Fontalicious Part 2: Practice vs. Theory
On the Fontalicious post many of you brought up VERY important points so I decided to put the fonts into practice. I printed out the fonts on our test cardstock – which is actually several shades lighter than the actual envelopes (oops) and traced over each of the fonts.
As you probably know, writing with a manuscript/calligraphy pen is different than a normal pen. Which means that it took me a spot of time to get used to writing with it. But once I came into the swing of it, I started to have fun! Creating the thicker/thinner lines, the flourish of the scroll – all those things were fun. What wasn’t so much fun? Figuring just how much ink I should have on my pen at any given time. This is why a few of the lowercase “e’s” just look like blobs. LESS IS MORE! LESS IS MORE!
I kept having flashbacks to bottle cutting where my haste (seriously) made waste. I however, do not have an endless supply of envelopes like I do wine bottles so I need to learn patience with this project. Or I could hire a nun to rap me on the knuckles when I get ahead of myself. Either one.
On to the Font Tracing Superlatives:
Adine Kirnberg – Most likely to encourage me to stab the nearest object with a calligraphy pen
As someone who has large, flourishy, style of handwriting Adine Kirnbirg was killing me. Tracing that font is like having to fit my 10 letter first name in a standardized form box made for 7 letter first names, I hated every second of it. Most of the fonts I went over twice to make the writing bolder but this one I just didn’t bother with.
Chopin – most illegible – from my hand. Jen’s look nice…mine? not.so.much.
This is where the LESS IS MORE lesson comes in handy.
Ecolier -The sleeper – seemed so simple yet was so irritating to trace
Ecolier was also on the cramped side, though I wouldn’t have guessed it by looking at it. The f’s and g’s were fun, but I was mostly bored by the time I hit the street address.
Snell Roundhand and Edwardian Script – a tie for most fun to trace once or twice.
They both had lovely flourishes and while I was a fan of the Edwardian Script Mr.D was decidedly not. Not to mention he hated the line spacing for Snell Roundhand. Although I enjoyed tracing these fonts, I doubt I would enjoy them by the 20th envelope.
As for the most popular fonts – English and Savoey? They’re both winners!
I’m awful at making decisions (in case you hadn’t noticed) which is why instead of forcing myself to choose one font I just went with both. UK invites will receive invites addressed in Savoye with clear postcodes and gold (smudgeproof/waterprooft) ink.
While US invites will be addressed using the English font with white ink and non-abbreviated States.
Have no worries hive, these are only trial runs! I’ll be doing quite a bit more practice (while mentally screaming LESS IS MORE!) before I take my pen to the real envelopes.
Have you tried “trial runs” for your DIY projects or did you just jump in?
