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.
 

Chic 21st

It's about time I wrote (apologies) and started to catch up with  my cards - I'm really falling behind. 

This one was for my best friend's 21st birthday. She's always a tricky one to make as I never really know what to put on her cards. I always go down the fashion/dresses route. For her 18th I did an Art Deco themed card (which I was particularly pleased with).



So this year, I opted for a stepper card. I drew the design myself and finished the dress with patterned vellum.
The text was a papercutting, originally traced from Word and then cut out in black card. It was extremely fiddly but I love the effect it makes.

Saaaaaayyyyuuuuuul!!!

My dad likes his rugby. I've been to a couple of matches as well. For his birthday, I decided to make him a card in the theme of his team: Sale Sharks. 
It's one of my more simple cards, using a stepper base, I paper cut the Sharks logo from some white card to put on the front. I like the dimension that the stepper card creates, I used this to my advantage with a set of posts and a rugby ball, giving the impression that the ball is about to be kicked half way down the pitch.
I finished is simply with a peel off sentiment.

A Card for a Potterhead

Having just blogged about my hiking birthday card, and my Wicked birthday card for that matter, I realised that I completely forgot to write about my sister's birthday card back in October. To call her a bit of a Potterhead would be the understatement of 2013.

Some of the inspiration for this card came from a small business called Paper Panda who makes the most intricate paper cuttings and I thought I'd give it a go. 
I used a zig-zag card again, with the back of the card a silhouette of Hogwarts. I used my sneaky powers of detection to find out which house she was in and made this the colour scheme of the card, as well as providing the design for the central fold. 
Like with my Wicked card, I was running short of ideas so for the front, along with the sorting hat and a birthday sentiment, I went crazy with a few stars.

My favourite bit is definitely the silhouette. I'm really pleased with it but it was hard going although I can now say that I've done it and I really do know how much work goes into what Paper Panda produces - and mine isn't even anywhere near the scale her work is on! I may do more paper cutting in the future but I definitely think that paper piecing is my thing.