Learning the art of hand lettering

A new obsession of mine is hand lettering. I have been inspired since joining the online Filofax community and seeing posts of beautifully decorated planner pages with gorgeous styles of writing. Particular inspirations of mine on Instagram are kikkiknetter and craftyniftydoer. They post photos of their planner pages and the writing on them looks amazing. I can only dream of being half as good as them one day. 

Instagram @craftyniftydoer

For other hopefull beginners out there I thought I'd share the first part of my journey with you. I started off with the best free teaching resource - Youtube. It seems like the starting point for me needed to be learning how to write cursively. At school I was taught how to write "joined-up", but over the years my hand-writing has evolved into a semi-joined-up scrawl. I watched a few videos showing how to do the alphabet cursively, and although each had a slightly different slant on doing things, they all had similarities. By watching a variety of these videos, notepad and pen in hand and practising along with them, I started to get the feel of cursive handwriting. My absolute favourite channel for practising is Loops and Tails which has a minute long video on each letter (upper and lower case). On their website, they also have free printable worksheets and exercise drills you can work through.

Tip: I can't remember where I saw this, but someone said if you want to make your writing look more like you've used a calligraphy pen, thicken up the downward strokes. I have been working on this technique and I quite like it. 

I also stumbled across a video on accenting, which talks you through different ways to frame, boarder and accent your hand-writing. I copied all of these out into my notepad too. I find it really handy to have a record of everything I see in my notepad so I can look back on it and use it. Saves trying to hunt down the specific videos. 

This is pretty much where I am up to right now. I keep practising my crusive lettering, the more I do it, I hope the more smooth it will look. At the moment I am having to think about it and therefore write it slowly which means it can look quite shaky. Once I have mastered this, I will start looking at other fonts and different styles of writing to learn.

I'm writing out people's names, phrases, random words that come into my head, anyting to practise really. A little untidy, but something I worked on today...

Part of my problem above with the untidyness is probably the black pen I used. It is a Uniball signo gelstick 0.7 that I had laying around at home. It's quite nice to write with, but not so good for thickening the letters as the nib is not precise enough.

One day, maybe my planner will look like a work of art. I can dream.

Week 10 manicure challenge

I bought some nail art from ASOS for £1.20 last week, what an absolute bargain. 

Here is my experimental spring look for the week...

The nail art didn't last great, but then I put it on a bit rushed. Also I didn't bother with a top coat for it to stick to.

It was fun to use though. Watch out for more in the future.

By the way, I also wanted to share ASOS' poor judgement on what size packaging is suitable.. :)

Metallic Sharpie nail art

Each year, a couple of months before my birthday I start making a list of things I'm lusting after. Then when my family ask what I want, I send them the list.

This year, one if the things was the set of three Sharpie metallic markers. But I didn't want these for writing with, no, these were for nail art!

You can paint your nails, let it dry then use the Sharpies to draw intricate designs on your nails. Final step is to cover your art work with a top coat, then you have the finished decorated nails.

I still need to master the top coat as I have smudged it a bit by going over it too much. Really you need to try and do the top coat in one stroke. But with a bit of practice I know I'll get there.