How to create a hand-lettering gift using the brushEX pens

Create a gift using your hand lettering

Once you've built your brush calligraphy skills, you can put them to use to create thoughtful personalised gifts for any occasion, from wedding favours to birthday presents. The options are huge!

For her latest project tutorial, Andra from Ada D. Letters has created this lovely bookmark, which would make a super gift for any bookworm. This design brings together a few different brush pens but you could use different pens to achieve a similar effect.

To get the look of a clear area in the middle of her lettering, Andra erased the pastel lettering using the amazing brushEX marker. The results achievable from the brushEX can vary greatly with different pen brands, colours and paper stocks but as you can see here, it works amazingly well on the Calli.Brush pens, so we strongly recommend these for this project.

Here's what you need:

Step-by-step guide:

1. Using pastel brush pens, write your chosen sentiment or message onto thick paper stock, leaving plenty of room around the design for it to be cut out.

2. Take the brushEX marker and brush across the area you wish to erase. For our design, this is a narrow rectangle across the middle of the word 'Love'. Use the brushEX pen sparingly on your first attempt, adding more of the brushEX liquid if needed to erase your pastel lettering.

3. Once the brushEX solution is completely dry you can write over it with your black brush pen. Use a different font and colour to contrast well with your pastel lettering.

4. Add a simple shadow to your pastel lettering using a light grey brush pen - Andra used the one from the Calli.Brush Pastel Edition set. Add highlights using a white gel pen.

5. Trim your design to a bookmark shape and, optionally, punch a hole in one end for a tassel. Andra used a corner-rounder punch to finish off the corners but you could equally do this with a pair of scissors.

For more inspiration from Andra, follow her on Instagram at @adadletters

All the tools you need to create this project are available here at Pen Pusher: