Hi there! As you already know, my name is Johana or Jo. I wanted to give a better idea of the girl behind the pen and why this little business started.
The first time I tried calligraphy was back in 2016 and I never took the time to learn how to actually use it. Frustrated and unable to figure out how to make the ink stay on the nib, I put that hobby on the back-burner until my now husband proposed to me in September 2018.
My first attempt at calligraphy back in 2016
Once we locked in our venue, I knew I wanted to get started on the FUN STUFF! For me that was signing up for calligraphy & watercolor classes during the winter so I could practice and have enough time to make my wedding invitations myself. In an ideal world, I would’ve learned all the skills in a few weeks, mastered photoshop, illustrator, calligraphy and watercolor to come up with something so beautiful I would WOW everyone. Unfortunately, that was not the case! I was overwhelmed with all the elements of creating my own wedding suite that I decided to just set addressing our save the dates as the first goal. That I did and our guest loved them.
I admit, I did not go too crazy with our actual save the dates and ordered from Zola. I would’ve loved to have made these a bit more personable, but time was of the essence and we had to get the ball rolling.
As for the wedding invites, I wanted to be thoughtful with. them. It was going to be the first true glimpse of our wedding weekend and I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted it to be us - fun and soft yet elevated but not too formal, while also capturing the environmental setting of our venue, which was in the Catskills mountains. Fortunately I found an amazing multi-talented artist who could capture this all within our tight timeline and I am incredibly grateful for her.
Due to budget (custom invitations are $$$), I ended up addressing our wedding invitations and designing all of our day-of signage including a 5’ mirror seating chart, menus, itineraries, cocktail menus and place cards. While I knew my lettering had gotten much better over the last few weeks, putting the pen to paper on 50+ invites and figuring out Adobe Illustrator was daunting. Yet, it was one of my proudest accomplishments in actually doing it all and taking the first step into calligraphy and design and see it go from there.
After our big day, I knew I wanted to pursue this hobby and create a business. What a dream it would be to work for myself one day. So here we are, venturing into the world of entrepreneurship!
In all, I hope this post inspires a future calligrapher / stationer / creative one day, that is eager and interested in pursuing their own dream. A few podcasts I listen to daily are below and these keep me inspired and motivated regularly.
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Goal Digger by Jenna Kutcher
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Biz Birthday Bash by Elisabeth and Cami
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The Modern Creative by Joyce & Dianuh
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Hobby to Business by Shelly Kim & Emma White
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Tipsy Business by Carley Zuercher
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The Jenna Rainey Show by Jenna Rainey
Enjoy!
Jo