5 Need-To-Know Chalk Calligraphy Tips

hey i'm becca with the happy ever crafter and in this episode i'm gonna walk you through my five insider tips for chalkboard lettering these are all things that i wish i knew when i first started doing chalk lettering especially number five super game changer [Music] all right just before i jump into tip number one i want to talk about what i'm using here i just have a chalkboard that i picked up at michaels this is just like a slate chalkboard there are lots of different types of chalkboards you can get and some of them are like the plasticky surface those aren't my favorite if you can look for a slate chalkboard then i have crayola chalk you might hear people talk about crayola anti-dust chalk or dustless chalk i'm not going to lie to you i've never found a difference both of them are going to make dust so don't worry about it just get any chalk i find crayola is a good like dense you know it doesn't break super easily it works really well it's nice and opaque but i really i mean it's i'm not that picky about what kind of chalk i'm using and then i have a paper towel so with those three things we're going to be able to do tip number one which is to season your board now if you've never heard what seasoning your board means it means basically just getting it set up for writing on it and a lot of people skip this step but it is so helpful for later which you're gonna see and it also protects your board from ghosting which is when the chalk residue that you write with actually kind of stays there when you erase it later so seasoning is really important basically all you're going to do to season it is just rub your chalk on it and then use your paper towel to smudge it around slash sort of wipe it off but not really you want this dust residue to stay on there so don't try and like clean it off you do want dust in chalk calligraphy chalk lettering chalk art dust is a good thing so don't be afraid to keep it on there so that's all there is to seasoning and you're gonna see why it's so important in a little bit but first tip number two is one that i really wish i had known at the beginning because i really struggled with this and the tip is to sharpen your chalk and not only sharpen your chalk but save your chalk dust so i recommend using a sharpener that looks like this one that has the little extra compartment in it that catches your dust because like i said dust and chalk lettering is a good thing so if you can save it you can actually use it a little bit later so to sharpen your chalk obviously just use the bigger end of your sharpener and just sharpen it like normal and this is super handy because it's really hard to write with the blunt end of a chalk stick so if you have it sharpened it doesn't even have to be like super sharp or anything just like not blunt it's going to be so much easier to write with this than it is to write with the blunt end okay tip number three is to have a pencil handy with an eraser on it actually it doesn't have to be a pencil you just have to have an eraser handy but i like the size of the ones on a pencil so you want to keep this handy and the reason is because you can use it to add shadows now in order to show you this i actually have to have a word on my chalkboard so let me just write a word first okay i just spot on my chalkboard a little bit you can just ignore that [Music] okay but now i can show you what this pencil eraser is for so now that i have this on here and you'll remember we seasoned the chalkboard so there's a little bit of dust on it this is such a cool tip it erases the dust and it'll give you shadows look how cool that looks this is like my favorite chalk tip ever is to just use an eraser like this now i've seen people use um a wet q-tip as well and you can do that and use water on your board i just find that it doesn't quite get as like opaque as a chalk or as a pencil eraser does i find this really gets like all the dust off and makes it really nice and dark wherever your shadow goes how cool does that look so awesome i never knew this trick until i'd been doing chalk lettering for quite a while and i'm really glad that i know it now i use it every time tip number four is to use a chalk pastel or charcoal pencil for smaller details so if we look at the chalk that we sharpened earlier this is about as thin of a line as we can get whereas if you were to use a chalk or charcoal pencil this is the faber-castell pastel pencil faber-castell pastel uh yeah so this is the faber castell pastel pencil and it's a lot smaller so if you wanted to do some really really small details you can use that and then if you want to go even smaller this is a bohin i don't know how to say it but i mean i'll link to it down below um this is another one and it's like a mechanical pencil with like the tiniest little white lead and you can use that one too these are for like really small really fine details and these are a total game changer if you're doing like a really elaborate chalkboard with tiny details it's so much easier to use this than to sharpen your chalk and try and make it like super super super pointy now i will say if you're using specifically pastel pencils i find they ghost a little bit more on your board and they don't come off quite as easily so if you're using either of these just do it a little