I have often been asked how I started doing caricatures, but rarely asked how I started my entire business.
I got to thinking about this today, and thought it would make an interesting story-post.
Sometime back around 1986-1987, I was working as a clerical aid for Allstates Engineering Company, an onsite contractor at the old DuPont Louviers facility in Newark, Delaware.
There was an older woman friend from the Newark Church of Christ (where I had worked a number of years prior as both a day care/kindergarten aid), whose daughter was getting married, and she asked me if I might design a wedding invitation with my “fancy writing” like she remembered me making for my own (first marriage) wedding in June 1985.
I didn’t exactly do formal calligraphy, but I did enjoy what I considered “fancy writing” and had occasionally done up poems or other kinds of little creative things utilizing my own extra neat, flourished printed penmanship. I’ve never been one to have very neat writing, per se. Not that my natural handwriting is sloppy either (especially back then) but compared to others who definitely have ultra neat writing, mine was not.
When I would decide to copy something inspiring using my “fancier” printing, it felt more like I was “drawing” the letters a certain way.
I was happy and honored to have been asked to do this, and this friend supplied me with the needed details.
So one day on my lunch break as clerical aid at Allstates, I had closed my office door for the half hour and ate at my desk, and also spread out some paper with ruler, pen, etc to start working on laying out/printing/designing the wedding invitation and its component response cards. I actually believe I had a cartridge style simple calligraphy set back then, although I wasn’t using it properly in my technique. My plan was to do an original and then have it photocopied on nice paper, like I had done for my own wedding.
My boss knocked on the door, needing to come in to get something from a file cabinet. I always got nervous when he came around because of his generally air of “boss-i-ly-ness”, ha ha, and perhaps my fear of making mistakes along with my people-pleasing nature. I guess it’s an “office thing.”
Sometimes bosses maintain a bit of formal interaction I suppose, but this encounter left me encouraged and kind of surprised me. He kind of paused and peeked at what I was doing, with curiosity, and then asked, “What are you doing there?”
I explained to him, and he said it looked very good! And then, he made the comment, “You would make a great entrepreneur.”
I literally looked at him and said, “What is an entrepreneur?”
I think he probably chuckled, and told me that it is a person who starts their own business.
I suppose I consider this friend’s request, along with that boss’s observation and subtle encouragement/affirmation of my giftedness in a certain realm, to be my first two identifiable “investors” into what eventually turned in to the business I now have today.
I honestly don’t recall if my church friend paid me for this service (I am certain she offered) but I likely wanted it to be my wedding gift to her daughter, who was also a personal friend from that school/church. I consider the act of asking me to perform this (potentially marketable) creative service, coupled with the encouragement (and learning the word entrepreneur and especially, having the idea planted in my head that it might be possible for someone like me to start a business using those skills) surely affected me in a positive way.
These first two people in a very real sense, made a tremendous investment in me and my giftings, with little to no monetary aspect. It didn’t take “Wall Street” investors to get me started, it simply took two observant friends who recognized my potential.
It wasn’t until my first son was born in May 1989, that I began to give more serious thought to the possibility that I might start a calligraphy business of some sort. I desperately did not want to put my son in daycare, and we needed income and though I was doing some part-time work that summer for Allstates, and some actually from home, I began to think about other options.
I decided to get some type of actual calligraphy book/guide and study it more closely, and practice and learn. I taught myself the skill and worked at it, practicing when I could on the kitchen table in our mobile home while my son napped or at night.
I soon began writing favorite scriptures in calligraphy, and pasting them up manually so I could print two cards per page that could be folded and fit into a certain sized envelope. I would take them to Alphagraphics on Elkton Road in Newark, DE to do the copy work on to nice paper, and then fold them and put them into some type of plastic bags.
While I felt a little funny about asking my Pastor if it might be OK to put a little basket of these out on the literature table for sale (I think I asked about $1.00 per card) and a little container for any payment, for after service, I did in fact ask and he said it would be fine. He and others knew just how much we were always struggling financially, and I am thankful that I was able to do that.
At first, I would be grateful to find I would sell a few cards here and there. I think I also–now that I recall–was allowed later to put a few framed calligraphy/art items on a wall downstairs at The Barn (former church name of Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Kemblesville, PA) with little price tags. As I started to move more into larger poems, I also began doing little (or later, larger) illustrations that worked along with the calligraphy. These were often flowers or symbols done with colored pencil/pen and eventually watercolor.
I’m really not sure how I got my first order to address wedding invitations. That was one of my goals. I believe that at some point early in the process, I designed some type of business card. I’m pretty sure I left some with the ladies at Alphagraphics, and I do recall them occasionally getting a request for hand calligraphy.
Back in those days, I also worked for a time at McDonald’s for about 8-10 hours a week on evenings when my first husband could watch Zach. He was working at the UofD, and had also taken another part-time job some evenings, at some point.
I did begin getting some women friends in my church circle back then to ask me for certain calligraphy requests. Sometime in 1991, my church friend Pam Wittenbach made a request that literally changed and expanded my business today, with one particular product I now have called for many years, “The Cord of Three Strands” Personalized Wedding/Anniversary Gift.
This friend asked if I might design a little calligraphy gift for a couple who was getting married that would weave each of their names with the name “Jesus” and also have the verse, “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
She said something like, “I’m not sure how you might do that (weave the names in calligraphy) but that is my idea.”
