By Carol Duvall
There was an interesting envelope, letter and idea from Kathi Fogleman of Southport, N.C., in the Shoebox today. A glance at the envelope indicated that Kathi is a calligrapher (figure A). The address was beautiful, as was the accompanying artwork (figure B). All this and a crafty idea as well! Kathi has heard me mention a number of times that I use dried-out or empty ballpoint pens for embossing, which is something that Kathi does as well. However, she mentioned that with the many gel pens she has, she can't always tell which ones are the empty ones; so she decided that if she removed the ink cartridges, she would be able to tell them apart. Unfortunately, that didn't work. She still couldn't tell which were full and which were empty...but, in her experimenting, she discovered that the empty pens were a great place to keep beads and a needle, and when she put the pen back together, she still had the point for her dry embossing (figure C). Kathy went on to say that calligraphers emboss. They also sew bindings for the books they make...and they love to add beads to the bindings and to cards and other craft items, so the pen idea was perfect. She mentioned that she takes her pens to class every week, as do her fellow calligraphers, to whom she gave them as little gifts. That's a lot from one little idea that happened almost by accident. So we had to try...and try...and try. And we found out that some pens lend themselves beautifully to this idea and some don't. Some just don't go back together tightly once you remove the ink cartridge...others do (figure D). So experiment. After all, you are starting with a pen that no longer works, so what have you got to lose but a few minutes of your time? And you might be successful the first time!
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