The link is to a selection of similar easels at John Neal Bookseller.) On the easel is a piece of Plexiglas — bought at the local glass store — covered by a clear mat with 1/8″ grid printed in red on it. Every 5 years or so I replace this grid, and it’s always a struggle to find it. It’s made by C-Thru Ruler Company, and it’s Item No. 158. They also make other gridded mats, but that one’s the most useful to me. You can see the light from the fluorescent strip on the desk behind the easel; I bought that at the local hardware store.

Despite the missing apostrophe, this very cool website provides all sorts of useful information for calligraphers and web designers alike:

• standard sizes of envelopes, folders, CD covers, and postcards;
• glossary of proofing marks;
• a “lorem ipsum” generator — useful for web designers struggling with, oh, CSS, for instance;
• legal documents which freelancers need, such non-compete agreements, copyright statements, and so on.

Be warned that the actual templates and legal document files require registration (online, that is, not the kind needed for 4-color separations — isn’t the English language a complicated thing?).

Anybody get their envelope mailed today? I was at the post office at 5:59pm, mailing mine. The postal worker was rather surly (maybe because there were 5 people behind me), and hand- canceled my envelope for me … twice. I can’t imagine why.

I’d post a picture of my submission here except that I finished it so late I didn’t even have time to take picture or scan it. I erased a few pencil guidelines at the stop light at the end of our road. I like parts of the envelope I did, but parts of may take it out of the running for Honorable Mention. We’ll see. The theme this year is “A Mailable Feast”. There were almost too many good possibilities.

While viewing the last blog post, I noticed a curious thing: the bubbly-giddy post immediately follows the post about cleaning out the pantry. Coincidence? Karma? Feng shui? Who knows?