Quilled Marriage Certificate - Chandelier Design

calligraphy: Living Letters Studio

Earlier this week I mentioned having had the pleasure of creating a marriage certificate for a Virginia couple. Kristyn, the bride-to-be, contacted me several months before the wedding. We worked closely to obtain the exact look she had in mind.

image: Jeff Greenough Photographers

Kristyn told me she has always loved chandeliers and that their invitation would feature one... she asked if I could quill a chandelier as part of the design. By coincidence, I'd been thinking it would be fun to quill an ornate light fixture someday, but until this opportunity came along, thoughts were as far as it had gone.

invitation: Kristy Rice of Momental Designs

Using the invitation's graphic as inspiration, I created a chandelier in ivory, pearlized silver, and silver-edged ivory, and placed it top and center on the certificate.


For the remainder of the design, Kristyn liked the idea of graceful scrolls to complement the chandelier's structure. I positioned large S scrolls at the sides of the hand-calligraphed wedding vows, and embellished each with smaller scrolls and leaves.


The wedding's elegant color palette was ivory, grey, lamb's ear green, and silver... all of these were used in the design.


For those of you who love to quill, read on about a new tool (to me, at least) that helped a great deal in the making of this project.

As much as I enjoy creating large designs and doing the actual quilling, when it comes time to glue the coils to a surface... well, let's just say placement is key and it can make for a pretty challenging situation.


Because I do the final gluing on marriage certificates after the vows have been lettered, everything has to be in perfect position from the start. There are no do-overs without extra expense and inconvenience.


In the past I've measured, measured, and measured again, dotting the certificate with nearly invisible pencil marks that are later erased, but this time I tried what turned out to be a fabulous device - a laser level. Ordinarily one is used as a guide when hanging art work, but what a huge help it is for a project like this.


The level shot a clear, red line of light across the entire thirty inch width of the piece, which helped ensure that the curves of the large scrolls were identical. Of course a lot of careful measuring was still required, but the level was just like having an extra pair of hands, and unlike a yardstick, did not get in the way.


I collaborated with other artists for this wedding... Riva Brown lettered the marriage certificate and Jenny Jafek-Jones of The Crimson Poppy helped to create a floral hair accessory that was exactly what Kristyn had in mind.

image: Jeff Greenough Photographers

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