Connecting with the past

Most of my work is sewing, but I do sometimes work on paper. I designed invitations for each of my children's B'nai Mitzvah. I had also designed some wedding invitations for friends.. Earlier this year I had my first paid invitation job and that, led to this invitation job.

Yesterday I put this invitation to bed, so to speak. The invitation is a gate-fold, so the top image opens to reveal the inner image. I have not included the specific invitation text. The text comes from Jacob's wrestling with the angel. We chose this particular verse because it seems to epitome that Bar-Mitzvah moment of choosing adulthood.

I have really loved working with Jacob's mom. She claims to be a control freak. I have found her not to be that at all, but someone who is really careful about details. She is very appreciative of the effort that I have put in and I have found her wonderful to work with. Her attention to detail has made my job so much easier.

I love how this piece is a mix of hand calligraphy, drawing, and computer work. All of the elements were scanned into my computer and then manipulated by computer. It's a fun mixture of hand and machine work. Yesterday we spent the morning getting the invitation itself in perfect shape for the commercial printer and designing all of the ancillary cards. Since all of the decorative elements were sitting in my pictures file, all we had to do waslay out the text and then choose a decorative element from the files to embellish the cards.

It's funny some aspects of doing this on the computer are difficult and time consuming. Other elements of the work, like resizing an object or copying it are made so much easier with the computer. I like the irony of creating something that looks so hand made with the computer.