Hand Lettering 101: A Step-by-Step Calligraphy Workbook for Beginners (Gold Spiral-Bound Workbook with Gold Corner Protectors)

I LOVE this book - it offers clean & pleasant practice pages with great smooth paper - perfect for my Tombow brush pens to glide across. I have collected many hand lettering books over the years but I find that the books that are full of instructions, tips and tricks are often the lease inspiring for me. I start thinking too much and just get nervous. With this book, there is a sufficient amount of instructions, but I think the author's point in giving you so much practice space is that the real KEY to getting good at this craft is just repetition. Really no matter how much you read about it, you won't learn to make beautiful letters without practicing.I suppose it depends on the person, but I am a very hands-on learner, and I memorize things best through writing. Hand lettering and calligraphy is such an enormous subject, that perhaps the best way to learn is to start small - just learn this one style, learn the basics, then you can move on to other fancy forms and flourishes. This is exactly what the author does - she teaches you one simple but beautiful style to get you started. She reenforces her teaching by offering you a large, clean, lovely space to practice. I just love how I don't need to use scrap paper to practice, and I can see my progress by flipping through the book.After you get the letter forms down, she moves on to teach you how to connect letters and how to make them "dance." But those lessons I feel like are extras. The main point here is acquire a solid foundation through practice.I think this is a great book for the serious beginner. On the other hand, you don't really need this if you already have basic hand lettering skills.Also, I highly recommend getting a pack of the Tombow dual brush pens to practice with. They're easy to use for a beginning, super smooth and the colors are so bright. All my letters in the photos are done with Tombow markers. The primary color pack is on sale on amazon now for around $12! That's a steal.Hope this review helped!

My wife has an interest in calligraphy and even has a nice pen set that her grandmother left her but just hasn't ever gotten down to learning how to do it. A conversation recently sparked the idea in my head of getting her a book like this for Christmas so here I am. I browsed for awhile before finding this book and just had a feeling as soon as I saw it. It had some great reviews and just looked like it was very nicely put together, which it very much is!It has nice thick spiralbound covers and an overall cheerful design with the dots on it and there's quite a bit of content inside. I've thumbed through it a few times and it has a ton of exercises for each letter in a few different styles and reminds me of a fun textbook the way it's laid out. What really caught my attention while looking it over is the little arrows that flow around the letter indicating the pen strokes. I'm not sure if this is common in these books or unique to this one but without actually sitting down and reading everything before that section I could clearly see how the letters flowed from beginning to end. There's even a section for little simple illustrations you can add.It's high quality in it's design and the content and lessons provided. I have zero doubt that the wife is going to love it and have no problem learning rather quickly. I might even try my hand at it considering how straightforward it looks! Overall I'm happy with the book and feel like I picked the right one for sure. I would definitely recommend.

One day I was looking through Amazon for books that I could use to help me with my new interest and hobby- calligraphy/brush lettering! I found a few that I liked and purchased them. I liked them. They were ok. But they didn't give me that excitement, none provided me with the style that I was interested in. So, I got back on Amazon and searched for more books. Then I came upon hand lettering 101 by chaulkfulloflove! Just the cover of this book alone grabbed my attention, it was the style that I was looking for! I saw that it was unavailable at the time but was only available for pre-order. I'm so glad that I preordered my copy back in March. The wait was worth while.I read the details at the bottom about this book on Amazon and saw that she was on Instagram. So immediately, I started following her. I am so glad I did because one day she announced that her book was soon to be available!!!I finally received my copy earlier this week. It was like Christmas for me. I kept checking my door to see if it was delivered (haha), when it finally came, I literally tore it open. LOL.I LOVE THIS BOOK! It's probably my only favorite hand lettering book thus far. It's so informative and I love all the drills she's provided in it. It certainly was well thought out.Thank you for creating such a great book. This surely helps out a lot for a beginner like myself ;)

EDIT: I changed from 2 stars to 4 stars because I received the comment from ChalkfullofLove and did as was suggested (downloaded the extras) -which indeed makes it more of a 'real' book. There are more fonts, and some more help, practice areas and "projects" to try - though I still maintain that more instruction/explanation is needed - I think this would be better if the downloadable material was actually put in all the book. I am an artist by trade and do not think this book is for people like me - I was looking for something with more technical help. This is definitely not that book. I would recommend this book for someone with general interest in the subject or looking for a fun book. It fits that bill just fine.ORIGINAL ...it's not really ready. I am a beginner in the world of hand lettering and while I do appreciate the talent the writer possesses I am not happy that this book did not have more help, instruction and real practice. There was plenty of room for these to be added in that half the book is empty. It is a beautifully bound book but that does not make up for a lack of substance. Each of the fonts should have a discussion and practice pages, there should have been one of two suggested small projects for the beginner as well as more explanation for each of the fonts, how to get more ideas for fonts and where to go for more advanced learning. It had none of these. I feel like it was a huge waste of money when I bought 2 other books that cost less and were more helpful. Also, it seemed that the type was overly large, just to take up space. Perhaps a later edition might include a couple of smaller fonts, for those of us who want to be able to do more than large posters. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book to anyone.

