Melissa Esplin has loved hand-lettering since she was very young. She practiced calligraphy for the first time in 1997 in a junior high art class, started a stationery business at 15 and from there her passion for design and letters has only grown. Melissa earned a BFA in Painting & Drawing at Brigham Young University with an unofficial “minor” in graphic design. She started blogging in 2007, and rediscovered her love for calligraphy. She's been teaching calligraphy since 2010 and online since 2012. In the years she's taught calligraphy online, she's been fortunate to take a front seat in many artists' beginnings and see the love for letters develop first-hand.
Melissa prioritizes encouraging creativity with letterforms while still maintaining a connection to traditional calligraphy theory. She believes that we all need to express creativity and that calligraphy is a wonderful and peaceful outlet for both left- and right-brained people.

Melissa started out self-taught (it was bad) but has since taken classes from Jake Weidmann, Kathy Milici, Christopher Haanes, Julian Waters and Michael Sull to name a few. She’s been a member of IAMPETH since 2013. The learning never stops!

Melissa loves cooking, sewing, photography, biking, calligraphy, design, art, mothering and watching embarrassing amounts of mediocre TV. She struggles with laundry and managing realistic expectations and loves to journal it all by combining calligraphy and illustration on each layout.