I’ve been admiring the hand lettering of Lou Collins over the last few months. Everytime it pops up on Instagram I always prod the ‘like’ button.

You can imagine, therefore, that when Lou collaborated with the folk at Practical Publishing to produce a magazine dedicated to this that I had to go grab me a copy and see if I could muster a steady hand.

Oh, if you haven’t heard of Lou, or this new fancy magazine then you can find out more about both over on the Craft Stash website.

Anyways, on with the story.

So, I collected my copy of the mag, ripped of the wrapper and popped the free pens to one side whilst I had a brew and had a good old flick through.

Looks exciting, doesn’t it?! A quick peruse later and there was lots to get my head around in this first issue.

By the way, yes, I did say free pens. Two, in fact! Double-ended, no less!

Not the only freebie either as there were some awesome practice sheets included too. I am going to need those!

Right, time to dig out some fresh white paper and give this a go.

I decided to have a go at the practice sheets first. There was no plan, just dive in.

First I had a go at the basic strokes with a couple of different pens.

Angles are there. I just need to relax a little more and breathe instead of holding my breath, I reckon, as me lines are a little shaky.

Quite liked a couple of the styles in the mag though so had a go at adding a little detail on the next couple of attempts.

Shadows were cool. Easy with the free gray pen too.

I did muck it up a little as you can see in the photo but it’s only a bit of paper and I can learn from this for the next one.

Had another rummage through the pen stash and found an old ink based brush pen to use this time and also dug out a white gel pen to add a highlight line for my next go.

Hmmm, ok. I think I am ok with this – it’s certainly been a long while since I did any hand lettering so am proud of the attempts so far.

As they so though, practice makes perfect so I set about using one of the templates from the magazine to practice the strokes on a thank you sentiment, quite a few times.

Mag version is bottom right. I think after these attempts I am finding the posture and method that feels right for me and relaxing into it.

So much more to explore in the magazine and a whole bunch of pens in my craft stash to use – but sadly, as ever, so little time for playtime so, the new pens have taken position in my collection ready for their next outing.

As for the magazine, I will definitely be returning to it again soon and looking our for future issues as I have really enjoyed this opportunity and would really like to explore hand lettering more.

How about you? Have you got this magazine yet? Have you given it a try? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it and on hand lettering in general.

Don’t forget, if it is something that you would like to have in your craft stash and a skill that you would like to learn, just visit the Craft Stash website to find out more.

For now though I must sign off and crack on with some work.

Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to sharing more explorations in typography in the future.

Bye for now,
J :) x