This is a beautiful practice book. It's top-shelf all the way. The spiral binding makes it easy to minimize space. The cover is sturdy so you can use this without a table or desk beneath it. The paper is smooth and thick. The lettering drills, flourishes, and words are easy to use. Modern calligraphy is so much more fun than old-style calligraphy--more creative than "precise." This will make a wonderful gift for anyone even remotely interested in modern calligraphy--especially for yourself!

Highly satisfied with my Spiral Hand Lettering Workbook! The hardcover adds durability, protecting the pages and maintaining a sleek appearance. The spiral binding allows for easy flipping and lays flat, facilitating a comfortable writing experience. The workbook's structured approach and engaging exercises are perfect for honing hand lettering skills. The quality of paper is excellent, preventing ink bleed-through. Whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your lettering techniques, this workbook is a valuable and aesthetically pleasing resource. Five stars for its thoughtful design and effectiveness!

My review may be partially biased because I think author Sarah (@chalkfulloflove) is just amazing. One of the reviews is very detailed in sharing how the book doesn't really detail how to link the letters and I would have to agree that I too expected something different. However, I think understanding that Sarah is a self-taught entrepreneur is an extra push to understand that in order for anyone to master this, you're going to have to (and need to) do a lot of practicing. Maybe that's why the "101" is there ... to remind all of us that this is just an introduction to get you started. I would suggest buying paper solely for practicing. The truth is, once you learn how to do the individual letters, I would assume you can do just about anything with a variety of pens. I do wish the back pages weren't blank and had lined spaces where you practice (and to keep it nice and neat). I didn't really think that many of my letters looked like hers when I started practicing, but again, I've never done this before. All in all, if you're looking for a basic intro, it's a good book. If you want to be amazing at this overnight, you'll probably want something different (like Youtube videos) and then just practice it on your own. I have to give kudos to Sarah for a beautiful book that's well put together, very good quality paper, and again, it at least gets you started.

I've looked at a lot of books about lettering since I hate my handwriting and want to write like all the crafty creative people I follow on Instagram because I'm a total conformist. I was super excited to find this book because the author is one of the people I follow on Instagram, and I really like her work. This book does exactly what it promises, which is teach you how to create beautiful lettering like what's on the cover. Other books I own and have looked at just include a lot of examples for you to try to copy; this book EXPLAINS how to create this lettering style, step by step. I've done some practice already with it, and feel confident that my handwriting will soon look Instagram-able. The book gives examples to practice with and copy like other lettering books, but the added bonus is that the author includes arrows with each example to show when and where to move your pen, so you don't have to figure out HOW to copy it, which is great.Just so you know, the author shows a few other styles of lettering different from the one on the cover, to show you other lettering options, but the main focus of the explanations is the type of lettering you see on the book cover. Other lettering books will give you many more kinds of lettering styles and options, but I wanted to learn THIS style of lettering, which this book definitely delivers.However, I didn't give the book a higher rating because in spite of the great content (as compared to other similar books), this book unfortunately does fall prey to what other lettering books do: include a bunch of extra unnecessary pages and make you pay through the nose for them. There are 20 entirely blank pages at the back of the book that are included as "practice" pages. They're not a printing mistake because they're numbered, and the first 2 of those pages instruct you to "use these pages for practice." They contain no dotted lines for practice, nothing. If you pay the full retail price for this book, that's $5.50 you just paid for 20 blank pages. I already own blank paper that I didn't pay a fortune for, thanks. I'd rather have more guided examples.I'm happy about using this book for lettering practice because I do think it's the best one out there right now for what I want to learn, but I'm really happy that I received an Amazon gift card as a birthday present so I could buy this book and not actually spend my own money on it.

Meraviglioso!!

Me encanta el tipo de lettering que puedes practicar, pero la subida de precio ha estado de más, el contenido teórico es casi inexistente. Son prácticas.

予約していたものでしたが大幅に遅れて届きました。予約の意味はなかった(笑)内容は初心者向けのワークブックといった感じで、普通のペンやマーカーを使って書けるカジュアルなカリグラフィーという感じなので、気軽に始められると思います。逆に、既にカリグラフィーを学んでいらっしゃる方には、あまり参考にはならないかも。内容から考えると、ちょっとお高いかなとは思いました。

Faux Lettering, pero muy bonito diseño e ideas!!! Vale la pena comprarlo por su calidad y presentación de contenidos, lo recomiendo!!!

What a sweet book with nice exercises! If you want to learn hard lettering you can buy this book, but be prepared to work very hard on the exercises to go for perfection. Love it!