This week my husband and I celebrated our 15 year wedding anniversary! It’s hard to believe it’s been 15 years already. In honor of this momentous occasion, I decided to calligraph a timeline of memorable moments of our life together to frame and hang on our wall. Today, I’ll share the steps I took to complete this project in case you want to design something similar as well.
1. consider your wall space and select a frame
2. design a layout and make a pencil draft
3. transfer to art paper and calligraph with ink
4. frame and hang
Tools needed:
1. frame (mat optional)
2. draft paper
3. art paper
4. pencil
5. kneadable and white erasers
6. ruler (optional)
7. micron pen or other dark pen
8. calligraphy pen & nib
9. calligraphy ink
We have a small cottage-like home with lots of windows. I love all of the natural light that brings, but it also leaves less than average wall space. We are minimalists when it comes to wall coverings, which means we prefer lots of open wall space too. However, this is a project that I definitely wanted to display in our home.
The first step is to choose a frame that fits the place you want to hang your artwork. I chose a long wide frame to fit above our wedding portrait. Garage sales and resale shops are a great place to find deals on frames. This one I found for $1 at a garage sale and replaced the picture with my artwork.
Next, you’ll need to cut your art paper to the size of the frame opening or mat if you are using one. I just used the picture that was in the frame to trace the correct size. For draft paper I used tracing paper and taped the ends together to get the correct length.
Using a ruler can be helpful for making guidelines to keep your lettering straight and inside the margins. A rolling ruler is an invaluable tool for making repeating lines at measured intervals.
Using the ruler I centered the title: History of Our Love and drew a layout of the timeline. I chose a calligraphy flourish to mark the events on the timeline. Then added significant moments with dates in order of occurrence in calligraphy. The wonderful thing about a draft is that it is easy to adjust minor errors in spacing when transferring to your art paper.
After you have the look you want in pencil, use a micron pen or any dark pen go over the pencil lines. This helps for when you transfer the pencil draft onto your final paper.
Tape your draft to your art paper with painters tape. Be careful when removing it though. As you can see in the picture below, I tore the paper a little at the top while removing the tape. Then, using a light table or bright window, trace your darkened pencil draft onto the final art paper. You’ll want to again use pencil for this step. Once this pencil draft is complete, you can use a kneadable eraser to lighten any dark lines that you may have made.
Now, it's time to apply the ink using a calligraphy pen and nib. This is the part that makes me nervous. Practicing pen strokes beforehand helps take out the tension in my hands and relaxes my strokes. Also, be sure not to drink lots of coffee before this step!
When you are finished, allow it to dry. Then, frame and hang. I hope that you’ve found this tutorial helpful and that perhaps you’ll try it out for your own special timeline. If so, please let me know!
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