After some encouragement (thanks, Emma!), I finally bit the bullet and set up a new account for my lettering projects earlier this year: @ACornishGeekLetters. I’d previously featured a mixture of content on my usual account and wanted a separate space in which to grow.
One of my goals for 2021 is to develop my own lettering style. I’ve come a long way over the last year but I’ve learned by imitation – I want something of my own which I can be proud of. What started as a plan to try different products and letter every day quickly grew into a public 30-day challenge where I encouraged others to join me. Oh, and I had a sponsor too! Under the Rowan Trees kindly gave participants an exclusive discount and regular prizes. Win win win!
My stationery addiction and lettering practise has a huge impact on my mental wellbeing so I incorporated wellbeing in the challenge itself with daily prompts. I thought long and hard about which prompts to use on the first and last days and decided to start with ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ (a great reminder for participants as there was a mixture of experience and skill levels) and end with ‘you didn’t come this far to only come this far’. Gotta keep learning and developing, right?
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For the first post I used a colour scheme which I featured in my January bullet journal spreads and fell a bit in love with. These colours popped up in a couple of subsequent posts and eventually became a part of my new ‘style’. I also quickly fell in love with the chunky style of the Stabilo brush pen.
While I loved playing with different styles and ideas, it quickly became apparent that I couldn’t ditch the yellow, blue, and pink mildliners! And I was surprised to see my ‘you do you’ post become my most liked post of the whole challenge. It was very much a style that I thought I’d didn’t execute as well as I’d hoped but it went down well and has since featured in many of my post-challenge posts.
Here’s a flip-through of the whole challenge.
While I had hoped to find a style that I would want to continue to develop, I had never expected to create such a bloody lovely community at the same time. Over 100 people took part and the support for each other throughout genuinely brought me so much joy. I’ve added a bunch of accounts to both my following and follower lists and it made me want to keep it going.
A lot of the participants have asked for more challenges and I plan to launch another one soon. At the moment I’m thinking weekly themes with daily prompts on alternate weeks. If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, do leave a comment.
New favourite products:
Royal Talens Large Sketchbook
Zebra mildliner brush pens
Stabilo brush pen (black)
Sakura Gelly Roll Basic Blank