Writing on Leather

 WRITING IDEAS

It would be a plus to your leatherwork, to learn to write in a calligraphy style.  I learnt to do "Italic" - you write it with a wide pen nib (or a wide woodburning tip):

I will show you many examples, but first let us get a No-No out of the way:

When using a very fancy alphabet stamp set, do NOT stamp the whole name/word in uppercase. It looks very wrong. 

This is an examle of writing that would have been unreadable if it was done in upper case only:

The more everyday letter stamp sets that are still sold today, can be used as is (they usually do not even have lower case letters included):

Many crafters have problems in lining the letters up.

If your project (and personality) allows, you can purposefully have the letters not in  straight line, as in this example:

Sometimes the writing makes up a big part of the overall design.  That would make it worth spending some extra time on the writing to make it pop:

Here is an example of freehand writing done with a swivel knife:

Of course, it is also a lot of fun to do the writing is such a way that it compliments other elements of the project:

This was written with an A105 background stamp, the same a the border.

...and this one was done in a woodwork design:

The writing on the left was done with a very thin tip Sharpie, and the Italic lettering on the right was done with a permenent ink Calligraphy pen:

When you use permanent ink pens to write on leather, make sure to test first how the writing will hold up to the sealer/conditioner you intend to put over it.

For example, a waterbased sealer like NeatLac will fade out a waterbased ink.

I hope these examples will inspire you to try different ways to write on leather where the design calls for it!

I will continue to place examples here as I work through my photos..... if this helps you, you can come back and look at the updates!