Are you planning an amazing wedding or other fabulous event?
Have you found the perfect venue, caterer, cake decorator, photographer, florist, and stationer? Yes! No? Still working on it?
Have you have seen beautifully-designed invitations and stunning envelopes on Pinterest or wedding blogs, or if you are REALLY LUCKY, in your own mailbox?
You definitely want your guests calling or emailing YOU to exclaim over how amazing your invitations look and how they can’t wait to attend the big event!
Welcome to PenDance Studio!
Our goal is to deliver high-quality, exquisite hand calligraphy and computer printing services to you and be the EASIEST part of your event planning process!
Our names are Maureen and Don Vickery, and we’ve been offering our lettering and printing services to brides, stationers, wedding professionals, and corporate clients for over 15 years.
We specialize in addressing invitations, place cards, and escort cards, either by hand (Maureen) or digitally (Don).
Maureen can partner with you to create a custom invitation design or name design in hand calligraphy, which will add a personal, hand-rendered touch to your stationery which will delight your guests.
Maureen also hand engraves wine and liquor bottles, which make popular hostess and bridal party gifts.
Hand Calligraphy – Maureen’s Specialty
I will help you select a hand lettering style that coordinates with your wedding invitations for addressing your envelopes, place cards, escort cards, menus, and programs.
I offer traditional calligraphy as well as modern calligraphy styles. Additionally, I can write in a custom style that emulates the font you chose for your invitations. Whichever works for you!
You can be confident that your guests will be wowed when they receive your invitations addressed in hand calligraphy.
Who doesn’t love receiving envelopes with their names written in fancy lettering? It’s an event in itself, like receiving a gift wrapped in a pretty bow!
Computer Calligraphy – Don’s Specialty
If you are in a time crunch, and/or money is a thing, then computer calligraphy is here to help!
After I receive your final approved address list and have your envelopes or place cards in hand, it only takes 3-4 business days to complete your envelopes or cards.
Psst! Maureen can address some of your invitations by hand (family, bridal party, and the guests who appreciate hand lettering) and I can print the rest in computer calligraphy. Who says that all the envelopes have to be addressed alike?
If you don’t want the hassle of shopping for place cards and having to provide the 10% extra, you can purchase tent cards from our online store. We offer 3 colors of large tent cards from Crane cardstock and 2 styles (square or rounded corners). You can upload your guest list, then I will print the cards and ship them to you. Simple and easy, with free priority mail shipping within the contiguous United States.
Treat your Guests to Something Special!
Our clients often tell us that their guests have called or written to exclaim what a joy it was to receive their invitations, designed and addressed so beautifully! We never tire of hearing these stories!
PenDance is currently listed on the vendor list for Bering’s Stationery, The Houstonian and in Houston’s Paper City Magazine‘s Blue Book. Maureen’s work has appeared in Letter Arts Review, Expressions, Weddings in Houston, Dasherie, and UPPERCASE magazines.
Questions?
If you have questions about hand calligraphy or computer printing, please visit our FAQs page and tour our web site and blog. Then schedule a meeting with us at our home studio in west Houston, near I-10 and Kirkwood. We’d love to work with you!
About Maureen Vickery
Houston calligrapher Maureen Vickery has been a professional wedding calligrapher and hand engraving artist since 2001. She also publishes a digital magazine called Calligraphy Crush.
She first became interested in calligraphy when her mom bought her Calligraphic Lettering by Ralph Douglass when Maureen was 11 years old. Maureen loved drawing the letterforms over and over in pencil and markers since she didn’t have any calligraphy pens and inks to work with.
Maureen received a BBA in accounting from Stephen F. Austin State University. A few years later she met Don at Mama’s Café in Houston one Sunday when he came to her table as she was about to leave with her best friend, and knelt down to ask Maureen for her phone number. (Yes, he picked her up at a hamburger joint.) They became engaged 10 weeks later (but didn’t tell their parents until 6 months had passed).
After Maureen took private calligraphy lessons to address their wedding invitations, she soon received requests from her friends to address their invitations as well. Maureen’s calligraphy services turned into a part-time vocation while she was working full-time as a technical writer and information architect in the oil and gas industry.
Maureen’s part-time calligraphy business took on a life of its own, and she happily exited corporate America to work at home full-time as a calligrapher and engraver while taking care of her two sons, Nathan and Evan (both now Eagle scouts – have to brag).
Before the holidays and other gift-giving times like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, Maureen engraves fragrances, wine, and liquor bottles at various stores throughout the Houston Area.
Corporate clients for Maureen’s hand engraving services include Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Coty, Estee Lauder, Givenchy, and RNDC.
