Graceful Envelope 2008
7"w X 5"h envelope

Created March 23, 2008

This is an addressed envelope I submitted for the Graceful Envelope Contest for 2008. The theme was "C or C's the Day"

I used Domtar Genoa Bond (white paper), colored pencils & Pan Pastels. The 3 R's/C's idea just popped into my head. I originally started out using just text & definitions of the words in the brown tones. But I found it a bit boring, so decided to use the books instead since it fell along the same lines as the postage stamps I was using. After coloring the books and using the Pan pastels for the background, I protected my circle area, and sprayed with a workable fixative. Then wrote in the titles and text on the books, with either a Nikko G nib or a quill nib, using colored gouache with gold powder (Neuberg E Ebel Rich Gold) for "Graceful Envelope Contest" in a copperplate style writing, adn black Moon Palace ink. I drew the circles using my Orbis Circle Scissor gadget and a brown Zig marker. Used either the Rennie Mackintosh or the New Celtic monolines for the words within each circle. The 1st two circles deal with colors that start with "C" (circle 1: cocoa, cadmium sulfide, clove pink, cinnamon, cardinal & celery), (circle 2: chrome yellow, cinnabar, chrome green, coal black) and colored some of the white space with that color. The 3rd circle has the "Washington Calligraphy Guild" done with the gouache & gold. The inner circle has the address. The first 2 and inner circle lettering done with a small black micron pen. The dots between words is done with a glue pen and gold glitter.

Now all I have to do is wait to see the results of the contest. That's the hardest part.