I gave it some thought and in my mind’s eye I was trying to imagine. She had suggested “braiding their names” I believe. The more I thought about it, I felt that to give an idea of a braid, it would be easier to possibly repeat the names of the couple on two strands and then think more broadly for some of the many other biblical names of God (including His attributes that are needed in Christian marriage between couples). I decided to make the third strand of “names of God” in metallic gold lettering, and the names of the couple in black, allow their names to “break” and criss-cross over the main gold central strand. I also decided for visual clarity to put colored diamonds between names, to help distinguish the three different word strands.
The main verse, I put into the center.
My friend loved what I did, and when other women at church saw the gift at that wedding, I was soon approached and asked, “Could you make that same piece for me and my husband?”
I think within a few months or less, I had possibly done four or more additional pieces that I can recall right away.
At some point, probably at the suggestion of friends, to a couple of the local family-run Christian Bookstores. It went into the Lighthouse Christian Bookstore that was in Elsmere, DE, The Sonshine House in People’s Plaza, The Salty Fisherman in Meadowood (this may have been the first place), Great Christian Books in Elkton, and later, Sandy Cove Retreat Center in Northeast, MD.
The stores were happy to display it in their wedding area, and call me with any orders. I would deliver it to the store, finished and framed, and they would keep a commission percentage. This was during a time when there were no Christian bookstore chains as there now are. These little shops had complete discretion what items to carry, especially in terms of hand-made things by local artists.
Not so, today. National and regional corporate offices leave the managers of these local bookstores powerless to take in such items–much as they might admire the work and like to do so. I learned that when I relocated to Alabama, but already, most of the old Christian stores mentioned above (except Sandy Cove) had already been forced out of business.
I’m going to end here, even though my mind meanders to the next thing…and the next thing…and so forth. Eventually, I began teaching art to homeschoolers in 1995…learning caricature drawing in 1997. There were miscellaneous art projects asked for…and mural work…illustrations and more…I did a lot of hand calligraphy however. It was my primary thing, eventually being listed in the Wilmington, DE yellow pages and expanding beyond my immediate church friends.
I would be asked to hand address wedding invitations and do poems, or wedding vows and guest documents. At one point, I was active in the Delaware Calligraphy Guild.
Below, I’m going to show some samplings of my older work–whatever I might yet find on my computer that goes back that far (that’s a challenge).
The first scan is something I had in a photo album that I did in 1984 while a junior in college. I remember where I heard this poem, and for some reason I felt inspired to write it out this way. I was at the monthly STIM training (Student Training in Missions through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship) preparing for a two month summer missions trip to Mexico City. Monthly, a group of about 20 of us from various colleges in the DE/PA area would meet for a retreat weekend for guided cross-cultural training and preparation. We would cook foods from the various countries we were headed, or give presentations, have discussion topics, etc.
I recall someone read this poem that was a sampling of a South African Christian’s writing. I believe it was read aloud by someone with passion, and we were given copies, and there was discussion about it.
(Above) My “fancy writing” from 1984.
(Above) The nearest I have on my computer of something slightly resembling the “first” original Cord of Three Strands. At first, each piece was entirely done by hand. Eventually, I had only the center verse and the gold strand of names of God printing in a large quantity on parchment, as an “offset” print that was costly to produce at that time. Eventually we got a computer/scanner/printer in the year 2000, and by 2002 I was exploring how I might make a computerized template, as doing so many by hand (even adding the names) was increasingly time consuming with the quantity of orders being received. I wanted to focus art time in other directions, and also keep the product affordable. Above was an attempt to do a computerized design that might literally criss cross, but the ability to quickly edit the names was so complicated and labor intensive, it was not accomplishing my goal. Eventually, I came up with the current computerized template design which is easy to edit with names/colors. It features a parallel rending of the three cords with braid-like weave elements “suggesting” interwovenness, but not in the same literal visual design as the original.
(Above and Below) Something I scanned around 2002, typical of some of my little cards/prints back then.
(Above) I believe this is a tweaked version where I later re-worked the calligraphy part but in exact line space and word sizes from a remaining old card from around 1991 or so…the dove and small verse reference were scanned from the original card.
Below is some ending nostalgia…I was looking for some photos of what I looked like around the time I wanted to think about starting a calligraphy business of some sort from home. Back in those days, if I could just earn a little bit from home, maybe even $20 a month at first, I felt it would help. This first marriage ended in divorce, after twenty years, in 2005. I remember thinking/feeling, “How can the ‘Cord of Three Strands’ lady divorce her husband?”
Things are always complicated with divorce–especially Christians who divorce. It was not something I did lightly. And then re-marrying seven years later also, sadly, ended in divorce. Statistics show subsequent marriages fail at even higher rates than first marriages, as I understand things.
God’s ideal is for lifelong marriage. I believe in that. I do.
And sometimes, sadly, it is far easier to say “I do” than to say “I don’t“…a thought I have held over the years…
I am grateful for the place my art has held over the years in my life, especially in its ability through using my God-given gifts to improve my self-esteem and self-confidence, and to bless others at the same time.
Shalom.
Below is one more scan of “The Desiderata” I found on my computer from 2002, I quite like this version/layout and I should make time to format it for my Etsy.
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