HAND-DRAWN AND HAND-CUT TITLES

Hi….Giovanna here!!

As a teenager in the 1980’s, I remember buying a Lettering Book from Book Club and spending many nights tracing and perfecting every conceivable font in that book. I used it to hand decorate and colour headings and titles for every single assignment at school.

Before the age of Personal Computers, this is how things were done!!! (Gen-Yers must be mortified right now LOL)

So, if you remember grabbing the Nikko pen and scribbling graffiti on your yellow canvas backpack or on the back of vinyl bus seats (*gasp* not me!!)…then you’ll love this month’s technique challenge!!

For those less-excited about what I’m challenging you to do……follow these 2 novice-proof tutes for really individual lettering on your projects.

USING MANUFACTURED LETTERING

(I’ve used Kaisercraft’s wooden lower case letters for this example. I haven’t been paid for this endorsement LOL I wish!!)

Place your chosen letters on paper (I prefer patterned paper scraps) quite far apart and quickly trace around them with a lead pencil.

Remove the wooden letters and cut loose with free-hand tracing to inject some of your personality and style onto them and let the subject of your layout determine the type of font it will become.

When you’re happy with the pencil adaptation, use a water-resistant pen (I used a Sharpie in this example) to do the final outline.

Erase the pencil lines and you’re ready to decorate/colour further, or coat with Dimensional Magic for your layout.

 

USING YOUR OWN HANDWRITING

This allows you to adapt your own handwriting and turn it into a block style.

Begin by writing the letters spaced apart and outlining or enclosing the line as shown.

Outline the letters in black pen.

I was unhappy with my “O” so repeated the process until I was satisfied.

Decorate and colour as you wish. Here I used watercolour pencils.

The beauty with this technique is that you can resize the letters to suit your own design and use any paper you wish.

Here is a heading using only white cardstock and outlined lightly in pencils.

And another…..

Comments

[Bleubeard and Elizabeth]

Wish I had some of those wooden letters. They are pretty awesome and would make this a doable project for me. I love this technique, even though I'm not a doodler. Great tutorial and layouts too, Gigi.

[Nicolee]

I could've sworn that was me typing that first paragraph there Gigi! ;) That was me exactly too! Loved those lettering books.....would tuck myself away in my own lil world and draw letters galore!!!! LUV ur examples! they rock!