The First Steps of Hand-Lettering class on Skillshare

I've recently been having a blast with a class I'm taking on Skillshare. It's on hand-lettering and is taught by the lovely Mary Kate McDevitt. It's brilliant, y'all! Lots of videos and great information start you off, you can go at your own pace, you can upload images for other students to critique, and you will always have access to the class material. Wonderful. I've always loved hand-lettering and have wanted to incorporate more of it into my graphic design. This class shows how preparation and practice really do make for a better finished design.

For the class you had to choose a favorite quote to letter. The top image is my current progress on the project. I think it's coming right along. I will make an inked copy for the final, then, there is a 2nd class on The Final Steps of Hand-Lettering where you learn to digitize and colorize your project. I'm really looking forward to learning more tips on scanning in hand-drawn items to Illustrator.

Here are some images of my beginning sketches and preparations for this project:

If you have any interest in hand-lettering, I highly recommend the class. If you click through my blog post, I think we both save some $ :) Enjoy and please let me know if you take the class!

create your own font

Good morning! I wanted to share a fun new activity I've been a little obsessed with the last few days. I saw Elsie's post, over on A Beautiful Mess, about an iPad app that allows you to create your own font. I tried it out and have been having a blast! I wanted to share it with you. The app is called iFontMaker. 

You can easily create fonts with your finger, but Elsie suggests using the Bamboo stylus for iPad so, being the designer I am,  of course I had to order one and try it out. If you really get into this I definitely suggest the stylus. It makes things much easier to control. The fonts only take about 30 minutes or so to create, maybe even less. That's what's so nice about this app is that they make it super easy. When finished, you publish a .ttf file that is easily imported into your fonts on your computer. 

Here I added some text to a picture of my sweet sleeping pup. This font I created is called Quirly. 

And here is an example of a photo of mine using one of Elsie's fonts she shared on her site. 

Lastly, here is a photo that I added text to with just my Bamboo stylus and tablet, done in Photoshop, ie. this is freehanded and not my actual font. I wanted to show the difference. I love both, but this photo took me twice as long to create, so if you're illustrating many photos it is so handy to have your own personalized font!

I'm still having fun playing around with my font creations. If I come up with some I'm really excited about, I'll be sure to share them with you! Enjoy and happy weekend!

Update on Red Ribbon Fox Design site

Hi all! I wanted to share the updates I made today on my business site, www.redribbonfox.com. I added some invitations, thank you notes, programs, and save the date cards that I have designed. I'm ramping up the wedding business, so if you know of anyone needing wedding design, send them my way! I do custom designs and can do anything that needs to be printed on paper for your wedding.

This is a wedding program I designed for Hunter & Terrah. We used real frames to display their silhouettes. It added a really neat touch!

I also work with some spectacular gals who do wedding decor/coordination (Jessica at Love Bird Style) and amazing floral design (Jasmin at Artisan Flowers). We have collaborated to create Lace*Paper*Flowers, a wedding cooperative where we come together to ensure a consistent theme throughout your wedding. We did a lovely photo shoot in November themed "Apple of My Eye." We worked with Souder Photography to create a really nice display of all of our work. Our shoot has been featured on both Style Me Pretty and The Ebury Collection wedding blogs. Here are a few examples from that shoot.

It's fun working with other spectacularly creative people to get amazing results! I hope our business continues to grow so we can do more and more fun stuff like this :)