We were lucky to catch up with Claudia Brade recently and have shared our conversation below.

Claudia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

New trends are a beautiful thing that help businesses and creatives like myself move forward in our work and art. I love to see new trends emerge, but I also think that in order to run a successful business, it’s important to be timeless at core. If you only try to catch new trends, you will exhaust yourself over time.

As a calligrapher, I specialize in mirror signage and have a mirror rental collection with over 40 unique pieces. Wedding mirror signs have been around for quite some time and I believe that they are not going anywhere. They are timeless eye-catchers that elevate the look of any event, whether it’s an ornate-framed vintage mirror, or a frameless mirror for a modern and elegant look. Mirrors make for beautiful welcome signs, seating charts, bar menus and so much more.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t also offer other signs that are based on a current trend. This year, flower box signs, or “bloom boxes” have become very popular and I recently added one to my rental collection as well. The one I offer is an A-frame with a flower box attached, but there are also other versions, like a Polaroid-style box with flowers growing out of it.

The great thing is that I can do calligraphy on pretty much anything, whether it’s a mirror, an acrylic sign, a wooden sign, a paper sign…the options are endless and I love to see how new trends incorporate calligraphy and open up a whole new way of being creative. Often times that means learning a new skill and it doesn’t come without challenge. For example, that flower box A-frame I added to my rental collection, I built it myself! I learned a whole new skillset to build it, and it was a lot of fun. The best part of it was having my dad in Germany on Facetime while I worked on it. He helped me and explained things to me when the wood didn’t quite fit together the way I wanted it to.

New trends always bring new business opportunities and that I am very grateful for. Aside from the wedding industry, I am lucky to work with wonderful corporate clients that include calligraphy and engraving into their experiential marketing activations. There are so many ways to use calligraphy for unique branding ideas, and I’m excited to see what new trends 2024 will bring.

Claudia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Claudia and I’m the owner of shescloudy calligraphy. I offer calligraphy and engraving for weddings and events. I specialize in custom mirror signage and have a mirror rental collection that I deliver all over Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange County; and even as far as Riverside and Santa Barbara County. Most of my rentals are unique vintage pieces that are the perfect addition to elevate any event. I have mirrors in multiple sizes, the biggest one is a 5 by 7 feet floor-length golden mirror that is perfect for a large seating chart for an event with 250+ guests.

My services include custom calligraphy on pretty much any surface. Most popular are mirrors, acrylic signage, wood signs, envelope calligraphy and place cards; to only name a few.
I also offer live calligraphy and engraving services for brand activations and corporate events, as well as bottle painting and hot foiling. shescloudy calligraphy was founded in 2018.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I fell in love with calligraphy when my then boyfriend (now husband) invited me to take a Copperplate calligraphy class with him. He is a tattoo artist and had taken that class several times before. I was curious about calligraphy – I remembered my mom having a book about it when I was a child – and decided to join. I loved the class and wanted to learn more: I went to all the workshops I could find in LA that had anything to do with lettering, from modern calligraphy to brush lettering. I even took a class in Old English calligraphy. During that time I also started following a lot of calligraphy artists on Instagram and realized that being a calligrapher could actually turn into a business. So I started to put my work into the world and slowly attracted my first clients. At that time it was mainly place card and envelope calligraphy. I was still working a full-time job, but knew that my dream was to become a full-time calligraphy artist. When I did my first wedding mirror sign I fell in love with calligraphy all over again and knew that mirrors were what I wanted to focus on. So I started sourcing my mirror rental collection. What helped me the most when I just started was to collaborate with other creatives on styled shoots. I am definitely forever grateful for all the other calligraphers that shared their knowledge with me, and all the planners that worked with me when I was just starting out.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Personally, I had to unlearn that a solid career doesn’t mean it has to be a corporate 9-5 job. It also doesn’t mean that you have to do what you went to school for. I hold a BA and MA in Journalism and worked in the media and PR for 10 years. While that was already a creative industry, I was far from being self-employed or running my own business. Growing up I was taught that you go to school, get a degree and then find a job in that industry. So trusting myself that I could be self-employed and successful was a mindset that I had to teach myself. And I think hand-in-hand with that goes that failure is a part of success. Failure is always an opportunity for growth and never a reason to quit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shescloudycalligraphy.com
• Instagram: @shescloudy_calligraphy
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-brade-1a8370155/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/shescloudy-calligraphy-los-angeles

Image Credits
Callaway Gable Photography Brett Hickmann Photography Alma Films Nadia Hung Photography