How can you get better at hand-lettering, or any creative discipline?

Pay hundreds of dollars on posh classes and fancy supplies? NO WAY!!

Practice for a short time each day!

Penmanship drills are a great way to build consistency, but often we want to have a little more fun with our practice. You’ve asked me how I’ve grown more confident in my lettering and art, and I tell you that I’m still working on it! In fact, I’m scribbling out doodles and drawing alphabets on most of the scrap papers within my reach!

Daily challenges are a hit on Instagram.

Instagram challenges can be addictive, but the real draw is that that fun approach to accountability is actually helping us stretch and grow our skills! We’re also building community as we connect and learn new tips and pointers from others that participate.

After months of requests for a daily challenge to follow-up #loveYOURlettering, I’ve finally brainstormed some monthly themes for us to practice through, together!

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You don’t need to carve out hours of quiet time to stretch your creative muscles.

I want to show you that just fifteen minutes a day can really grow your skills! No fancy supplies needed, use what you have on hand, whether that’s a pen, pencil, marker, or calligraphy pen.

I’m using a 3″ note pad I found at IKEA and a few of my favorite writing utensils, a Tombow Fudenosuke(soft), a pigment fineliner, and a mechanical pencil.

For fifteen minutes each day I’ll draw out one letter in various styles, on a single sheet of the notepad. No erasing, no measuring, no planning, just drawing out different styled letters. It’s not time to worry about perfection, instead we’re perfecting on progressing.

Just get in the habit of daily practice.

If you don’t already have a notepad you’d like to use (I know you’re probably still hoarding a few One Spot notepads… What, I’m the only one?), why not split the back pages of your #loveYOURlettering notebook into grids and use that?

So will you join us for June?

Here is a graphic of our prompts for the #justaletteraday theme.

I don’t have a schedule, yet, but I’ll demonstrate some of my practice on Periscope or Facebook Live during the month.

If this challenge gets a good response, I’ve already brainstormed a list of themes for the coming months.

How can you participate in #15Minutes2Create?

There are very few rules. Seriously! No, you don’t have to sign up for my emails (but if you’re on my monthly newsletter list, you’ll see updates for new challenges and more), you don’t have to buy special supplies, I don’t require you to follow me on Instagram, Periscope, or Facebook (but if you do, you’ll see my practice pages).

Just use these prompts for your own fun!

If you use the hashtags #15minutes2create and #justaletteraday, the rest of us can follow your progress and cheer you on! If you’re not on Instagram and want to share your work as accountability, feel free to post on the Facebook page. If social media isn’t your thing, just comment here that you’re following along! You can even post your progress in the comments.

I’m looking forward to this month of practicing each letter (plus a few bonus items that I use frequently in my lettering).

See you June 1st!

The post Monthly Challenge #15Minutes2Create: June #justaletteraday appeared first on CreativLEI.

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I couldn’t imagine going an entire summer without gardening, so this year the children and I are container gardening around our home. I love that it takes very little prep and planning to succeed when you garden in pots and planters.

In a season when we’re running in so many directions, easy gardening is the way to go!

We started with stack-able planters from IKEA. This helps us from vertically instead of spreading out on all of our flat surfaces. We have three sets of planters, one for a ‘pizza’ garden, one for a ‘salsa’ garden, and a third for ‘salad.’ The children and I talked a little about companion planting to help ensure success. It was interesting to learn that the plants we tend to eat together are actually beneficial to each other when grown together, they provide nutrients to each other and help prevent pests.

Nothing is more frustrating than spending a bunch of money on seed packets when you only need a few small seeds.

One thing I’ve learned through raised bed/square foot gardening, is that I don’t need a ton of seeds. Planting in a good fertile mix allows you to plant just a few seeds of many varieties over a small area and still get great yield. Honestly, I’ve got baggies full of seed packets from which I’ve only used a sprinkling of seeds. Not fun to try to keep them organized while they’ll still germinate, I always forget which seeds I have leftover from previous seasons, or I find them too late to start sprouting them for the current season.

What would you plant if it was guaranteed to grow?

