When I found the planner community on Instagram I was immediately hooked. What really drew me back to using a paper planner was adding stickers, stamps, washi and color ink to make each week beautiful. As the weeks have gone on I have noticed that some ladies have amazing hand writing and lettering skills. It adds so much to their planners that I have decided to improve my handwriting and lettering.

I am ok with my writing as far as actually just writing down my "to do" list and appointments. I don't need my planner to be a work of art in all areas. But, it would be lovely to be able to add some beautiful lettering or doodling (I will cover that another time) to my weekly or monthly spread. I want to fill the empty spaces with something beautiful that I have created, not just beautiful stickers.

So I have been looking around trying to find some ways of improving my hand lettering. As you can imagine there is a lot of options online. Some free, some online classes, and of course youtube. It is really inspiring to look at what people do with pen and paper.

The most important thing is to Practice Practice Practice. I find that anything I have to do with my hands I need to do it enough times so my hands know what to do and my brain can take a step back. That takes a lot of repetition. So you need practice sheets and pens.

llamas Love Lettering has free practice sheets on her site. I print several pages of each exercise at a time. I put them on my clip board and practice while watching television in the evenings. I use the backside for more practice so no paper is wasted.

As you can see there is nothing special going on here and I have a lot more practicing to do. It is very relaxing, yet challenging, at the same time.

I don't have a big pen collection so right now I am making due with what I have. That would be Paper Mate Flair pens. The pink is the medium tip. I also have the fine tip that I use. Sharpie Ultra Fine is another set I have and I fine that is works for me right not. Only the Sharpie does bleed through the paper so I do use the Flair's more often.

Another way I get practice sheets is by printing pages from the internet that I like. I have just typed things up myself and there are also text generators, ( Loren Ipsum and text generator) that will give you a page of text. I copy and past into word and then play around with different fonts and sizes. On the print page I changed the color to a light grey, print it out and then I just write over it. It really helps to get my hand to understand spacing and to get in a rhythm. I think the rhythm is very important. I know that ones knitting becomes very consistent once you have a rhythm going and you are not thinking.

This is a an never ending journey on the internet. I have even found a website through Print Magazine that lead me to old lettering books that have been scanned that you can download and read. But for simplicity sake here is some beginning information to start you off. These websites have been very informational and of course I don't know where we would be without the wonderful videos on youtube.

Here are a few of youtube videos;

Have your paper planners made you want to improve you hand writing? If so what have you been doing to get better?