Our Story: Making Life More Beautiful One Penstroke at a Time

It began with being traumatized. Yes! When I was in elementary school, I had a super-hard time with penmanship because I'm left-handed. I vividly remember sobbing, telling my mother that I was going to fail first grade because I had made a C in handwriting on my report card (ignore the fact that I had A's aside from this mark)! A few years later, a teacher announced loudly in front of the class that another classmate and I had "the worst handwriting in the entire fourth grade!" 

That smarts. 

I began mimicking things unique to my friends' writing for fun. For practice, I wrote the alphabet A LOT, as well as journaling daily. After a while, people began admiring MY writing style and borrowing elements from ME. As my penmanship developed and advanced, people even began to express serious admiration of my handwriting, and for years I've shocked people. Numerous times I've heard, "You don't write like a lefty!" Actually, I do: Myself! 

I veered into the world of calligraphy and the different styles that fit under that umbrella quite naturally. Having trouble finding lefty supplies (this was, after all, the 80s - no internet or Amazon Prime), I fabricated my own "calligraphy." For years, I fooled around and "made do" with regular pens and markers. 

After earning my college degree, I promptly began what would be a 20-plus-year career in customer service and front office jobs. While I found my niche in which to excel for my "bill-paying job," my dream of using my underutilized creative side always poked at me strongly. I thought the opportunity would never arise where I'd be fortunate enough to make a living doing what I love - especially after becoming a single mom to my two girls in 2011. 

I got remarried in 2015, and was fortunate to not "have" to work outside of the home. While being available for my kids without conflicts made me very happy, they were in school, and didn't need the day-long intense attention that smaller children require. 

I enjoyed volunteer work, but something was still lacking. I wanted to be doing something creative to call my livelihood. But I was stumped; due to a wide array of interests, I could go in quite a few directions. It was difficult to decide what to do or where to even begin. 

Things converged on a visit with one of my dearest college friends. She's an art major and has her own successful creative business; as we talked about doing what one loves to do (and I lamented my lack of direction), she had an idea: "I think you should do something with lettering and calligraphy." She'd noticed my social media posts about my bullet journal, and thought the pages had promise. She'd also kept her latest Christmas card from me for some time because she thought it was so beautiful. I was surprised, but it made perfect sense to me at the same time. 

So I kept my eyes peeled for a class that would teach me "proper" lettering. I found an online class by Atlanta artist Anne Elser in American Cursive (Spencerian) and Open Shaded Script. It wasn't always easy, but by the end of our course things were beginning to come together! After this, I happened upon a local watercolor class, and thought, 'Why the heck not?' Amazingly, it clicked with me rather quickly and I saw a convergence of these things into one creative endeavour. Yes! Finally! Thus, The Gilded Pecan studio was born.