This year we’re ditching the guess-work of seed packets and choosing a few varieties of Gro-ables to cut down our waste. Miracle-Gro was kind enough to send us a Salad and Herb Garden Kit to start our very own #GroablesProject, and we added a few extra Gro-able pods in the varieties we knew we needed duplicates that we found on sale at Home Depot. We purchased bags of potting mix at Walmart and sat out on the deck preparing our new garden planters. Since the Gro-ables pods contain mulch, plant food, and seeds, all the children needed to do was push the pod into the planter and water! You can’t beat that type of easy gardening. They’re all excited to watch their plants grow.

Talking about the vegetables we’re growing has also piqued their curiosity and willingness to taste test new things!

A few months ago they were picking out the bits of bell pepper from their dinner, but now they’re asking to try a fresh slice from one. Color me surprised! I can’t wait until the pods they’ve planted start to grow so that I can watch their sense of pride and accomplishment grow.

Our next #GroablesProject will be a pallet garden for our lettuce and cucumbers. Do you have garden plans this season?

Check out my Year-Round Gardening board on Pinterest to get a peek at what we’d like to try!

The post Easy Gardening Without a Garden appeared first on CreativLEI.

When you experiment with lots of different art media, you end up with a number of supplies and the need to find ways to use them in a variety of ways. Here’s one more way to dress up some #happymail.

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Do you love the look of fine marbled paper? Me, too… Unfortunately, I just don’t have it in the budget to always splurge on handmade paper.

With some shaving cream and colored re-inkers you can create a faux marbled look!

You’ll want a baking pan or styrafoam tray to work in. This is a messy technique, but the results are really beautiful. Grab a can of shaving cream (nothing fancy, store brand will do), colored re-inkers (Don’t have bottles of ink around? No problem! Use liquid food coloring!), toothpicks, and a blank envelope. You’ll also need a few sheets of paper towels.

Randomly squeeze out drops of color over the shaving cream. Leave white space, you can always add more color if needed!

Use a toothpick or skewer to swirl the color through the shaving cream. I like to make figure eight motions. Start big and then get smaller, until you start to see swirls emerge.

Now the palette is ready for your envelope (or paper).

Place the envelope on waxed paper or another baking pan and use paper towel to wipe off the shaving cream. The color will have transferred to your paper!

Dip a little bit of the bottom of the envelope, too. You can even dip a whole sheet or scraps of cardstock.

Wipe off all the excess shaving cream. Watch your fingers, they like to carry the color to places you don’t want it. Allow the ink to dry before addressing the envelopes. If you’ve left white space, you can swirl what’s still in your tray and dip another envelope or few.

I dipped the flap and a bit of the top of the envelope.

Just be careful to not over do the swirls and turn your colors to mud.

Once dry, address your envelope in any style you prefer. I start with the zip code to center the address, and then work my way up. Leaving the names until the last step.

I love the combination of brush lettering with my soft tip brush marker (Tombow makes my favorite!) and simple print with a fine tip pen.

Here’s the demonstration of this fun (but messy) technique from Periscope.

Do you think you’ll give this technique a try?

The post Faux Marble Paper Technique {#MailArtMonday} appeared first on CreativLEI.

Each Monday in November I’ll share a new envelope idea.

Since we just talked about using watercolor paints and a waterbrush, let’s use that for today’s envelope.

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I started with a blank A7 (5×7) envelope. Throughout the month I’ll demonstrate using various sized and colored envelopes. I used a piece of graph paper with some lines I had darkened as a guide sheet I could slip inside the envelope. The lines showed through enough to see faintly. I’ll tell you the truth though… unless I’m addressing formal envelopes for a wedding or such, I don’t often use a guide sheet or lines. I typically just eye-ball it (which drives my engineer husband a little crazy).

I drew in a light pencil line to anchor the family name. I did this at a slight curve, not straight. On this line I used the water brush and Yoobi watercolors (from Target).

I also used the watercolors and a larger brush to create a very simple Christmas tree.

I added a star, little swirls and dot, and an outline for the name with a gold gel pen. Not sending a holiday card? Add a whimsical daisy, or gift box. Have fun with it!

Erase any pencil lines you used. I added a greeting with the Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen.

Then use a fine line pen, like the Zig Millenium (I used and 05 for this envelope), for the rest of the address and your return address. You can add your return address to the back flap, I like to add it along the left edge of the envelope front.

Will you give this style a try?

If you’re looking to improve your hand writing and creative lettering, be sure to check out my 31-day series to learn to love your lettering.

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