Picking your envelopes wisely

What looks gorgeous in the sample book,

will be gorgeous but it may not be a calligraphers best friend.

This is a lovely natural envelope - which means it has fibers! 

Which means a calligrapher's tool will pick up little fibers that will drag the ink on the stroke. 

Here is the close up of what happens:

Look at the lower bowl of the 'a' - not what it is supposed to look like, but on the up stroke the fiber drags extra ink and causes that filled in bottom. These envelopes had another nasty problem. The green lining was dark enough that guidelines could not be seen and therefore, pencil lines needed to be put on each and every envelope. Then, due to the natural fibers of the paper, these pencil lines did not fully erase.

NOW, most folks won't notice but for the me, the calligrapher, I noticed! And it just isn't the best presentation. Moral of my comments - think about how the addresses are going to be put on the envelopes and select paper accordingly!