A few months ago, Cody McBurnett, the Brooklyn based owner of Loki Loki, a branding and visual identity firm, contacted me to do some work for her new website.  (A website, which, coincidentally, has a very similar visual concept to mine – I guess we have a similar aesthetic!)

She had some lovely testimonials from a bunch of her clients, and wanted them to look handwritten and original.  Not a problem!  She chose a number of styles from my style sheet and I went to work pairing styles with the appropriate testimonials.

(She did a blog post about the collaboration as well!)

I think her site looks awesome!  Don’t you?

Photo by Raya Carlisle

I’ve been waiting for what seems like forever to write this post.  The Cream Event took place on March 10 at Vibiana in downtown LA.  I have been working like a crazy person since the minute it was over (not to mention for weeks up until the second it started), so I just didn’t have the time to give the post the attention it deserves, and I also wanted to wait until the photos were released.  We got the photos a couple weeks ago.  Wow!  These photographers (Rad + In Love, Raya Carlisle, Mr. Haack, and Paige Lowe) are unbelievable – and also – wow! – this event was AMAZING.  Those Bash, Please girls really know how to throw a party and the sheer talent that was in that space was staggering.  Unfortunately, I mostly saw everything through the photos, because I pretty much didn’t leave my table all night.  I was writing names on bracelets to give away and at any given time had a line of at least 25 people waiting.  But that was awesome – don’t get me wrong – I met so many great people and somewhere around 800 people were introduced to my work.  What could be better?

Photo by Rad + In Love

Photo by Rad + In Love

Photo by Rad + In Love

Photo by Rad + In Love

Photo by Raya Carlisle

Photo by Rad + In Love

Photo by Raya Carlisle

If you can’t tell from the photos above, the color inspiration for the event included mint, emerald, gold, and navy, with a little bit of wood and ivory.  Since I didn’t exactly have samples lying around that fit into this color scheme exactly, I made all new samples exclusively to show here.  And I had A LOT of fun with it.  I was very inspired to think of new and different uses of calligraphy.  New formats for envelopes.  Escort cards on leaves and rocks and jars with flowers in them.  Painted placecards and envelopes.  Below are a few shots that I took of the standouts.  I would love to use any or all of these ideas for a real wedding.  Just ask.  Please!

Real chalkboard escort cards (More on this to come!)

Also, check out the coverage on 100 Layer Cake – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4!

1  A wedding job on printed “watercolor” envelopes

2  Rina in white on black envelopes and belly bands

3  Chalkboard menus and place cards for a photo shoot

4  Neon escorts!

5  Simple, modern wedding envelopes

6  Finally able to put this kid to work!  (On an awesome splatter-paint job – more to come.)

7  My make-shift desk when I was on-site at Barneys in Beverly Hills

8  Tattoo designing

9  More neon!

10  Wedding envelopes in navy on gold

When I started this whole blogging/tweeting/social networking thing, I didn’t include my Instagram because it was mostly filled with photos of my kid.  But I have found it to be such an easy way to show off projects as I’m doing them, and so now my feed has a lot of pictures of my work (along with pictures of my kid – but it’s kind of nice to see all aspects of my life so you can really get to know me, right?)  Anyway, you should totally follow me.  It’s also a good way (along with Twitter) to know when I put up a new blog post (which has been super hard to do lately – hello wedding season!)

Whoa!  It’s been a while since I’ve checked in here, huh?  I have been working around the clock and just have not been able to find the time to update you on all the fun stuff I’ve been creating.  Soon – promise – soon!  But first, here is a little print that I made to include in the swag bags for the first 200 people who arrived at The Cream Event.  It’s 5×7 and letterpressed in a pretty mint green onto a thick ivory stock.  I have a limited number left, and they are now for sale for $15!

The print would look awesome on a gallery wall (which I know is pretty trendy, but is my latest obsession):

Anyway, just click below to pay via PayPal and I will send one out to you ASAP.

I’ve been keeping a huge secret for months, but today I can finally let it out!  I’m going to be at The Cream this Sunday, March 10th at Vibiana in downtown LA.  It’s a super-cool wedding showcase event, with a huge sampling of the most awesome vendors in town.  Check out the rest of “the crop“ – pretty cool, huh?  Really, this is not your ordinary “bridal expo.”

I’m so excited to meet all of these people and see what they have up their sleeves.  As the new girl in town, I haven’t had the chance to meet most of the other Los Angeles vendors.

