Presents for You: Brush Lettered Emerson Quote
Free quote Friday! Use for Project Life, scrapbook, art journals, or just print it out and hang on your walls. Just click the links below to download the version you desire.
Click on photos for JPG
8×10 inch Coral PDF
8×10 inch Charcoal PDF
Transparent PNG
I’d love to see what you’re doing with my lettering and you can share your great ideas with others too! Tag me on instagram @randomolive and use the hashtag #randomoliveletters.
Personal use only. (Because these words are neither yours or mine to sell.)
Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to see lettered? Suggest it in the comments!
Resources for Learning Pointed Pen Calligraphy
I’d been thinking of learning calligraphy for awhile, especially after following some awesome calligraphers on Instagram. But I kept chickening out on paying for any courses; what if I buy all these supplies and courses and I hate it? (I tend to pick up and drop hobbies all the time… it must be the hoarding learner in me)
I noticed that one of the calligraphers I followed on Instagram was offering in-person local workshops! Well, that sounds perfect for me as a beginner!
I signed up for a class for beginners with Jenna M. Rainey of Mon Voir Calligraphy.
Why would an in-person course appeal to me?
– Comes with supplies, so I don’t have to fend for myself at the supply shop.
– The instructor covers the basics on how to hold the pen and the proper technique.
– As I’m practicing in the workshop, I can ask questions and the instructor can see and correct my technique.
I figured that I could try out the class, go home and practice a bit, and see if I still liked it enough to seek out other resources. (Spoiler Alert: It’s been 4 months since that first class and I’m still into it)
After that, it got the ball rolling for a ton of other resources that I use to practice.
Presents for You: Brush Lettered Teddy Roosevelt Quote
More quotes! Use for Project Life, scrapbook, art journals, or just print it out and hang on your walls. Just click the links below to download the version you desire.
Click on photos for JPG
8×10 inch Blue PDF
8×10 inch Charcoal PDF
Transparent PNG
I’d love to see what you’re doing with my lettering and you can share your great ideas with others too! Tag me on instagram @randomolive and use the hashtag #randomoliveletters.
Personal use only. (Because these words are neither yours or mine to sell.)
Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to see lettered? Suggest it in the comments!
What To Do with that Sad and Brown Banana
I don’t know about your house, but at my house, bananas are on the weekly grocery list. It’s a staple here. However, some weeks, we just don’t get around to eating them all before they get overripe. So what should we do with them? We can make banana bread, but we might not have the time for all that. Instead, I just mash them up and store them in the freezer for a later day.
Presents for You: Brush Lettered Matisse Quote
More free brush lettering for you guys! Use for Project Life, scrapbook, art journals, or just print it out and hang on your walls. Just click the links below to download the version you desire.
Click on photos for JPG
8×10 inch Seafoam PDF
8×10 inch Charcoal PDF
Transparent PNG
I’d love to see what you’re doing with my lettering and you can share your great ideas with others too! Tag me on instagram @randomolive and use the hashtag #randomoliveletters.
Personal use only. (Because these words are neither yours or mine to sell.)
Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to see lettered? Suggest it in the comments!
Travel Souvenir Idea: Find Illustrated Postcards
So, postcards are not a new concept. You’ve seen them everywhere: gift shops, airports, bookstores. But I find that most of the postcards on the rack are some generic stock photo of the location and then the name of the town across the top or bottom (usually in some outdated font choice).
Sometimes though, you find a gem. And I’ve been on the hunt for well-illustrated postcards everywhere I go. The key is that they’re illustrated and not photographed. These sort of cards appeal the most to my artistic aesthetic and upgrade the cards into something I feel good about putting on my walls.
They’re definitely tougher to find than the usual photographed cards (in one airport, I went to about 5 different gift shops to hunt one down), but they’re totally worth it.
Have you found any awesome postcards?
Post a pic on Instagram and tag me @randomolive.
Presents for You: Brush Lettered Bruce Lee Quote
I recently posted a rough version of this brush lettered quote on Instagram. I also recently acquired a scanner
Use for Project Life, scrapbook, art journals, or just print it out and hang on your walls. Just click the links below to download the version you desire.
Click on photos for JPG
8×10 inch Blue PDF
8×10 inch Charcoal PDF
Transparent PNG
I’d love to see what you’re doing with my lettering and you can share your great ideas with others too! Tag me on instagram @randomolive and use the hashtag #randomoliveletters.
