Back from IAMPETH

I've been back for a week, but catching up with life has taken awhile.  In case you don't know, IAMPETH is short for International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting (at least that's the way I think it goes).  Each year they sponsor a week-long conference with lots of workshops, sharing, networking and fun.  This year the conference was in Milwaukee, so I was able to go!

One of my favorite workshops was with Harvest Crittendon, on Illuminated Letters.  Here's a few pictures of the process I used in creating a bookmark for my daughter, Karissa.

 I did leave out a couple of preliminary steps, but we first traced a basic outline of a letter from a historical alphabet.  This one is from the 1600's.  She then showed us how to add some of our own design elements to it.  We added real gold leaf to the open space and painted the base coat of color onto our letter.

 We added shading, highlighting and some extra touches and then went over the outline again.

 The end result is a pretty nice little bookmark!  By the way, my bookmark is made of calfskin vellum from El Salvador.  My room-mate for the week, Lucy, brought it for me!  I had never worked on vellum before, and it was great fun!

One final picture -- this is Lucy.  On our afternoon off, we visited The Domes -- a botanical garden in Milwaukee.  Despite the language barrier, we had a great time together!