How it all began

In 2018, my daughter gave me beautiful stationery as a Christmas gift. With a shared commitment to write to each other, we set off on a year’s worth of writing letters by hand. The first letter felt awkward, given how accustomed I had become to editing my words and grammar while composing an email. Handwriting revealed all the bad habits that I had gotten into from texting or using other forms of social media. Reliance on emojis and acronyms became apparent during that first letter writing experience.

Writing a letter by hand required me to slow down and to be thoughtful before putting pen to paper. And all at once I felt a sense of calm

In 2019, I began to dabble in sketching and water-coloring. By the end of 2019, I had created over 30 small watercolors and gave the collection to my daughter that Christmas and promised not only to continue writing monthly letters to her but also to include a watercolor.

Along came COVID

In March of 2020, we all quarantined. My leadership development consulting and coaching practice quieted down dramatically. I was able to explore more watercolor techniques. But I was, like everyone else, feeling disconnected and lonely. Motivated by the events of the day, I created an image, and decided to reproduce them into postcards and send handwritten notes to family and friends. I sent 25 cards with personal notes in April 2020. Friends and family were grateful for the note and equally, if not more importantly, they appreciated the image and sentiment.

With more time on my hands and finding water coloring so joyful, staying connected with handwritten notes seemed natural. I decided to create a monthly image, reproduce the image onto greeting postcards and hand embellish each card.

In 2020, not including Christmas and New Year’s, I sent nearly 200 cards as part of either monthly mailings, birthday cards, thank you cards and sympathy cards.

I have to thank several YouTube artists whose generous sharing of their talent and ideas and techniques have been an inspiration; in particular, Creations CeeCee, Kim Dallow, Emma Jane Lefebvre and Sarah Cray from Let’s Make Art.