When I first began penning my ABCs on one of the many Big Chief tablets my parents would buy me, I obsessed over each letter. Even in Kindergarten, I remember practicing my letters; it was important that my capital letters “touched the top,” and that only lowercase letters with descenders “breached the base.”
I practiced printing using song lyrics from the back of album covers, long passages in my favorite books, and scripture.
At the time, teachers introduced cursive in 3rd-grade, but before that, I had spent hours tracing, starting with my mother’s handwriting. Her handwriting is a beautiful, untamed flowy mixture of print and cursive. On the opposite end, my father’s print is all caps and his handwriting–large, uniformed sweeping strokes–was stately but illegible to my (then) young, untrained eyes. I copied cursive letters long before I could read them.
Even then, I instinctively understood that each person developed a style of writing that was all their own, and I wanted desperately to make my mark with the written word.
I believe the years I spent tracing my parents’ words played a large part in shaping my handwriting style. I print in all caps, and my cursive is a mixture of print and cursive, similar to my mother.
And my obsession over letters never stopped.
My eye is drawn to fonts…
My eye is drawn to fonts–whether on billboards, magazines, book covers, pillows, web design; they fascinate me. I’ve never thought of myself as an artist, and perhaps it is because I don’t like making messes to “create” like so many artists and creatives I know. My work was web design for over a decade because it met two of my life loves – neatness and attention to detail. Also, it paid. Measuring and adjusting pixel after pixel, paying attention to kerning with fonts, spacing and padding properly, etc…was fulfilling.
Over the past two years, the increased use of hand lettering in design planted a seed that developed into a full-on craving to learn the ins and outs of it. If I must be honest, it is more than a little daunting, but I’m ready for daunting. Or, at least I hope I am because I asked for my first-hand lettering book for Christmas, and I’ve begun looking online for a course or series of videos that might get me off to a strong start.
Plus, one of my Instagram friends turned me on to bible journaling, which kept me up for hours one night perusing the pages of others’ Bibles that beautifully expressed their love of particular scripture passages. I’m not partial to all of it; some of the Bible journaling is more like scrapbooking with colorful layers of paper and stickers, and I typically prefer simpler lettering with words penned with black. But, pages like this and this spoke to my heart. I would love to have the skill to do something somewhat similar, among other things, with words.
…sometimes I lose sight of my need to express myself creatively.
As a homeschool parent I spend a significant amount of time listening and guiding my children toward their interests, and sometimes I lose sight of my need to express myself creatively. Writing fills that gap considerably, but I want to expand my relationship with words to create something beautiful–artful even.
I imagine I am not the only one thinking about 2015, and specifically, how to fulfill a quiet yearning in my heart. Am I right? Do you have something that always lingers in the back of your mind? Something you want to try for the first time? Maybe something you’ve tried before but could not get off the ground? My kids have grown older, and while they still need me, they don’t need me the way they did when they were toddlers. Now is the time to “fill my well” a bit.
How will you fill yours? What will be new for you in 2015?
Heather Sanders is a leading homeschooling journalist who inspires homeschooling families to live, love and learn. Married to Jeff, Heather lives in the East Texas Piney Woods where she currently home schools two of her three kids.