Planner Lettering Tips - Ways to Write in Your Planner!

hi guys it's Mary Ellen today I am doing a video that you guys have requested over and over and over and over again I have been resisting it because I just don't I don't know I feel like I can't give you enough good content on this or maybe it's just because it's second nature to me and I feel like it wouldn't be interesting or helpful but you guys keep asking so here we go here is my video on lettering if you want to see how I let her in my planner and get some tips for you stay tuned [Music] okay there's lots of different ways to letter in your planner and what I thought I'd start out with is just showing you my spread from last week just to give you an idea of what I do now this isn't going to be for everybody but I use lots of different kinds of lettering each week I like to switch it up so that it's not the same all the time I feel like if it's the same type of lettering on all the days that it just looks boring to me and that's just me everybody's different you can just do one kind of lettering and it'll be look good for you like whatever you want to do I just like switching it up so I'm gonna talk first about the different ways to write big in your planner and then I'll talk about the like the smaller writing okay so the big stuff is for like headers and stuff so I'm going to show you a few different ways that I letter right now I'm using a Statler pen these are linked in the description box below I've been using these a lot lately I don't know why I like it I've kind of switched I didn't use this for a long time and now I've been using these I think these are really good pens so the first thing I'll do is just like I said show you different ways to write big and these are just the ways that I do it and I am by no means a professional letter I did used to get paid for calligraphy back in the day but that was back in college when there wasn't anything like you know bounce lettering or anything like that it was just straight up curly calligraphy anyway that's besides the point so what I'm gonna do here is just write the word bumble I guess and I'm gonna do it in different types of lettering so you can see what I mean you could just do straight-up caps like this okay.you then you can do this is what I do so I use this kind of lettering a lot and I usually do it in all caps but sometimes I'll do lowercase okay and then once I do a word I can either fill it in with black like this or I can leave it alone so that it's like that but sometimes I like to go in and fill it in with colored pencils so I can take it and just fill in the whole section there or I can do like sometimes I do like an ombre look so let me see if I can grab a couple of different so say I wanted to use this say I wanted to do like a teal to like light blue so I'll do the first half at the top in teal I'll do the bottom half in light blue and then I hope you can't see this okay and then what I'll do is take a white color pencil and these are Prisma colors that I use art ISA has some good ones too and that one didn't work very well but I think it's because I wrote too small but if it's bigger it kind of blends it too I'll show you I'll do a big M here well that's kind of funky hold on okay so cross that part out I'll do the Big M let's just say I write the top say I want it to be darker on the top and lighter on the bottom I just color this in like so and then I'll take my white pencil and I'll kind of blend them together so it's sort of like an ombre effect do you see that I do that sometimes I think that's a really cool look okay you can also do stripes like that you can fill it in with like polka dots whatever you want to do okay so I also I use markers too where I'll go in and just color it in depending on like the the colors of my spread let me see if I can find that for you like here so you can see I did a red white and blue spread so I colored these in with the markers with like the gel pens all right so that's another kind of lettering you can do you can also and I don't know the names of any of these so yeah you can also do this and put the the tails and stuff is that what it's called - I don't know like I said I am NOT a professional letterer nor do I need to be but sometimes I can do this okay okay then we have sometimes I just do this and I'll do like block letters oh that's bad example like so I'm just doing this quick you guys definitely not my best work but you you see what I'm saying and then you can color this in the same way with the markers or the pencils or leave it like that whatever you want to do and then we go into and let me pull out a this is a tombow dual brush pen I don't use the brush side because I suck at brush lettering I will be honest with you I'm terrible at it but a lot of times I'll use this for like or other pens I'll use it for like the bigger cursive okay you can do that you can also do folio fees so if I did this on the same type of font and I'm not gonna bounce lettering like I can do this kind but I'm not good at like the up and down like like Heather cowl does I could have tried and I really can't I mean I guess if I practice enough I could but and then you think well this you can go in and do like and color all of the the down strokes make them a little bit thicker so that it looks like you used a brush pen that's full leg rafi so I'll do that sometimes you get the point I don't have to do the whole thing um what else let me just look at some of my old spreads I'm gonna take my my planner out from last year because I used to use a lot of different kinds of lettering that I don't