JMJ Lettering

Hi i have no chill so here’s just a full picture for my grid 😅😂💙

If you know someone in the Baltimore area who needs some handlettering, I’d love to work together!

One of my newest creations is a logo for my Substack! The picture is my favorite part, even above the lettering—I opened up and had a photo shoot with four beautiful books that share something about me.

The upper left corner is The Life You Save Might Be Your Own by Paul Elie, a thrifted (with ) copy of a spiritual reflection on Flannery O’Connor (he takes the name from one of her short stories), Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day. Next to it I placed a copy of the Norton Anthology of Women’s Literature that I picked up at a used bookstore some time ago (to look pretty on my shelf, ngl).

The lower right hand is one of my and my mom’s favorite books, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which she bought for me and I devoured my freshman year of highschool. This copy, though, is a hardback I thrifted and was part of the centerpiece at my mom’s table at my wedding.

The bottom left book is probably the most precious of all: my great-grandmother’s copy of Chesapeake by James A. Michener given to me by my aunt.

Both as nostalgic items and reading escapes, I just really, really love these books! And the picture is beautiful—even with my future home office’s bare subfloor and the not-pictured balled up old carpet in the corner of the room 😅

The Bookish & Distracted Catholic (which is conveniently my initials, if you keep Dakota/Durbin and bold the T in Catholic 😂) is random musings exploring the ways that literature and ADHD life can give insight to the Catholic faith. Any post is about one, two, or all three of those topics, my most recent being just a love letter to libraries 📚📖

I’ve got the link in my bio if you’d like to follow along! Posts were previously kind of sparse and dependent on school breaks, but I hope to be posting somewhere around once a week moving forward.

Today I attended my first-ever Maker’s Market!! It was so awesome to sell some of my work, meet other alumnae vendors, and enjoy a beautiful day at Mount de Sales 💙

Very grateful for for hosting this event and even more grateful to my husband for his encouragement and support (swipe to see him trying to protect his incredibly sunburnt neck 😂😅👨🏻‍🦰)