Just Start Hand Lettering (and a little trick to make it SUPER EASY!)

Hand lettering is everywhere these days and it can be a little stressful for people like me who consider themselves to be crafty but do not have an ounce of artistic ability.  Seriously, if I don’t have a stencil I cannot draw, paint, write, etc.  I don’t ever trust myself to keep it from looking like my six year old scribbled all over it.  If I’m honest, she draws much better than I do anyway!  So you can imagine how life changing it was for me to find a little trick that makes hand lettering so ridiculously easy that even I can do it.  And I want to share it with you so you can just start hand lettering too!

Pen choice is important when it comes to hand lettering.  There are tons of beautiful calligraphy pens available, but I prefer to use the Sharpie pens.  There are lots of colors to choose from and they glide very nicely over the paper.  Ballpoint pens are hard to use as they don’t saturate the paper as much.  Also, be sure to use thicker paper as well.  I picked up this artist sketch pad at Walmart for a couple of dollars.

Start by writing your word in cursive, leaving a bit more space between the letters than you might normally.  Now look at the word and identify where the downstrokes are, or wherever you would have been pulling the pen down toward you.  Sometimes I put the cap on my pen and “air write” over my word if I need a reminder of where my downstrokes are.

Once you have established where the downstrokes are, you are going to thicken that line by drawing another line, coming from the top of the downstroke area and reattaching at the bottom of the downstroke.  Like so:

After you have the line thickened, just fill it in with your pen and voila!  Hand lettering that looks gorgeous with little effort.

Of course there are a million ways to hand letter and this is probably the easiest of them all, but I love that I can feel confident to create my own hand lettered works of art with this little trick!  I love to practice and just doodle.  I keep my pens and pad handy while I am on the phone or waiting in line to pick my kids up from school.