Ten years ago today, our first member signed up at Flourish Forum! Happy 10th Anniversary! One thousand, one hundred, and thirty-nine hours. Several times per day, almost every single day for the past ten years. That is how much time I have put in online for Flourish. This does not include the countless hours offline. And I have loved every minute of it! When I started this adventure ten years ago today, I had no idea where it would lead. Today we have thousands of members from all over the world and together we have created a truly incredible resource for calligraphers everywhere.
When we started in 2013, Instagram was just getting started, and there was only one online calligraphy learning site! One! I received a little bit of fuss over creating free tutorials when I launched the forum for fear I would hurt business. LOL – we had no idea what was to come! Today there are a plethora of online calligraphy classes, tutorials, YouTube videos, Insta reels, and more. And we are all better students and artists because of it.
Seeing other calligraphers do calligraphy and studying their work has helped me to grow and improve so much over the past decade. I relearned Engrosser’s Script and have been studying and practicing my Spencerian, as well as many other different hands. Who knew the internet would help calligraphy to grow and thrive over the years!
I would like to thank our many members for always being so willing to answer questions, share their work, and participate in exchanges. We have Super Hero Members (those with over 1,000 posts) who have been with us almost since the beginning. @Ken_Fraser has started more topics than me!
@AnasaziWrites has logged almost as many hours as me. And @gloria_dawn is our longest standing member, who participates in almost every exchange. There are so many more who have dedicated so much time to helping us all.
Things have changed so much for me in the past ten years, including moving four times! A change in my husband’s employment has put me back to work and I am currently wrapping up a calligraphic calendar for 2024. I also have plans for a new artistic adventure which I will be announcing shortly. Finally, I have been working for almost 5 years on my Flourishing book. This is a very deep dive into the world of flourishing, Engrosser’s Script, and capital variations. And I seriously cannot wait for it to be ready! I sincerely hope it will go to print in the first part of next year.
As a special thank you for being a part of Flourish and helping us create this amazing calligraphy community, I have used one of the illustrations I created for my upcoming calendar to design a year-at-a-glance calendar PDF that can be downloaded from the forum. You have to be logged in to download.
CalendarP.S. Check out our new logo!