Check out the inspiration board they sent us.  The colors are emerald, mint, navy and gold, with a touch of ivory and wood.  You should see my office right now.  It looks like this mood board exploded!  I’ve been working on tons of new stuff using all these colors to display at the event.

Tickets are sold out (there will be over 800 people there!) but hopefully you’ve gotten yours already and I will see you there.  I’m so excited to show off my stuff and to see everything, and maybe to have a little nibble and a cocktail or two!

Photo by Stephanie Godfrey Photography

Katie and Will got married last August at The Beach Club in Santa Monica.  The wedding was featured on Style Me Pretty a couple weeks ago, and it was so much fun to see how it all came together.  Such a beautiful, classic wedding.

(A little secret about me – I always wanted to get married on the beach, but it wasn’t my husband’s thing and we were offered the beautiful backyard of my mom’s best friend, so it never happened.  I loved, loved, loved everything about my wedding but whenever I see a beach wedding I get a little jealous!)

Photo by Stephanie Godfrey Photography

Photo by the bride

I worked with Katie and her mom, as well as with Jonathan Wright of Jonathan Wright and Company in designing the names of the bride and groom for the invitation.  They wanted something very classic and elegant, so we used my Erin style but bumped it up a notch with some flourishes.  The envelopes were done in a soft gold.  So pretty on the ivory envelopes.

 Photos by Stephanie Godfrey Photography

Congrats Katie and Will!

See more photos of the wedding here.

You can follow me on Twitter now – @annerobincallig.  I will be letting people know that new blog posts are up, and I will probably point out some Instagram pics of my work (since most of them are of my son!)  Still getting used to this crazy world of tweeting, but eventually I’ll be a pro.

Just a little snap of a recent commission I did – a prayer done in a version of my Rina style.

Happy weekend!

My son turned 4 on Monday (which I still can’t believe) and we had a little party for him in the backyard on Sunday afternoon.  But it didn’t feel so little leading up to it because I tend to go a little nuts on the invitations and the decorating and the details and the food.  But what do you expect from someone who does what I do for a living?  I have to get all creative, right?

The theme was fish, and it all started with the cake.  Back in July, I made a bear cake for a friend’s son, who saw it in Martha Stewart Living and became obsessed.  Charlie does not like chocolate and didn’t want anything to do with the bear, but saw the fish cake in the magazine and wanted that one.  I told him I would make it for HIS birthday.  Well, this kid doesn’t forget anything.  So since we were having a fish cake, we had a fish themed party.  Fish, fish and more fish.

I have to say I’m a little disappointed with the photos.  They’re not as good as they should be and there definitely are not as many as there should be.  But I’m going to give myself a pass since I was a little busy running around making everything look perfect in real life, and I think my camera is on the fritz.  Next year maybe I should hire a photographer!

So here we go.  First, the invite.  This part is the easiest for me – and it is fun to create invites like this when I am my own client.  I can do whatever I want.  I just played around a bit and inadvertently created a new style.  It’s different from any of the other styles I do and it worked really well here.

Then, because I wanted a photo-op for all the kids, I decided to create one of those stick-your-head-through-the-hole character boards.  (What are those things called?)

Then there was the signage and the favor bags and the games and the little details:

And the desserts – which just about killed me!  First, the infamous fish cake:

And fish bowl cookies and fish cake pops, (not to mention fish shaped brown butter rice krispie treats and Swedish Fish and chocolate Goldfish crackers, oh my!)

Whew.  I have to say I’m glad birthdays only come once a year.  But it was all worth it because he had a blast!

I don’t often have time to play around with different calligraphy styles and techniques, but sometimes, when inspiration hits, I start to play and I can’t stop.  These photos are of a bunch of different envelopes I did using a paintbrush.  Using a brush is really relaxing and comforting for me – it brings me back to high school, when I did a lot of painting in a lot of art classes.  It is very different than using a pen or nib, and it takes about 20 times as long to write a name, but the result is pretty nice, I think.

Here’s what is essentially my Rina style done with a brush:

And some totally new lettering styles:

This kind of lettering would be great for a logo or tattoo design.  Pricing on envelopes would have to be on the high side because of how long they take to do, but I’m hoping someone with an ample budget, or maybe someone with a small amount of envelopes, will fall in love with these, because I can’t wait to play some more.