Handlettered Alphabet

Handlettered ABCs

Well, time just got away from me today and by the time I had a chance to take a photo of the yarn I’m using for my scarf, the light wasn’t any good. So that will have to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m just sharing today’s photo from the extended #handletteredABCs challenge on IG — writing the entire alphabet. This was probably my fourth or fifth attempt, and right around the letter “v” I realized that my dinner was starting to burn. That explains the funky-looking w, x, y, and z!

Still, any practice is good practice, and a blog post is still a blog post, right? I just wanted to keep my word.

For now, I’m calling it a night. I have tea and a donut and my cozy bed calling my name! Crochet stuff tomorrow, I promise!

Taking a Break

 We love tea.

No, no! Not from the blog, don’t worry. It’s just that I have been going all day so I decided to take a break and check in on blogs, Facebook, etc. and pop in and update here since it’s been a while. I’ve been keeping up with my #HandletteredABCs over in IG, but I probably won’t get to post them here today. But here’s one of this week’s letters.

 

A photo posted by Carol Bancroft (@carolwrites) on

Honestly, I’m just wiped out! I’ve been cooking, cleaning, doing laundry… Drew and I brought in wood for the wood stove stove and stacked it. I poached chicken, made peppermint brownies, made turkey tacos for lunch, then cleaned up all the dishes from that. Might not seem like much but as many of you know, all those little things add up.

Finally, I’ve decided it to call it quits for the day. I made a fire, made a cup of tea, and that’s about it! Let’s see… what else has been going on? Drew was in Boston for work this week, and I admit I was a little jealous. It was funny — he texted me that he drove through the same intersection we went through all the time when we were dating and he’d drive me home from his apartment in Framingham to mine in Somerville. A lot of stuff has changed; it’s been almost 18 years, after all!

So, he got home around lunchtime on Friday and then Friday night was Cub Scouts. Aside from Blue & Gold Banquet in a couple weeks, it was the last pack meeting we will ever have to do. While we have certainly enjoyed our time as Cub Scout leadership, I have to say that I’m ready for it to be over and let someone else take the reins. Noah will be bridging over to Boy Scouts, and we will be taking a back seat. Drew is still very involved because he has a lot of fun, but it will be nice to relinquish the responsibility, you know?

On a completely different note, I’ve been having fun playing around with the Silhouette Cameo I got for Christmas. I am still learning, and there’s a lot of trial and error, but I’m figuring things out. I bought some vinyl the other day, so I am looking forward to making a custom travel mug for myself. The hardest part is deciding on a design! Mostly, I’ve just been making stickers for my planner. It is really cool to have the machine make the detailed cuts. Using an X-acto knife or small scissors is so much work. This speeds things up considerably!

A photo posted by Carol Bancroft (@carolwrites) on

And while I haven’t actually done any crochet, I’ve been organizing my yarn and patterns with the intention of getting back into so projects this week. I bought a lidded basket to keep my current project stashed away, safe from playful cats. And I’ve been putting my patterns into a binder so they’re all in one place. 

Well, I guess that’s about all for today! Hope you are having a great weekend!

Handlettered ABCs 2016 – Week 1

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I’m not sure if I talked about it on the blog, but last summer I decided to really start putting in the effort to learn Copperplate calligraphy. I have long been interested in calligraphy, going back to high school. I’d purchase those markers with the angled nibs and my writing would look OK, but it was never quite what I wanted.

When my dad was young, he also had an interested in calligraphy — but the gothic and illustrated letter styles. Here’s an example of his work:

 

A photo posted by Carol Bancroft (@carolwrites) on

Gorgeous, right? But what I fell in love with was elegant, flowing, feminine script. I thought I wanted to try my hand at the Modern Calligrapahy style. You are all familar with it, I’m sure — it’s really popular right now. But I found that I just couldn’t relax my hand enough. Instead of looking casual, my letters looked forced and awkward.

After months of browsing the Internet, looking at handlettering examples, I finally found what I was looking for: Copperplate (also called Roundhand or Engrosser’s Script). It’s very old-fashioned looking, and there are specific ways to form the letters. In a way, it’s really more like drawing letters, not writing them.

I found that Instagram has a fantastic and supportive community of calligraphers! And just about the time I was really to give it my all, there was a Handlettered ABC challenge starting up. Every day was dedicated to one letter, in whatever style you like. Perfect! It was a great way to get excited about script.

Flash forward to the fall. With school starting and all the kids activities, I just couldn’t get it together and my lettering practice fell by the wayside. So one of my goals for 2016 is to work on improving my skills and hopefully be able to address next year’s Christmas cards in Copperplate script. Well, wouldn’t you know it — a reboot of the Handwriting ABCs challenge started as well! So this time I thought I’d start sharing my journey in learning this amazing style of handwriting. I have so much to learn, and so much to improve on, but you know what? I have been keeping all of my practice sheets in a binder and seeing how much I have already improved encourages me to keep going.

So here are the letters from week 1! First up, obviously, is A. I wrote two examples — the first is brush calligraphy using a Zig Millenium brush marker (from my scrapbooking days about 12 years ago!), and the second is Copperplate.

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For the letter B I pulled out one of my sheets from the last challenge in July to compare and contrast.

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C gives me trouble. I never think the majiscule (capital) looks right.

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D is also a challenge. The majiscule is one stroke. I need a lot of work here.

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E is fun and loopy.

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F can be tough, but it’s so fun to write out that I don’t mind doing it over and over. 

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And that brings us to today’s letter: G. I was really happy with this example, even if the lowercase isn’t quite right. The descending loop is cutting into the oval. But I was just so darn proud of that squared off top that I used it anyway!

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I think one of the reasons I just love this style is because it forces you to slow down. If you zip through the strokes, you’re going to get messy, inconsistent letters. You have to take your time and really pay attention to what you’re doing.

If you’re interested in getting started, I highly recommend following @anintran and @masgrimes on both Instagram and Periscope. I have learned so much from them! Next week I’ll put up another post with some of my favorite resources, including the tools that I personally use. The greatest thing about calligraphy is that anyone can do it! It’s all about practice! Trust me, if I can do it, so can you!