really use anymore I just want to see if there's any here that are different you can see like this spread I use like several different kind like it did this and I colored the downstrokes in here you can do like rounded letters like this you see that how they're like a little bit rounded you can also do like all lowercase or you can do all caps I've actually gotten a lot better now that I look at this at my that was when I tried to do bounce lettering that sucks well that's pretty good but I gotten better at that so that's one good thing so that's I tried it again there that's not too bad I should really try bounce lettering gun so here's an example of what I use like the full block letters so those are the main ones I do oh here I I did like a bounce lettering type thing and then I filled it in with a marker I kind of like that look so yeah my lettering has changed a bit hmm interesting look here I did a couple of different things here like I did like a small letter and then a big letter and then a small letter and I kind of made it bouncy I like that and I did the same thing over here where it says lunch okay so you get the point there's lots of different things you can do right for the for the headers or for the bigger lettering now what I do for when I write smaller in my planner as I typically will just write in all caps and the reason I started doing this I didn't used to do it the reason I started is I feel like it's more uniform looking so I can do this or I can do this they're both good but when you've got a whole page of it for some reason I feel like it's more attractive and more linear I guess to do all caps back here let me see if I can find this is back before he is the happy planner when I started I was using a little caps here so here's Oh God okay well you know back it when I sucked back back on this horrible week I I used like lowercase and you see what I mean it's just not as uniform or something I don't know so I like to use all caps sometimes I'll switch it up and then sometimes I'll write like this week I'm doing this I'm writing in all caps but I'm like doing kind of like italics like I'm tilting it and then there's different ways to write in lowercase to like I will do sometimes I'll write this is my regular lowercase right and then sometimes I'll do this and I'll do it make it like kind of like that so I switch it up for whatever reason I just like to do different things okay now I'm gonna talk to you about different ways to write in your blocks so if you want to fill a whole block with with lettering let me just give you an example let's see so for example so this girls night at the melting pot so I filled this whole section because sometimes if I have an event like a party or look this Christmas shopping I'll fill up the whole block and I like to do that because it's it's just a little bit more decorative and more fun I do that a lot more these days than I used to so I will show you what I mean so a lot of times I'll put a hole like a big sticker here or something but sometimes I just write it right in the block these are not good examples but do you know what I mean so I'll do like okay Ally comes from that day yeah I like a whole section Memorial Day so that's what I'm talking about so there's lots of different ways you can do this the main thing I want just to mention is that you need to you don't need to but I think it looks the best if you vary what you're you're with like your thickness of pen you're in the different fonts that you're using so if I'm doing somebody's birthday so say I'm doing mom's birthday right let's say what I would typically do is I would do the name like in a font like this okay because like mom is the most important part here right my night color it in like this now I'm gonna switch pens because this is a little bit thick and now I want to write in a smaller pen so I'm gonna use a point not this one a point seven pencil inner gel if I can find one hang on okay so here's a point seven and I am wait is this a point seven this is not hold on okay this is a point seven so what I'm gonna do now if I could just do mom's birthday in the same pen but for me I feel like it's just too uniform so I'm gonna use this thinner pen I'm also gonna use a different font a different type of lettering when I write birthday so I might do it in cursive I might go like this okay I might do that and then say we're going out to dinner today we're going to I I don't know there's a restaurant called estrela's around here say we'll go into Australis so then I might might come in with this skinnier pen and I might do at in just regular letters and then I might come back in with this pen again or even a bigger pen and do I'll try this one and write in the name of the restaurant and now I'm going to write it in like this [Music] I my daughter just walked in the door okay so you can see how it adds just a little bit of interest it's not the same throughout the whole block and then I can come back under here and put in like stickers or the time and maybe I want to put in the time and maybe I want to do that in a pink pen so say 8 o'clock you can switch up the colors you can switch up the fonts and then if there's some left over at the bottom you can go in and put little like polka dots or like a little squiggly line and you can do at the top too if you want so it's just good to switch it up with the different thicknesses the different types of lettering I just think it makes it a lot more interesting ok so I'll give you another example of something you can do with lettering so sometimes what I'll do is do it like like an arch