A new hobby I have been loving recently is calligraphy and hand lettering! It is super fun and easy to get started too! I made a calligraphy binder so I could keep all of my supplies in one place and so I can see improvement as I keep practicing my calligraphy and hand lettering. If you want to improve your hand lettering and calligraphy quickly, then a calligraphy binder might be just the thing you need!

Starting to learn calligraphy is super simple. I have been doing calligraphy since around May 2019 and my handwriting is improving a lot. Most of the calligraphy worksheets used in this post were hand-lettered recently! I couldn't bring myself to use some of my beginning ones because my hand-lettering has improved so much. :)

All you need to start learning hand lettering is a few worksheets, which you can get for free, and a pencil. To learn calligraphy, it is a good idea to invest in a set of brush pens. Don't worry! it won't break your bank! You can get a set of two Tombow Fudesonuke brush pens for around $10. The Tombow Fudesonuke brush pens are great for beginners!

Did you know that you can also do calligraphy with a Crayola marker?

You can!

So if you already have Crayola markers then you can start learning calligraphy today, without having to purchase any new supplies. :)

My favorite pens for lettering are the Tombow brush pens and Ecoline brush pens, though I recommend Ecoline brush pens for more advanced calligraphers because the ink is harder to control due to the more bendable tip. I love how smooth these brush pens feel on the paper and the juicy ink.

Whenever I do calligraphy, I put a piece of thick cardstock underneath the sheet I am working on, just so the ink doesn't bleed through onto whatever is underneath. You may want to consider doing the same if you don't want to ruin the surface you are working on, and you don't want to have any accidents. Yikes, it would be bad if your table permanently had ink spots on it!

For almost all calligraphy styles, you make the stroke thick on the downstroke. If you are left-handed, you can also turn the page at an angle to help get the pen at the right angle for making a stroke.

My favorite resource for hand lettering is DawnNicoleDesigns. She posts new free worksheets regularly and if you sign up for her email list, you get a new worksheet every Monday. I think it's a  great reminder to keep yourself practicing at least weekly. :)

When I started learning calligraphy though, I tried to do at least one worksheet every morning so I could improve quickly. If you want to do the same, then it would be a good idea to incorporate practicing calligraphy into your morning routine.

All of the worksheets shown in the images for this post are from her website and you can get them all for free. I like how she uses different fonts for her worksheets, so you can learn lots of different types of fonts.

I have been trying to practice my calligraphy almost every day, and I am seeing a great improvement in my lettering, but that isn't what this post is about, so let's get onto how I set up my calligraphy binder.

If you would like to learn how to improve your calligraphy quicker, you can read Guaranteed Ways to Quickly Improve Your Calligraphy + Hand Lettering.

Before I had made my calligraphy binder, I just had a stack of all of the calligraphy worksheets I had printed out. Every time I wanted to do a new worksheet I had to flip through all of my pages to find one that wasn't already done. (I have to keep all of my worksheets so that I can track my improvement 😁) It's very motivating to be able to see how much your calligraphy has improved.

Obviously, I needed some organization!

I decided that I needed some way to organize all of the calligraphy worksheets and hand lettering printables I had. I bought a 2" inch binder because I wanted a big one for all of the calligraphy worksheets I was going to print out.

And you know it's really annoying to have to switch everything to a new binder when you fill up the old one with worksheets, so why not just go with a large binder in the first place?

In the first pocket in my binder, I have a piece of thick cardstock for putting under the worksheet I am doing, so that the ink doesn't bleed through to whatever is underneath.

I divided my binder up into the following three sections, but I may add more if I think of any other sections that would help organize my calligraphy and hand lettering worksheets.

• Practice...
• Finished
• Portfolio

This way, if I take my calligraphy binder somewhere and I have some extra time, I already have a bunch of calligraphy worksheets in my binder that I can do!

Finished

Portfolio

Doing Calligraphy + Hand Lettering on the Go