Welcome to my creative online journal

Monday 14 January 2013

Love Your Handwriting by Heidi Swapp

I am still actively creating as part of the Creative Jump Start Course and today's activity will follow after I show you what else I've been doing today.

One of my creative loves in life is doing lettering, calligraphy and fun styles of writing and so this year I decided that I was going to do more of it which is why I purchased from America, this book of Heidi Swapps called 'Love Your Handwriting'.  I got it from Abe Books for something like £5 including postage so was delighted when I got it to see how good it was.  I've always loved the way Heidi Swapp writes and was interested to know something about her style.

The book came as a set with a step-by-step guide, a workbook, a ruler, Zig Millenium Pen, a technical pencil and a rubber.    I've decided I may as well just work through all the exercises as they are pretty short and this was my exercise 3:

Writing in different sizes, different styles, with different pens.

The book I've been refering to is this one:
which may be a few years old (?) but it had an original price of $29.95 so I was dead chuffed. 

I know I don't need to learn how to letter really, but its such fun and I really enjoyed doing the exercises shown above. 

Onto the Creative Jumpstart course and I am having to miss the odd lesson out as I don't have all the materials but it's not a problem, there are enough I can do.

This one was another of Natalie Kalbach's. 

It was to make a fun journal background.  We gessoed our page up first, then put down a first colour of paint.  In my case it was red.  We then splashed water on the paper and dried the paint around the wet dots.  Next we dried the wet splashy bits off with a paper towel and where the wet drips had been, it remained white:

Then we painted a layer of blue on top and splashed that.  We dried it off like before, as in the paint around the wet drips was dried with a heat gun.

After towel drying, you get spots from both layers coming through and in some cases, where the drips overlapped the previous ones, you got white too:
I have always loved the effect of glaze pens on dark paper so decided to write some journalling about today's weather with a few of my neon Sakura glaze pens:
.. and today was a perfect day for staying indoors and crafting!

Thanks for looking and for any comments,
Nicky

4 comments:

Carmen said...

Ooh that book looks really good.

Really love that effect on your journal page :-)

Melanie Marshall said...

The book is from about.. 2007! I remember it! You've found a total gem there - handwriting never goes out of fashion and it's something I covet - especially Heidi Swapp and Ali Edwards!

(This peaked my curiosity, just checked and it's 2005!! Wowza, i'm getting old!)

I trully thought you'd just printed out some fonts - I can't believe that's your handwriting!! My gosh, when will your talent end?!

The new painting is my favourite. I have this silly love for rain and it makes me feel the same, calming, happiness as peering out of the rain-dotted windows on a grey day, listening to the tranquil patterings. I don't know how you managed to make it look like rain without just looking like a load of paint blobs - it's really quite beautiful!

Melanie Marshall said...

OK I was too excited to comment to read it all before, now I have I need to get me some neon pens and try this whole shindig out!! I was wrong, it reminds me of looking out at the lights through the rain covered car window whilst being driven home.

Can you tell I love it?!!!

Patent box girlie said...

Got to try this neon-pen-paint-splashing-towel-drying thing ASAP. And you've also inspired me to make my handwriting slightly prettier than it currently is!

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