Hamilton Lyrics Digital Calligraphy for the Fourth of July

I recently was able to score last minute tickets to see Hamilton in Chicago! (TIP: Sometimes they have last minute tickets that have been saved for guests of the cast that are released about 3 hours before show time. You might get lucky - I had amazing 10th row seats, dead center!)

The show is amazing, of course, and the lyrics are inspiring!

I've been having fun practicing my digital calligraphy on my iPad using some of the quotes.

I use an Apple Pencil for my drawings and used the Tayasui Sketches Pro app to make my drawings. 

To help me with designing my quotes, I used Ian Barnard's Grid Builders which I recently downloaded from Creative Market. I love these shape templates. You can arrange and combine them on your page any way that you wish to make your design. The grids come in a variety of formats including brushes for the ProCreate app. I used the transparent .png format which I had saved in a folder on my iPad. I was able to import them into Tayasui Sketches Pro and arrange them on my page  on a bottom layer. When I finished my writing, I hid my layer (or else you could delete the layer.) You can see below how I used the Grid Builders to help me with my lettering and design.

Lemon Chicken Rice Soup

If I am sick, this is the soup that will help me feel better...

(Some of you asked for the recipe for the soup which I brought to school for our luncheon last week.)

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil
One small onion, chopped
6 cups chicken stock (I use Trader Joe’s)
1/2 cup arborio rice (Regular rice would likely work, but arborio/risotto rice has more starch and will be creamier.)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 lemons
1 deli chicken, removed from bones, chopped or shredded
3/4 cup chopped parsley



STEPS

1. Sauté the chopped onions in olive oil until soft.
2. Add chicken stock and heat until boiling.
3. Add 1/2 cup arborio rice. Simmer under medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until al dente.
4. In a medium bowl, temper the beaten eggs by adding a cup of stock and beating until absorbed. Then slowly add to soup, whisking as you add, to thicken the soup.
5. Grate the zest of the lemons into the soup, then add the juice.
6. Just before serving, add chicken and cook until warm. Top with fresh parsley. Season with freshly cracked pepper if desired.

Leftover soup will thicken, add more stock before serving.

Recipe adapted from Closet Cooking: http://www.closetcooking.com/2008/03/avgolemono-soup.html

Sermon Sketchnotes 2017

I don't get an opportunity to post to this personal blog very often anymore! I am too busy keeping my two school blogs active and busy with other technology projects. But I wanted to post a link to a personal project that I just completed.

Since 2013, I have been creating digital sketchnotes on my iPad. I do them at conferences, for books, videos, and meetings, but I also regularly do sketchnotes of the sermons at my church on Sundays. I decided to compile all the sermon sketchnotes from 2017 into an ebook using the Book Creator app. Here is the link to the book:

Sermon Sketchnotes 2017

To view the ebook, simply click on the link and you can click through the pages of the book.

If you are interested in learning more about creating sketchnotes, here is a link to my resource page:

http://tinyurl.com/ipadsketchnotes

And if you are interested in seeing more of my sketchnotes (along with other creative projects and an occasional picture of my cats), please follow me @karlyb on Instagram!