bit more gently than you would with normal chalk because they don't quite rub off so easily it worked here because i wrote really lightly and i don't want to damage my chalkboard but just make sure that you don't push super hard with these because if you do they might leave a little bit too much of a mark on your chalkboard okay and lastly my very favorite tip ever it's so helpful that it actually feels like you're cheating and i've had students ask me if it's considered cheating but it's so helpful and that is doing a chalk transfer so what you're gonna do for this is you can actually plan your entire design on paper first and then super easily transfer it onto your chalkboard if you've never seen this trick before buckle up because it's about to blow your mind and your chalkboards are about to get 18 million times better so yeah that's a scientific number 18 million times better so let me just do a really quick demo here i'm just going to write a word i just never know what word to write like you saw earlier i wrote the word hi it's just not very original but listen i'm going to do it again so i'm going to write the word hi just using a brush pen any brush pen this like this part really doesn't matter it's just whatever you want to write on your board i'm just going to kind of finesse it here make it exactly what i want so this is what i want to write on my chalkboard and i don't want to have to draw guidelines because then i have to erase them and i don't want to mess up the dust on my chalkboard and i don't want to just spend a lot of time i don't want to use tape all those annoying things that you would have to do to draw guidelines on your board this is a super easy example but let's say you were doing like a whole menu board and you didn't feel like taping everything out you can do it all on paper first so once you have your word written all you have to do is turn your paper over and i don't know if you can see this yeah you can see the shadow a little bit in the video but basically all you're going to do is trace over your design in chalk you can do this as delicately or as messy as you want i recommend trying to stay on the lines the original lines that you drew to not make it too messy chalk does tend to be quite dusty and you don't want to get it all over your board but basically you're just tracing over what you drew okay pretty simple and then the magic part you're gonna take your design place it wherever you want it on the chalkboard and then trace over it with a pencil so just holding your paper in place oops okay so just holding your paper in place where you want it to go so it doesn't slide around if it's a big project you can even tape it down and just trace over exactly what you want to show up on the board you can do this again really delicately and go around all the edges if you want which is what i'm doing for this first part or you can even just do this and it'll only transfer where you put chalk so if you on the back were really delicate and you only put chalk in those couple of spots then you can feel free to just go over it like that it's a lot faster but if you were a little bit messy and you only want certain lines to come up just be a little more delicate with it so you'll see the difference i went over the edges on this side of the h and then i scribbled on the rest and what it looks like is this so you've got like a perfect transfer and now you can just take your chalk and finish it off so here i've got my perfect little outlines i can just color them in hopefully you can see that in the video whereas on this side it's almost like i don't even really have to i'm just going to touch it up a little bit it transferred basically everything that i wanted but it's such a handy trick i use this every time i do chalkboards and i've had people say to me like oh isn't that cheating well no because you're making your design on paper it's still your own work you're just working smarter not harder this trick is super super handy for things like a logo if you ever do a chalkboard for a company that wants their exact logo on the chalkboard and it's like really intricate and really hard to replicate you can totally just print it out and do a chalk transfer so that it's absolutely perfect on your board so tricky but so smart i've used this technique on a lot of really giant chalkboards i'll pop some pictures up on here where i have huge rolls of tracing paper with my design and i cover the back in chalk and i do this transfer and it has saved me so much time i can't even explain to you so hopefully this trick is helpful for you too okay so now i have a quick question for you before i end the video i'm just curious which of these five tips did you not know about before tell me in the comments below because i'm always curious i feel like some of these are duh and some of them are mind-blowing and it's different for every single person who's never done artwork like this so leave me a comment down below and let me know i hope you liked this video i hope it was helpful if so hit the thumbs up button to let me know and i hope to see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Happy Ever Crafter

Views: 86,536

Keywords: chalk calligraphy, the happy ever crafter, happy ever crafter, calligraphy

Id: DM8zDwig4Os

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020