Technique of the Week: Fonts

As someone who is creative, both for work and pleasure, I love looking at fonts and playing around with different typefaces and have plenty of excuses to use them.

I started using fonts when I did calligraphy and this became a foundation for how I use different fonts now, particularly on my greetings cards, although I very rarely use a calligraphy pen and ink these days. 

Whenever I want to add a sentiment to a card, my favourite place to go is Word. As anyone with a computer will know, there is a whole list of fonts ranging from the simple to the cryptic. Essentially, there is a font for every occasion which is why I love it. 

Calligraphy required quite a bit of patience and time: once you've chosen the font and size, the lines need drawing up, I tend to pencil my text out before inking it, then the ink has to dry, then the pencil has to be rubbed out. This system, however time consuming allowed me to create text that was neat and uniform and I used the same system today, even if I don't use the calligraphy pen.

When I use Word for writing sentiments, I find it easiest to actually write out what I want into the document and copy it onto the card, occasionally drawing up some guide lines in pencil first.

I try to match the font to the theme, using more calligraphic ones for serious cards and looser, fun ones for less serious cards.

While I nearly always use a black fine liner pen, I don't necessarily always write the text. For bolder fonts, or in the case where I cut out the text from paper, I sketch out the letters in pencil before going over them in pen or carefully cutting them out.
 

Relocated!

So here I am in Bath!

I managed to bring lots of my stash although I did have to reduce it by quite a lot, the Craft Cube 5000 has remained up north (sad face) but that shall soon be rectified when I find permanent accommodation. 

As I've only been here a couple of days, I'm still settling in and finding my way around the city. I have however already managed to find a craft shop and potentially a couple of places where I can sell my cards so it's all good on the crafty front!

I'm making this a short one as it's now stopped raining and I have a flat to view this afternoon (yay!) so I'm off into the city again.

Technique of the Week: Easel Cards

Last week, I received this card for my graduation. It was made by a family friend but sent from my Nanna. While I’ve seen easel cards several times in magazines and on websites and other blogs, I hadn’t actually come across one in real life. Easel cards never really seemed my kind of style, mainly due to all the borders and peel-offs and all sorts of embellishments and images, while mine tended to use paper piecing technique and a generally simpler design.

It’s not that often that I receive handmade cards so when I do, I like to examine every detail – how did they do that? what paper was used there? I’ve never done it like that before! – and this card was no exception. While I admit, it took me far longer than it should have for me to realise how the card worked (getting it to stand up), I was inspired by the simplicity of the structure and how effective it was. Cards like this are perfect for special occasions (significant birthdays, wedding anniversaries, weddings, graduation, etc.) because they are more than just a card and become a keepsake of sorts.

I decided to have a go at making an easel card and was surprised (although I really shouldn’t have been) at how easy it was to make. I chose to use a card blank that I already had rather than make it from card stock but all I had to do was trim it down to make it into a square blank and fold the front diagonally to make the easel. To make the front of the card, I cut a square of white card to match the size of my easel. The nice thing I found about using a card blank was that it had different colours on each side of the card and by turning the blank inside out, I could have a coloured base.

In honour of the Great British Bake Off starting tomorrow (who else is as excited as I am????), I chose to do a cupcake themed card. The papers were courtesy of Papercraft Inspirations (of course) and fitted my theme perfectly. Another great thing about using card blanks is that they come with matching envelopes, which saves me having to root through my ever growing pile of recycled envelopes trying to find one that is both the right size and colour. Because the card blank has been trimmed, it does leave space in the envelope but this can be taken advantage of by not restricting the design of the card to the dimensions of the front – I added a little tab as a final flourish.

Having seen for myself how simple these cards are to make and having a few more special occasions coming along soon, I will no doubt be giving easel cards another go in the near future.