March 3 - March 5, 2017

By Anne - March 06, 2017

I have a lot to catch up on with this post, because while I haven't been posting, I was lettering like mad over the weekend.

I told you last time that I joined two Instagram lettering challenges, which was pretty dumb on my part because I'm already behind on my entire life, so adding new tasks to the mix is always a poor decision on my part. So of course I allowed myself to get several days behind, and was rushing to catch up over the weekend.

The first two I did on March 4th for the #letteringwithsuzy challenge.

Meh

I wasn't happy with either of them, though John liked my Espresso bookmark.

double Meh

I was struggling with letter shapes and forms, consistency, angle, spacing, or in other words, just about everything. I uploaded them anyway, because at least I was showing up to the game, even if I was in last place. We all have to start somewhere...

Friday night John and I went shopping at Target, because in the last few months all of my clothing has expanded and hangs like a tent on me. I always check out the dollar section at Target, and I found this little gem in one of the $3 bins. The paper has a nice smooth texture, and so far it hasn't frayed my brush pens, and it's the perfect size for my challenge words.

I don't know about you, but staring at a full sized piece of paper intimidates me. How big should I make my letters? Where should I put my word? There are just too many factors that freak me out. I was using scraps of cardstock from my stamping days, but their irregular shapes pose a different problem, and the texture isn't always nice to my markers. So this notebook eases some of the anxiety I get when I'm staring at a blank page. It also allows me to keep everything together, so I can easily see the progress I'm making (some of which you're going to see farther down the page).

Forgive the puppy drool

Next I needed to start catching up on the #marchintolettering challenge.

It was about this time that I started to realize the scope of my disadvantage in the challenges. Because I don't know how to actually form any of these letters properly, since I'm still working on my drills and haven't progressed to actual letters. So I had been looking up ways to write the words, and trying to figure out how to form the letters and fit them together.

When I finally got a word drawn that I liked, I made sure to snap a picture before I embellished it at all, because if I ruined it with my doodles, It would be really difficult to write it again.

Final entry - Not horrible

I was going to letter some more Saturday night, but then this happened.

Sunday morning the #ShowMeYourLetters uppercase book came out and went on sale for 24 hours. I purchased both that book, and the one for lowercase letters (which is the one I need next). Now I still have a week of drills to do, but I was able to use the book as a reference for how the letters should be constructed.

After I bought the books, things started to get much, much better.

Well, not here, my second oval got away from me.

That got me caught up with the #marchintolettering challenge. Now I just have to stay caught up.

I still had two more entries for the coffee themed #letteringwithsuzy challenge, and then I was golden. My next word for that challenge was Affogato, which I had to look up because I didn't know what it was.