Oct 11th Three Way Series | Fonts for Handwritten Titles POSTED

Hello Scrapping Friends! Today I have a brand new edition of my Three Way Series, where we show you creative ways to use and stretch your stash. Today we are going to be playing with fancy handwritten fonts and using them as titles on our pages.

If you are a regular blog reader, then you already know our amazing San does a quarterly Fave Fonts post where she highlights various favorite fonts from around the web. You can find her posts (and lots of handwritten script font freebies) HERE. And ... if you follow Pink Reptile Designs on Facebook or are a Newsletter Subscriber, you will also know that Mirjam often highlights fabulous free fonts that she spots around the web. If you are not a Newsletter Subscriber and want to sign up, CLICK HERE. Trust me, if you haven't seen these fonts, you are missing out. They are usually only available for a short period of time, so when you see them grab them fast.

Before we delve into playing with 3 different versions of fancy handwritten fonts for making fabulous titles on our pages, I want to share some Pinterest inspiration with you. Have a look at these pretty pages. The one thing they all have in common is a big bold title made from a handwritten script font!


Are you ready to try some of these ideas on your digi pages? I know I am. A pretty title with a handwritten font can really make a beautiful statement on a page and give it that final finishing touch. So, let's get started!

1. For the first title I used the Ilana Bloom font. This was a find by Mirjam and was mentioned in a past newsletter and on her Facebook page. I hope you were able to grab it, because it is gorgeous and one of my new favorites! We will be placing the font directly on our page background. Take a look at Pinterest inspiration #3 in the image above. I used black for most of my title, but decided to color the letters of the word "color". I also used a small simple sans serif font for the "filler" words, so the important words will stand out. Here's how my page turned out:


TIP #1: To give it a realistic look on your page use a distressing style, play with opacity, use a low opacity scruffy eraser brush to gently take away some of the "ink", or in your Layer Styles play with the "blending options/blend if" features. These tricks help the font blend into the page background. On my title, you can see the words have a gentle distressed look which makes them feel like they are stamped on the white cardstock, rather than floating on the page.

TIP #2: Sometimes these freebie script/handwritten fonts need some tweaking to look good. You may find that the script letters don't connect so well. If this is the case, play with your Character palette settings. Use the tracking feature to bring the entire word or even individual letters closer together, so they appear "connected" and more like natural script handwriting. If you have puppet warp, you can also move individual letters around to get them to align and connect better. I used both techniques on the word "color" for my title.

2. For my second title example, I used Acryle Script font from Sans' Fav Calligraphy Fonts post. My title has a paper clipped to it and resembles many of the paper pages with the script silhouette titles in the Pinterest inspiration above.


TIP #3: Make a copy of your title text layer. A lot of these features that I am playing with today, to alter my titles, require you to rasterize your text layer and thus make them uneditable. If you decide you don't like something, it is much easier to go back to the original text layer and start over.

TIP #4: These letters connected nicely for me for the most part, but I love the "Seriously" layout (in the Pinterest inspiration above) and wanted to recreate that title look on my page where some of the letters are raised and some are dropped down a bit. It reminds me of a playful title made with alphas. So to do this digitally with a font, I used puppet warp to move, twist, turn, raise some letters and lower other letters to get that fun whimsical look for the title. If you don't have a version of Photoshop with Puppet Warp, you could put the letters on individual layers. Then you would have to move then up and down and twist and turn them. The transform tool's warp feature may also be useful if used gently. Investigate the Filters as well ... a lot of them will help you transform your text.

3. Our last title uses the Lovetime font and you can still find the link on the Pink Reptile Designs Facebook page. (NOTE: As of the time this post was written, it was still available, but please note this could change at any time.) For this handwritten title, I recolored the word "serene" with a gradient adjustment layer. I also made my title into a sticker. For this font, you can see how the "e" and "r" do not align so perfectly. Here is another example where you can play with the tracking, use puppet warp or the transform tool's warp feature, or put some letters on individual text layers to create a seamless script word. I chose to leave this one alone.


TIP #5: I used a premade radial gradient in a rainbow of colors and then swapped out the rainbow colors with the colors found in the papers and elements using my color picker. I find this is easier than creating a gradient from scratch (especially when you are using a lot of colors).

TIP #6: The gradient title was a little too sleek and polished for my taste, so to give it a quick distressed look I added a layer mask to the gradient fill layer, and painting with a scruffy brush in black on that mask, I scuffed up my title just a touch with a low opacity.

TIP #7: Make sure your title font is white so it matches the sticker color. Otherwise when trying to scruff up & distress your title, you will end up with some funky results. If your sticker color is off-white, then simply match the text layer to the off-white color you used for the sticker background.

So that rounds out our three ways to use handwritten script fonts as titles on our digi pages. Hope you are inspired to try some of these tips and tricks on one of your future pages.

can't wait to see your pages Jenn!

Thank you Mirjam. I am so in the mood to keep continuing and scrapping but have to head out really soon for my daughter's HS soccer game. (it's an away game too). If I don't finish it later tonight ... I will for sure work on it tomorrow. I can't wait to play with your DSD kits. :)

Good luck at the soccer game!!!

sorry mirjam ... there was just no way to get a video recording done this week. (i'm not sure they are even worth the time as the views are really low) ... maybe once in awhile i'll do one?

It's so weird that the post views do not match the video views.... But once in a while is perfectly okay Jenn.