Weddingbee Blog

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 was 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 writing with a normal pen. This means that it took me a spot of time to get used to writing with it. But once I got 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 “Es” 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 a 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. I went over most of the fonts twice to make the writing bolder, but I just didn’t bother with this one.

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 Fs and Gs 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 Savoey with clear postcodes and gold (smudge proof/waterproof) 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?