Maureen regularly attends calligraphy workshops and conferences, studying with nationally-and internationally-renowned calligraphy instructors to expand her lettering repetoire, as well as network with other professional calligraphers from around the country. You can find her on Instagram at @pendancestudio, @scriptstylist, and @calligraphycrushmagazine.
Publications
Letter Arts Review featured Maureen’s pointed pen motifs in their Summer 2005 wedding issue. Samples of her calligraphy and engraving were featured in the 2004 issue of Weddings in Houston magazine.
Maureen was also published in Dasherie and UPPERCASE magazines in 2014. Maureen also wrote Etching a Path with Pillar Candles and Painted Glass that was published in the September/October 2002 issue of Expression magazine.
Memberships
- Houston Calligraphy Guild
- IAMPETH (International Association of Master Penman, Engrossers, and Teachers of Handwriting)
- Daughters of the American Revolution
- Alliance of Certified Engravers (ACE)
ACE is a mastermind group of freehand engravers who provide crowd-pleasing engraving events to department stores, specialty gift shops, wineries, country clubs, and corporate clients. In a matter of minutes we can engrave custom names, messages, and monograms on glass and metal gift items, on either flat and curves surfaces. Other ACE Engravers are located in Michigan, California, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Maryland.
10 Things You Might Not Know About Maureen
- I once caught a foul ball during an Astros game. I was so shocked when I saw the ball coming straight at my head! Unfortunately Don and the kids were away getting ice cream and missed the whole thing.
- My dream growing up was to be a portrait painter like John Singer Sargent.
- I play doubles tennis in my neighborhood’s women’s league, affectionately known as “Hit and Giggle” tennis. However, I’m rather quite serious about winning.
- My love language is SERVICE. I would rather that Don weed the flower beds or vacuum the house than buy me a dozen roses.
- I played the clarinet in middle school and the saxophone, oboe, and English horn in high school. Now I’m studying harp. The harp sounds pretty even if I miss a few notes.
- When I was growing up in Bellaire I knew a Chinese man in our neighborhood who was the seventh son of the seventh son. How cool is that?
- I love collecting vintage and antique ink wells. And silver repoussé penholders.
- I’m a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I just recently discovered that I am a descendant of one of the Sons of Liberty who participated in the Boston Tea Party (he was the only one arrested for it but was later released), 11 of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, and one ancestor who was an investor in the Jamestowne colony.
- I own seven books about Elizabeth I, including one that features her italic lettering. Her handwriting became atrocious as she got older.
- If I had time, I would love to make wire jewelry, plant miniature gardens in pretty containers. and learn travel hacking so that I can take a lot of trips on mileage points! I would also like to learn contact juggling like I saw at the Texas Renaissance Festival. And pen spinning.
About Don Vickery
Don received a BBA from the University of Texas in Engineering Management. After graduating, he moved to Houston and worked for several pressure vessel companies, then became the computer technician for a small Japanese engineering company.
Don has always been active in church and sang in the children’s and adult choirs. He and Maureen were invited to join the start-up team for Grace Fellowship UMC in Katy, Texas in 1996. They still attend there, along with their sons Nathan and Evan.
Don has been active in scouting since Nathan joined the Tiger Cubs in the second grade. Don serves as an assistant scout master with Troop 599, and is a certified rappelling instructor with the Boy Scouts of America. Both he and Maureen plan to launch two Eagle Scouts (Nathan and Evan) very soon.
After Hurricane Rita, Don joined the Texas Annual Conference Committee on Relief as a Disaster Emergency Responder. Like Maureen, Don always had an entrepreneurial spirit and dreamed of starting a home business. He joined Maureen at PenDance in 2001 as the computer guru, bookkeeper, hand calligraphy proofreader, and lifter of heavy things.
10 Things You Might Not Know About Don
- I love tiny houses. One day I will design and build my own RV from a Sprinter van.
- I can fall asleep in five minutes or less — anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
- I’m lucky at finding great parking spaces.
- However, when I’m in line at the grocery store it suddenly becomes the SLOWEST line. It’s a running joke in our family.
- I played Snoopy in “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” at Chapelwood UMC when I was in my late twenties.
- I was asked to go to four different senior proms my junior year.
- The odd jobs I had as a teenager included ceiling fan repair, bike repair, vending machine delivery, and selling kitsch stuff at World’s Fare.
- I was bitten by a stingray at Stingray City in the Cayman Islands when we were on our honeymoon.
- My mother’s family can trace its roots back to Lady Godiva, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and William the Conqueror.
- I went backpacking for 6 days across the Continental Divide.
Contact Us!
If you have questions about hand calligraphy or computer printing, please visit our FAQs page and tour our web site and blog.
Then fill out our Contact form to receive a quote on your next calligraphy or printing project!
Out home studio is located in west Houston near I-10 and Kirkwood. Meetings are by appointment.
