Tuesday Tute: Lettering Techniques

Hi there - it's Karen here bringing you today's Tuesday Tute: Lettering techniques! This is my first tute, so please, be gentle LOL

As scrappers, we know that journalling and titles can really make a page, so our alpha stash can be huge - there’s so much variety to choose from . A few examples are:
Thickers – these come in variety of colors and ‘textures’ including puffy vinyl, foam & chipboard.
Tim Holtz Grungeboard – love this stuff! Flexible and if you ink in a color and decide it’s not quite right, simply run it under cold water and dry and start again!
Stickers – endless variety, so many different brands and styles. At the moment one of my favourites are ‘Adornit’ by Carolee Creations. Big color variety and the best part is they only cost $2 here in Australia!
Rubons – again an endless variety available. Many different brands that offer abc/123 basic fonts, coloured fonts, prints, words, pictures.
Chipboard – again endless variety, you can get premade words, titles, shapes, almost any type of theme. Some are plain, some are printed, colored, patterned, etc.
Sizzix & Cricut – A huge variety of Sizzix and sizzlit alphas to choose from, also Cricut cartridges provide a great range of choices. They can be quite expensive to purchase but if you already have some, mix and match the fonts in your title for a great effect.

Tip - By using different lettering fonts and styles, in different materials, you can create a unique look on your page. Mix and match different alphas in different fonts, brands, colors to give your layout a wonderful title and focus point.

Use chipboard for one word, thickers for another word and stickers for the rest, so many combinations, you’re going to end up with a different look every time.


Combine thickers and stickers:




Tip - Some abc lettering stickers are quite small, ie. ‘Adornit’ by Carolee Creations range, as mentioned above. Sometimes I do find them rather small when I want them to stand out more. A great tip to make them ‘pop’ on your page is to matt them on plain white cardstock, using a small square punch. You can get these great little punches from spotlight for around $2-$3. Once you matt the sticker on the square it automatically looks ‘bigger’. For an added effect you can outline the white cardstock with a cloured pen!

Tip - With a lot of lettering, if you run out of a particular letter, you can substitute with another similar and either turn it upside down, or make a little snip somewhere and you have what you need. Sometimes it’s not always that affordable or accessible to go out and buy another packet of lettering because your missing one letter!
Tip - Recolor your existing letters using inks to get the right color or change the look. I often use Dew Drop inks, they have a huge color range and are very easy to use. Add some color ink to your Tim Holtz Grungeboard and any chipboard. But you can also take it further and experiment with other alphas like Thickers. There is a huge selection of foam Thickers that are already coloured, but sometimes you may not have the ‘right’ color for your layout, grab your inks and change the color to suit your layout! Chipboard is great for creatign a title that matches your page - cover it in paper or ink it to suit your needs!There are so many endless possibilities and you don’t always need to have a lot of abc’s in your stash.

Recoloured Grungeboard

Inked & glossed chipboard


Tip - use a different type of font within a word, if you’re using thickers in a certain color and you have run out of a letter to use for that word, maybe use a different color or different type of lettering, ie sticker abc! This adds some interest to the page as well as giving you a pretty funky looking title!

Have fun with lettering, use them as another element to your page and really make your titles ‘POP’!!!!

Thanks for joining me for todays tutorial - Karen x