Personal use only. (Because these words are neither yours or mine to sell.)
Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to see lettered? Suggest it in the comments!
Identifying Your Strengths with StrengthsFinder
I’m a big fan of identifying my own personality traits and figuring out how to leverage them. One of my favorite resources for this is Canon EOS 60D
The book starts with some information about how the strengths were developed and why focus on strengths at all. The thing I like the most about the Strengths Finder approach is that it doesn’t dwell on your weaknesses. Your characteristics are framed as strengths and there are suggestions for how to cultivate them. The book then describes all 34 strengths in detail, with the description of it, an example of a person with that strength, some action ideas for cultivating the strength, and some tips on working with people with that strength.
When you buy the book, you get an access code to the online test which will tell you your top five strengths.
My strengths:
1. Learner – Basically, I love to learn and am more interested in the process of learning something than becoming an expert. I will pick up new hobbies all the time just to learn something new (like photography, or calligraphy, or setting up a blog).
2. Analytical – Basically, I love data and statistics and evidence. I tend to look for patterns and themes. Sometimes people may think I’m being skeptical when I’m looking for logical explanations.
3. Competition – This one is exactly how it sounds. Sometimes I get caught up comparing myself to others. I have to be careful because this can lead to doom. If I spend too much time thinking about how I may never get to the same level as others, I might not even start.
4. Input – I’m an inquisitive collector. Combined with my first strength, it means I tend to collect information and skills. I have a tendency to clear out entire Dewey decimal shelves at the library so that I’ll have collected and archived all the information from a particular genre. I also collect hobbies like nobody’s business.
5. Significance – This is where I want to have an impact in the world. (Hence the blog where I share stuff and hope to impact someone). It’s that desire to be recognized and be exceptional.
Have you taken the Strengths Finder test before? What are your top strengths?
affiliate link for the book
Resource of the Week: Mayi’s 5K Sales in 365 Days
I’ve been following Mayi Carles on Instagram and on her blog ever since she was a guest on April Bowles-Olin’s CreativeLive course. Mayi’s blog has a ton of awesomely illustrated printables and wisdom for kicking ass.
Recently, Mayi posted about the cycle of an idea, which totally resonated with me because I get a lot of ideas, but never quite execute them to the point of world domination. At the bottom of this post though, she had a blurb about a product that I hadn’t seen before. My first thought was “What?!? There’s something else she’s offering that I haven’t bought yet??” (I had already bought the Life Is Messy Planner Pack and enrolled in her joint venture course with April, Connecting the Gaps.)
So what was this product that I missed…? It’s an eguide for how to create best-sellers in your pajamas. Pajamas? Now you’ve really got my attention. So I click over to the sales page, and it’s a guide for creating, marketing, and selling your digital products. (and this is the first time I’m saying this publicly, I’ve got a few digital products in mind, so this guide was very timely for me)
I didn’t wait long before clicking the button to buy (maybe an hour? hour and a half, tops) and printing out my very own copy. And gosh darn it, it’s just as cute and helpful as she says it is. I totally can hear her voice reading it to me, as I read it.
I finished reading it in 3 days, and I still need to go back through and mull over all the assignments and prompts to get my ideas out of my head (or scrap papers lying on my desk) and off the ground and into the world.
If you’re thinking about launching digital products, or spicing up your current offerings, check out what Mayi has to say about it. She even has a sample chapter up on the site.
Links to Mayi’s sales page are affiliate, which means that if you make a purchase, I’ll receive a portion of the proceeds. Opinions are totally mine. You may not know me yet, but I’m pretty frugal, so if I bought a copy myself, it’s totally worth it.
Super Soft, Super Moist, Super Fluffy Banana Bread
I only really know how to bake one thing from scratch. But that one thing is a hit every single time I make it. I make it for potlucks, Thanksgiving, Christmas, my husband’s birthday, every event where I need to bring something. And it’s super easy.
I think the original source was this fromĀ AllRecipes.
I’ve adapted it to be the following:
Ingredients:
1.5 cups of all-purpose flour1 teaspoon of baking soda0.5 teaspoon of salt1 cup of granulated sugar2 eggs0.24 cup of melted butter3 mashed bananasa dash of cinnamon (optional)a splash of vanilla extract (optional)
