DIY calligraphy card

This card was made for my brother, who never reads this blog so I can post this without any fear of him seeing this too soon.  He was just awarded an aviation scholarship by a major airline.  As if he wasn't a big enough deal to begin with! I'm daily learning I'm not cool enough to be his sister.  All the cool in the family went to him.  All of it.  Anyway, he's still on the other side of the country where I am unable to shower him with praise and lots of hootin' and hollerin'.  So I decided to truly go postal on him (get it? Postal?) and send him a shout out.  

The thing is, all I had were some wedding cards and a set of blank folded notes from the clearance section at Target.  While I loved the colors of my discount paper, they still didn't quite send the whole message I was going for.  They needed some sprucing.  

If you are looking for an easy project, this would definitely be it.  It took me longer to take the photos, edit them, and write this post than to actually make the card.  The card took a max of five minutes.  Two of those were spent hunting down my felt tip pen.  It's just so easy.

What you'll need:

1. a blank notecard of whatever size and shape.

2. a pencil and eraser

3. a felt-tip pen

1. Grab your blank notecard and pencil.  Lightly write in cursive what you want the card to say.  

2.  With the pencil, create a bubble effect to the letters, loosely following your original lines.  For more of a calligraphy look, add chunkier sections next to thin lines.

3.  Grab your felt tip pen.  I like using a fine point as it gives me skinny, skinny part of letters.  Trace your pencil lines and then fill in between like in a coloring book.

4.  Give the ink a few moments to dry then take eraser and remove remaining pencil lines.  If you do this before the ink dries, there will be smudging.  Think mascara dripping down a face in a rainstorm kind of smudging.  It's not pretty, so just give it a second, okay?  Okay.

And that's it.  Really.  Honestly, trying to explain how to do this is more complicated than actually doing it.  So go hit the clearance section for blank paper and make some cards people!