- Nusaybah
Rowan Berry Picnic Box and Superhero-themed Lettering
This month's summery Rowan Berry Box from Under the Rowan Trees was picnic themed! It's such a cute box with stationery themed with lots of really fun, colourful illustrations, so I've used some of the contents to make a superhero-themed hand-lettered quote this month!
This month's box contained:
A pack of 6 double-ended brush pens (brush pen on one side and fine-liner pen on the other!)
2 scented ice-lolly rubbers
A few sheets of colourful picnic-themed scrapbooking paper
A sheet of picnic-themed stickers
Some square postcards (again, with the cute picnic illustrations!)
2 cute novelty paperclips - an avocado and an ice cream cone!
A shopping list tear-off pad
A pocket reusable shopping bag!
I was definitely most excited about the brush pens, since I love using brush pens for calligraphy and had never tried out this brand. To be honest, they were a little bit difficult to get thin upstrokes and a nice contrast between strokes, so are better for really big, bold lettering and the bright colours look lovely for a bouncy lettering style. I did some swatches with them (the swatch video is in the Rowan Berry Box Facebook group and I will post it on Instagram soon too).
The pens are great for colouring too, and the fineliner on the other end makes it really easy to colour in tight spaces. I'm working on a gallery wall commission for a children's playroom, so did a pop-art style lettered quote for one of the pieces, using these pens. Here's how I did it!
Sketch out your quote. I find it easier to write put the quote in my normal handwriting first, and choose which words I want to emphasise. I then sketch out the letters a few times on the piece of card I'm working on, making sure things are centralised, and I'm happy with all the sizes. I used a block font for the second and third lines in this (see image below), the first line is serif block letters, with the details added in and the third line in script letters, sort of inspired by the copperplate alphabet.
2. Using black - fineliner or Tombow fudenosuke pen - outline your words. I outlined the first line and did the third line in a Tombow fudenosuke as it is flexible, then used a fineliner to neaten up the edges.
3. Neaten the edges - Next I coloured in around the edges using the brush pen side of the pens in the box. You can see this is a little messier, so I neatened up all the edges with the fineliner. This is really useful for making the smaller shapes cleaner, like the oval inside the 'A'.
4.Add highlights - You can see it looks much better in this picture! I finished off by adding highlights using the fineliner, and then popped it in a frame!
This whole piece was very different to my normal style, but I really enjoyed it and am happy with how it came out! Here it is with a piece which I did with a similar colour scheme...
I did another few pieces with some pastel colours and spot the cute rubbers from this month's box!
I hope you enjoyed reading that, and I can't wait for next month's tutorial (I already know what the tutorial is going to be, after seeing the amazing box we got this month!!). As always, you can use Nusaybah10 for 10% off at Under the Rowan Trees, and for your purchase of the next box (Eden theme - it's amazing!!)
And if you've missed out my previous tutorials using the Rowan Berry Boxes, you can see them all here - I've done blog posts for February, March, April and May too!
You can see more of my work on Instagram too - my favourite post this month is this one, with the pictures from our holiday to the Malvern Hills!!