DIY Easy Hand Lettering

Trendy hand lettering is so popular these days and it looks so nice! You see it on the chalkboards at fancy coffee shops, or maybe even on your packaging when you order something from Etsy. How do these people do it? True, most of them are EXTREMELY artistically talented. But for those of us that don’t have a steady hand for those beautiful swooping strokes and glyphs­–I have a solution.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

• A computer with Internet Connection & Photoshop, PowerPoint, other desktop publishing program or Word*I used Adobe Photoshop to create my lettering, but I know that you can do similar techniques in PowerPoint!
• A printer you can print to
• Tracing Paper
• A #2 Pencil
• Nice paper, wrapping paper, envelope, etc.
• A sharpie
• Acrylic paint of your choice

First you’ll need to pick out some fun fonts. Here are a few of my favorites and fonts you have seen regularly in popular product ads, restaurants, your favorite stores, etc. The following fonts are safe to download onto your computer and install in your font book.

SCRIPT:
Mission Script
Lavanderia
Leckerli One
Channel
Big Surprise
Wisdom Script
Impregnable

SAN-SERIF:
Blanch
Arvil
Bebas
For more fonts, try dafont.com.

Pick ONE script font and ONE san-serif font and only use those two. Too many fonts in one piece will look messy. Open up either PowerPoint or Paint and arrange your words the way you’d like them to be on your final piece.

Make all of your text BLACK.

Once you are done, select every text box and FLIP horizontally, so that the words are backwards.
When you’ve arranged everything and flipped your text, PRINT!

Then, get your tracing paper and place it on top of your print out. Use your sharp #2 pencil to trace the lines of the font. Make sure your lines are VERY DARK.

When you’ve finished tracing, it’s time to transfer the trace to your final piece. Get your paper that you’d like to have your final words on and place it under the tracing paper you just used. Make sure that the tracing paper is flipped over so that the words facing you are not flipped any more, but are readable.

Then get a pen edge or something small and hard to go over the lines you just traced. You want to trace the lines just as you did before. Don’t scribble over the top of the entire thing you traced, but purposefully trace each line so that the transfer will turn out correctly.

Once you’re done, you can lift up your tracing paper and see your fancy text! You’re almost there!
Lastly, get your sharpie and color in what you’ve traced so that your font will look solid. For extra flair, I added a shadow to my words using bright acrylic paint and small paintbrush.

Let dry, take a breather from all that sharpie smell and then admire your work!

As featured on Biblical Woman.