Beautiful Boundaries, Slants, and Angles

Ya girl been putting all this calligraphy practice to good use.

I have a school daughter. Actually, I have a few now. But, I have one that I’ve been “school raising” for years. She lost her maternal mother early in her life, and when she started attending our school, she was still fairly young. Our principal planted a seed for me to look after her and her older sister when I first met them.

The older sister was already a tween at the time. She was my very first school daughter…and she acted like it, complete with boundary testing and all. But, one day, when she had basketball practice, the younger sister and I sat down and completed a craft project together…and ever since, she has been pretty well attached to me-so much so that some of the teachers call her, ‘Stacey Jr.’ 😳

Her sister graduated last year and is in high school now. Meanwhile, Stacey Jr. meets me at breakfast duty in the morning and wraps her arms around my neck as I monitor the girl’s bathroom, tries to “bunk” her recess every day to get to the art room with me, and hugs me every day before leaving for dismissal.

She also happens to be a freshly minted tween herself…and after having been the youngest of my school daughters for so many years now, she has picked up some real daughter-like behaviors. For instance, she “does” my hair, playing with my puff at will…If she comes down for lunch and sees snacks on my desk, she eats them ALL…And, last but not least, she fishes my phone from my waist pouch should I lay it down for one second to check her hair in the camera.

The first two, I don’t mind…My natural daughter does that. And I learned to leave snacks for her to find on the desk a lonnng time ago since she rarely enjoys lunch at school. But, it’s that last one that I fear…for the same reason I don’t let my natural daughter use my phone.

One false move, and I’m paying for a new phone!

No, thank you very much.

Now, our students are not allowed to use their phones in school…and a growing tween has to be able to groom herself. So, I told her she needed a mirror…

…and, as her school mom, I vow she shall have one.

I found these on sale at a local department store. They are too cute, and the phrase really suits her! But, I intend to further customize these a bit before I give them to her.

It’s such a good thing I’ve been practicing my calligraphy drills and working on my engraving with some other items.

For the drills, Lawd have mercy! I read somewhere that Copperplate is one of the backbones of modern calligraphy. So, I thought I’d give it a try.

That stuff is no joke!

There’s a baseline, a waist line, an ascender and a descender line.

There’s a 55 degree slant and so many angles to position the nib, and the sheet, and my body.

There are rules and boundaries everywhere!

I can’t claim I am even remotely close to getting the consistency Copperplate would demand. I think that would require an utter respect for the boundaries of the style that I am too green to possess, let alone have a complete awareness of just yet. But, one thing is for sure, it is teaching me to slowly work through my strokes just to keep up with all of the rules. That’s very nearly the opposite of what I came to learn with my typical brush calligraphy style.

It’s pretty interesting to try to attempt brush calligraphy with that deliberate kind of slow hand. But, to execute anything nearly resembling Copperplate, or possibly any kind of consistent calligraphy style, it seems I need to slow down to a creep in order for my my brain and my hand to sync up.

I used some Tombow Colors Brush Pens for these minuscules on my lunch break.

After all these drills and practice, I got a little restless. I engraved an older school daughter’s beat up water bottle because she had been such a huge help on the HBCU project last month. I’ve only had this particular school daughter a year, and she’ll be graduating from our school in May. I’ll miss her lots.

It appears she showed her water bottle off in her next classes…So, I also engraved a colleague’s $100+ ukulele (yes, he made sure to tell me) for which I got my first paid engraving request!

When you work in a school, you practically live there. So, the majority of the projects and/or clients you get tend to be right there in the building. 🤷🏾‍♀️

So…why two mirrors? Glad you asked.

I got her two mirrors…one to inevitably leave home so she can try to get to my phone 😏…and, the other to leave with her homeroom teacher until the end of the school year so she doesn’t need my phone anymore. 😂

Actually, to be clear, it’s two mirrors and a watch (so when she reaches for my phone, I can say it’s TIME to get your mirror 😂, get it?).

You can see above where I used a micron to add the lines that would help me make room for the x-height, a descender and an ascender. I know me, and if I didn’t do this part, I wouldn’t have left enough space for everything. Also, I added slant lines to help me keep in mind to angle the letters toward the centers of the mirrors…another thing that is difficult for me to remember without a visual guide.

See the photos below or jump to the process video below the photos.

Boundaries are beautiful things. ♥️