Christmas brush letter artwork (with free printable)
Hello everyone, I’m back and with my first festive post of the year ah, how exciting! I have a great cozy night in craft for all you Hygge fans and not just that, I’ve got a free printable for you to download if you too want to create this gorgeous, festive brush lettered phrase.
The lovely Olivia from Random Olive got in touch because she’d seen some of my posts about Bullet Journaling. She specialises in creating awesome practice guides to help people master the art of brush lettering. As you all know I am always trying to improve my hand lettering skills (especially to make my BuJo prettier) so when she offered to create a free printable for me and my readers I couldn’t wait to try it.
We decided to create a few festive phrases which you can print out, practice with and then frame for some unique, homemade holiday decor. The first phrase we went with was the perfect ‘it’s the most wonderful time of the year’.
As you can see Olivia sent me an exclusive brush letter practice guide with my phrase faintly shown so I can practice practice practice. I also used her amazing Brush Letter Practice Guide* which comes with pages and pages of practical advice and tips on how to up your brush letter game. If like me you are completely new to brush lettering then this guide is perfect! It comes with printable guides for the letters in both upper and lower case, number guides and even a guide to pairings of letters. There is also really handy suggested practice schedule which I am going to embark on, as well as advice on the best tools and supplies to use. Inspired by her Instagram I decided to purchase a Pentel Aquash water brush* in medium as I thought it would give me slightly more control than using a regular paintbrush.
To begin with I used this guide to drawing all the lowercase letters. Because this sheet is designed to show you the strokes needed to create the letters it is printed dark, there are practice sheets for every individual letter which are printed nice and feint so that you can practice over the top.
After practicing a few of the individual letters I decided to try going through the lowercase alphabet over the top of the guide sheet. The waterbrush did take some getting used to, as did learning when to apply pressure to change the thickness of the lines.
Here you can see what the printed practice guide looks like, there is a download link at the bottom of this post for you to get your own.
This is the first line from my first practice, as you can see the guide letters are easy to see but feint enough that you can cover them with your paint. there are guide lines including a dotted line which makes getting the right letter height a doddle.
This is my finished attempt, I am pleased with how it came out for a first practice attempt but I definitely need to spend some time working my way through the whole guide. I found the hardest parts were getting the pressure right to create distinct thick and thin lines and also manouvering the brush around tricky curves like the small loops joining the W to the O in ‘wonderful’.
Feeling confident after a few practice runs I decided to print out some blank lined sheets to see if I could re-create the phrase without the guide letters. I’m pleased with how this looks for a first attempt although my letters definitely aren’t all uniform. I think I need to practice a bit more before I make the leap to writing this out on plain paper.
Here you can see my 2 favourite attempts (the middle sheet is the one I did without guide letters). Clearly I need to practice a bit more and also work on how regularly to load up the brush with more paint to create more of a consistent colour. However, for a beginner I’m really happy with how they turned out. I think with some more practice this could be a really pretty phrase to frame and hang up as part of my Christmas decoration. I’m even thinking that drawn with a silver or gold marker on black cardstock this phrase would really pop. Although, I think I need to master the waterbrush first before moving onto other pen types. 🙂
And here you can see my two favourite attempts side by side, guess which one was done without guide letters haha!
I really am glad to have found Random Olive, her work is so inspiring (seriously go check out her IG) and her blog is full of great guides for things like Bullet Journal headers and personalised prints. She also has an awesome shop where you can download practice guides, or if you don’t have time to learn her ways she also sells beautiful prints which make the perfect Christmas gift.
If you’d like to download this printable and create your own ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year’ Christmas artwork then pop your details in the form below. And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram if you do make your own version of this artwork, I’d love to see what twist you put on it. 🙂
Love, Sarah x
P.S. This post contains affiliate links which help me with the cost of running this blog, where used they are noted with *