it’s my turn for the technique today!

some of you might have noticed i use a LOT of handwritten journaling on my pages. and not only handwritten journaling, but i also LOVE to create handwritten titles. so it is about time to show the trick, there is really nothing to it. really. believe me, once you’ve tried it, you will thank me. ha. or not.

OK, let’s go:

here’s the easy part. get these materials ready. some left over white cardstock, pencil, pens, scissors, eraser, ink.

write your title with a pencil. i just try to write ‘italic’ and really do not mind if the letters are straight / even or not. just go with the flow and write in ONE time.

sometimes i use just one word as a part of my title, sometimes i write it completely by hand. if you look at it now it looks crooked and sooo out of line. just hang in there. it’ll all be okay

after you write your title, outline it. just put some ’shadows’ here and there. i don’t know any rules. i just create extra lines.

after you draw the extra lines, color it in, still with the pencil. so you create the shadows.

when you are happy with how it looks, than color it in with a (black) marker.

after i colored all the letters in, it looks like this. still looks kinda crooked right? use your eraser to erase all the pencil lines still visible, and the stains (i always have stains…)

than cut it out. leave a little bit of a white margin around the letters and just cut around them following the lines of the letters.

after you’ve cut the word out, you’ll have this. looks so much better to me than the 2 pics above.

next:ink the edges with a contrasting color, put on some glue dots beneath to let your title pop up and create a page, like this one:

(background is fabric)

of course you can use this technique to create titles, but also subtitles, or part of titles. some examples…

created with the November 2008 kit

on the front of this mini-album i used it as a part of the title (uhm. strange title? yes, it was a mini about my almost 2 year old boy Ruben having heavy diarrhea for 3!!! weeks…)

created with the April 2009 kit

here i used it not as part of the title, but just to mention her name on my layout.

created with the April 2009 kit

and sometimes the letters i want to use as a title are too large, or the word is too long. than it comes in handy, cause you can create any size you want!

so, what are you waiting for? embrace your inner Heidi Swapp (who started my love for handwriting by the way) and get going!

life is good

rev