How and Why I Got Started Hand Lettering

I grew up as a pretty smart kid. I loved reading and writing, did great with math, enjoyed science, one of my only flaws? I had terrible handwriting.

Realistically my writing probably wasn’t any worse than your average elementary school kid, but I had one differentiating factor: my mother was an elementary school teacher. What did that mean? She had that perfect, teacher typewriter handwriting that could’ve been put into a textbook. So from an early age I knew my writing was subpar.

Hence I promised myself that one day I’d have beautiful writing.

And I kept that promise too. It only took me about 20 years to get around to doing it.

It was Instagram that got me into it. Around 2014 it was the beginning of the hand lettering craze, and I decided it was my time to improve my writing.

I started slow, practicing on a notepad with my kids crayola markers at night when they were sleeping. Barely grasping the concepts of upstrokes and downstrokes and scouring the limited youtube videos available at that time about handlettering.
Fast forward a few months later and it was beginning to look like I was a calligraphy pen dealer with the number of different nibs and inks I had acquired. I was addicted.

Then a year later I bought my iPad Pro, the second edition. And I have never looked back since.

And despite all the likes and comments and followers I’ve acquired over the years, I think my proudest moments are the times my mom emphatically tells me how beautiful my hand writing is. 🙌🏻

How about you? Tell me your lettering journey!!