Before we begin: an announcement! This morning, I spoke to The Compound Cowork in Brooklyn, NY, and was able to rent a space to conduct modern calligraphy workshops on Saturday, October 29th! If you’re interested in attending, you can sign up for the morning workshop by clicking here, or the afternoon workshop by clicking here. I just taught a couple of great calligraphy workshops in Portland; they’re really fun and helpful for those who are new to calligraphy!
Now, for the topic at hand! Artistic corner designs can elevate a paper project from ordinary to eye-catching. If you’re ever working on a project that lacks “oomph”, try putting a design in all four corners and see what happens! More often than not, corner designs direct the eye to the spotlight center element while adding artistic value to the piece.
The star of today’s blog post is this “Artistic Corners” free printable, which you can click here to download. In it, you’ll find ten different artistic corner designs and tips for making those designs. In this post, I’ll briefly touch on three of the designs found in the printable. Please feel free to experiment with not only these three corner designs, but all the corner designs on the printable!
1. Simple Curlicue Artistic Corner Design
The Simple Curlicue artistic corner design is best created with a dip pen or with faux calligraphy. That’s because the design relies on stroke width variation to stand out! To make the Simple Curlicue, you’ll begin by drawing one small loop, then one medium-sized loop, and you’ll end with another small loop.
The Simple Curlicue corner design adds an element of playful elegance to any project! I most recently used it on Janet Style calligraphed place cards for the TPK Portland modern calligraphy workshop last weekend. The delicate loops of the Janet correspond so well with this corner design!
2. Arrows and Feather Corner Design
The Arrows and Feather corner design is whimsical without being too “cutesy”. In this design, two feathers cross to hug the corner of the paper, and a feather fills in the space between them.
You can vary the Arrows and Feather corner design as much as you would like! You could use different colors of ink, as I did here (I love using McCaffery’s inks in Indigo and Green), experiment with different shapes for the arrowheads, or draw beads in the middle of the arrows. Note, too, that there’s no need to use a dip pen to create this corner design — any writing instrument will work!
No matter what variations you choose to use, the Arrows and Feather corner design will add creative whimsy to any piece you use them on! You can pair them with any calligraphy style, but I like them best with the Kaitlin, which boasts whimsy and creativity itself.
3. Simple Leaves Corner Design
I like the Simple Leaves corner design because of its versatility. You can keep it as a corner design, or extend it into a border! To achieve the latter, all you need to do is draw pencil lines along the edges of whatever you are working on. For the envelope pictured below, I drew pencil lines 0.25″ (6.35 mm) from each edge.
Next, trace over the pencil lines with ink. Each ink line should end with a little leaf.
Finally, add a myriad of leaves to the lines you just drew.
Add some pretty calligraphy (I chose Beth Style in the photo below) and a couple of stamps, and you’ve got a nice little piece of mail art!
I used McCaffery’s green ink for this envelope, but you can use any color! It is not necessary to use a dip pen for this design: any pen will get the job done beautifully. As with the other corner designs, you can vary the Simple Leaves as you see fit! It might be fun to add some flowers or berries, or vary the leaf colors in honor of autumn.
There are many possibilities for these artistic corner designs, and I hope you’ll use them to best suit your projects and your personal style! Again, you can download the free Artistic Corner Designs printable by clicking here. I hope you’ll keep it at hand for inspiration as you work on mail art, bullet journaling, gift tags, and anything else you may want to create!
I hope you enjoyed this post and that you find the printable helpful! Thanks very much for tuning in to read today — it’s my pleasure to count you as a reader. I hope you have a great, creative weekend!
Warmly,
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