creative skills: handwriting

In her last AEzine (#23) Ali Edwards writes about creative skills and concepts and sharing it. What a great idea! She´s right, the Internet allow us to share information (not only with people nearby but with all over the world!) and to learn and to grow and thus maybe help others to grow too. I have to be so much grateful for it and for all that I´ve learned lately... I would like to return it in some way but I consider that I´m still only learning. I´ve been scrapbooking just for 7-8 months so I think it´s not time enough to develop any speciality. I can say more, I´ve been trying and testing everything (scrapbooking related) that I found NEW for me, that means EVERYTHING. Sometimes stamping and embossing, sometimes using chipboard elements or rub-ons, sometimes stitching and other times trying different sizes for my layouts or making minibooks. That is everything but nothing, I haven´t got experience enough! But I´ve been thinking (as Ali recommends) and yes, there is something I´ve been doing for almost my whole life: handwriting. I love handwriting and hand journaling and using it in almost all my projects (as well as I love to see other people´s handwritting). I think "I am good with handwriting". When I have to make a journaling block I usually write the text previously on a piece of paper just to calculate if it will fit more or less in my free space. As I don´t matter if it will be perfect (handwritting is inherently imperfect) I don´t worry about writing lines in order to get it straight (in fact I´m afraid I´m too much confident of my handwriting...).

But there is a kind of handwriting that I really really love. I call it "the art journal handwriting", I have no idea if it has a real name (if someone knows, please, i would love to know it...).

OK, it´s nothing new but this is the way I do it:

1. You can begin drawing a circle or other shape with a template, or you can do it directly onto the page (or card or journal or whatever it be)


2. Then I draw wavy lines randomly


3. I write between each two lines taking care of filling up all the space between them. Sometimes I also make some little drawings, like those flowers over the "i".


4. Eventually I take my watercolor pencils and colored the shape. For blending the colors I like to use a baby wipe (never imagined how many uses they have!) and a cotton stick. This time I´ve used a waterproof ink pen but is usually better to do this step first.
   
5. I have done this example in my sketch book, but you could then cut it, ink the edges and make a nice tag for a layout or you could do it directly on it. Or instead of coloring you can write on a cardstock or plain patterned paper.

I think that the main advantage of this kind of handwriting is that no matter how is yours it always looks nice.

I know it´s no big deal but I hope that sharing this at least encourage you to try it if never did it before.