I'm just printing Dianne's writing paper for her birthday - see Label Projects, titles "A Little Project". Onto "natural" Calligraphy paper, which is parchment coloured.
I'll do the envelopes next.

One of my cats just sat on the first printed page of the writing paper, crumpling it. *sigh*. He wants to help me!

I've been thinking about the "My Method of Shading and Highlighting" piece (under the Label 'Paper', after the Script Analysis questions)

At the moment it describes my method, plus some information and images for "lymning" (the tiny strokes method) plus dry brushing.
What I'll do is strip it down to just a description of my method, seperating out the rest into a seperate entry.
I want to add a link (I have permission) to Lady Isabella Evangelista's wonderful paper on producing a mss page. She also talks about how to paint illuminated elements, and uses much a much prettier and more complex exemplar than my little teardrops.
http://www.megapathdsl.net/~amichaels/IlluminationStarttoFinish.pdf

For the stuff on lymning (which isn't quite an accurate description, because lymning, or limning, means 'illumination for manuscript pages" in general, but I don't know how else to specifically refer to it, other than 'the tiny stroke method') I'll make a seperate entry. I already have some other images that show lymning really well and I want to add them. I imagine this entry will grow as I learn.

And add in the comments from Master Ranthunlfr and Mistress Tetchubah between the two pieces as relevant as there is wonderful information there.
I also talk more about what I need to add in as part of the 'editorial comments' added at the top of the piece at it's blog entry.

I'm getting the hang of the lymning, tho I'm not clear enough in what I'm doing to describe it well yet. I'm combining my method with the lymning (which I actually mention in that paper) but with a lot more lymning. You have to do the 'soft' blending that I describe a bit to get the strokes to blend into each other - or be a lot lighter hand than me, I guess. You can see the difference - the Jacobean card is a lot more 'strokey' than the illumination in The Second Coming. The tiny lines help add dimensionality to each element, rather than just using shades of colour - you can use both.

I'll do this as well as going back to my script analysis of the Bedford Hours, given I want to get both done.

Meanwhile, here's a fellow from the Luttrell Psalter - all lymned up. I look forward to painting him one day. Purple is good.