when I'm writing so say I want to write and sometimes you don't if you're doing like filling up a block with an event that's cool but sometimes I fill up a block if I run out of I mean not run up space if I have extra space at the end I could either put a sticker there or sometimes I'll write things that are kind of mundane like sometimes I'll do plan for next week you know they own like a Sunday or something even though I know I'm going to be planning for next week and I don't forget it's just something fun to put in the box if that makes sense so what I wanted to show you is you can do it like this you can kind of curve it around so that it looks something a little more interesting and this is already I'm not doing this well usually I'll do this in like pencil first to make sure that it's like even and everything so I'm just winging this one but you'll kind of know what I mean so I would just do plan and then maybe like well maybe I'll call that a color and then I might do like four in another pen and then like next week in another type of lettering and another thickness of pen something like that I know that's bad but then maybe I come in here and color this in to make it a little more interesting and again I'm just doing this quick so it's kind of running with the other pen usually I let the black pen dry a little bit first before I bring in any markers or colored pencils because I don't want to make it like muddy looking like that and then I can go in so say I have this here and I have all the space on the side I can just do something like this boom that's bad that should have been angled up but you know what I mean and then I could do since I have the rest of the block I could like put a couple stickers down here or whatever or I could do like stripes across something like that I don't know sometimes when I have extra space I just like to fill it with little kinds of doodles like that's not a doodle but you know what I mean just little things for emphasis what could I put down here I mean literally anything probably what I would do is do that and then put a sticker down there or I could do this again at the bottom you know and this is just one example of something like there's so many of these types of little doodles you can do like that to fill up the the box if you need more or you don't have to do that at all but sometimes that's fun to do okay but yes I like to sometimes curve my letters and I think that makes it look a little more interesting also what you can do is you don't have to have it straight up and down like what you could do I'll do it over here so we like a clean page also what you could do is like do it kinda on diagonal so say I was having lunch with a friend I could go like this lunch I'd do it like on a on an angle and then come in here and do this part straight with Cheryl something like that so that it's like its own little section here and then I can come in with like stickers or something about the launch or right where I'm going to lunch and sometimes I can come in here and just do a skinny like line skinny down stroke so that just makes it look a little more dimensional kind of than what it was than just regular writing okay so what else oh no I guess my main point to that I want to get across to you is I don't like to do this and I know I'm repeating myself but I don't like to do the same thing all the time and I think it makes it look a lot more interesting to switch up lettering to switch up thicknesses to switch up colors to switch up angles and all that I think it just makes it more fun so what I think I'll do now is just kind of look through my my planner with you I'll just do this year is I was gonna last year I think I paid more attention to lettering last year but I'll just show you some different things and and probably I've already gone over some of this but you can see what I do so I like right here I did I colored in these with colored pencils to match kind of the rest of the spread and I did the same thing here I did like a gray like a taupe because that kind of coordinates with the rest of spread here's like a light blue so I like to do that this popcorn day is kind of up and down for fun because popcorn day is like super fun let's see so here's like I did different colors and lettering they're different colors and lettering there but like the same ones you know what I mean here's another example of one I did those little lines to fill up the box I probably did this first and then realize I had a lot of space around it you can do that for emphasis sometimes if if you like if something is important to you or whatever let's see so this is the same type I like I used a lot of the same types of lettering and I don't like to switch it up too much so if I'm on one spread and I'm doing this kind of lettering I definitely want to use this kind of lettering in other points in the spread so there's you need balance but you also need variety so I hope that makes sense here is like I did a different kind of lettering here for fun my gratitude section I did like cursive and then I did regular printing here's the curve thing with like that ombre look for the color pencils again like more variety here so you can see I use like really pretty much the same fonts I'd really like to branch out and do some different things but for now I'm pretty much using the same thing this was a little bit different you can see I like I made some down strokes and didn't color them in just for a different look here's where I like did some lines on these let's see so like this I just kind of did on it on a diagonal beautiful day outside so