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The Postman's Knock

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The Beginner’s Guide to Modern Calligraphy Part II

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The Beginner's Guide to Modern Calligraphy Part II | The Postman's Knock

After I wrote The Beginner’s Guide to Modern Calligraphy, I received some questions via email and comments that led me to believe a follow-up post would be helpful. Let me begin by saying that if you’re completely new to calligraphy, I wouldn’t invest in a dip pen just yet. Instead, you might consider building up muscle memory with a regular pen and a faux calligraphy technique. Not only will your hands become accustomed to forming letters without hesitation/trepidation, but you will also gain an understanding of upstrokes and downstrokes.
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How to Use an Oblique Calligraphy Pen

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How to Use an Oblique Calligraphy Pen | The Postman's Knock

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s summer — and wedding and events season! With party season comes invitations, and with invitations comes invitation calligraphy.

It’s always been my philosophy that the envelope builds up anticipation for whatever is inside of the envelope. If the envelope is super-cool, just imagine what’s inside! Before I started selling calligraphy, I would look on Etsy and salivate at the amazing wedding calligraphy on the site. For months, I wondered, “HOW do they do that??” {as I used my cheating calligraphy method in the meantime}.
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Making My Handwriting Into a Font

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For a while now, my other half (an efficiency-obsessed engineering PhD student) has been scheming about ways to “mass produce” my talents. “I’ve got it!” he said one day, “We should make your handwriting into a font!”

I flinched and explained that a lot of the reason that people have me write out custom calligraphy is because people love having hand-written quotes, envelopes, etc. “Ah-ha, but how would they know?” he countered. Well … part of the charm of calligraphy is the fact that it isn’t consistent. I always look for consistency if I am unsure whether someone actually wrote something out or “cheated”. You can identify a letter, then look at the subsequent letters to see if they are a little bit different from the letter you picked out.

Despite the fact that I am always 100% for writing things out rather than typing them out, I must admit I was intrigued by a post on Craftgawker promising that I could make handwriting into a font for free without fancy software or headache. It’s called [MyScriptFont.com]. All you do is print out a template, fill it out, scan it back in, and upload it to the website. The site then converts your work into a vector font.

Font Creation in Progress
Lindsey Font Letters and Characters

There’s the handwriting into a font that I created. Based on what I’d written on the template, I thought it was going to be truly amazing. A ground-breaking, game-changing font, if you will. But, that’s not what I ended up with. What I did get was a bunch of disjointed letters that end up coming together to look whimsical and unique. Will I use this font much? Well, probably not. However, what I do like about it is I never can find numbers that suit my taste. This font solves my problem in that I created my own. I also love the hand-written quality of the special characters.
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