I think you guys get the point you know what I'm gonna grab my old I'm gonna grab my old planner and show you what I was doing and I where is it show you what I was doing back what I had more time to focus on lettering see if there's anything really different and I know I just showed you some of this but there's a lot going on here is it there but like for example I did this and look I punched this wrong do you see this quote so I worked hard to Center this I did it in pencil first so that it would look centered but I used this type of lettering that I did regular then I used another type of lettering and then I did regular again and then I did it in lowercase and I did like a curved thing so I think it's a cool look I like that here's a different kind of lettering I did that's kind of cool actually oh my god Alexa shut up anyway sometimes you can take a lowercase not lowercase well yeah lowercase which I'm gonna call it cursive and like kind of drag it across the whole space so if you do say you're doing like a gratitude section instead of just doing this I'm just doing this really quick you guys instead of just doing that like sometimes you can do this and do it kind of like shallow chello what's the word I'm looking for like short or and wide so that it fills up the whole space and I think that's a really cool look I kind of did that right there and let's see that's sort of like that ombre look where I used two different colors there whoa this is like BAM so up here I did like a curve on these I think that was kind of cool and it felt I made sure it like filled the space and I did it like this kind this kind this kind of like every other one was a different type of lettering kind of like that here I was experimenting with some like capitals and lower cases on the same in the same words I did some of that before here's like that example of that font with the tails and stuff and sometimes you can do I don't know if I told you this but sometimes if you do like a like a cursive and then you outline it all in black like so say maybe I did go over this with you already sorry I did half of this video yesterday and I'm doing the other half today so I'm not sure what it covered yesterday but if you do it like this no no no that's not what I want to do say you do it like this I'm just gonna write them you'll know what I mean and then you just go in like this and like outline it it just gives it more dimension I think that's a really cool look and you can outline it in black or you can outline it in another color I have to do that more often I don't do that very often but I like that here I did some big block letters and then I colored them in with colored pencil and I kind of went around the edge the edges a little darker and then the middle is a little bit lighter to kind of make it sort of 3d ish looking slanting so it seems I used to use more different kinds of lettering when I first started and it sort of has transformed into the same like usual ones so I should do this more often like kind of branch out a little bit here I did like it's gonna be May got some bad singing right there okay so I won't keep going on too long but I just want to show you a couple more things so here I did this same type of font but then I did like a rainbow I did one color for each letter I think that's really cute with this rainbow spread I already looked I already looked at most of these with the guys whoops that's Anna back him up we look back here um and this spread I use definitely some thicker lines and it gives it a different look so I used this tombow pen for like all of this and it's kind of more like emphasis then and I think I went through did I go through a period where I was doing that a lot I don't know I was using this pen a lot for a while and then I kind of got out of it again now I'm using more of like papermate Flair I also sometimes try to match like if I have fonts if I have stickers with a certain font I try to match it sometimes so like here this is a sticker that says coffee and then I put this relax over here and it looks sort of like the same kind of lettering as this so I kind of copied it I guess a little bit and it just sort of matches on the other side of the page so I think that's really all the examples that I see I hope this like gave you some ideas every planner is their own individual like every planner is just different than every other planner and everybody has their own style I hope this was helpful but definitely find your own style just know that if you balance it and switch it up that it's gonna look uniform yet beautiful at the same time I hope that makes sense to you and if you like this video please click the thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to my channel check me out on instagram at playing with bumble and also check out the giveaway I've got going on right now I do have if you go to my giveaway playlist you'll see it it is going until next Thursday so I'm giving away a lot of cool stuff so check that out I hope you guys have a great day and a wonderful week and I will talk to you soon bye

Channel: Planning with Bumble

Views: 55,385

Rating: 4.9449377 out of 5

Keywords: planner lettering, happy planner lettering, planner fonts, brush lettering, planner doodles, planner writing, planner flip through, ways to write in your planner, how to write in planner, hand lettering, types of hand lettering, handwriting tips, handwriting in your planner, Mary Ellen Houston, lettering tips, calligraphy, fauxligraphy

Id: 8VCaULDCSnA

Length: 33min 35sec (2015 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 21 2019