Emily Jones of jones design company (a fantastic and creative blog I recently discovered) posted this great tutorial on how to “fake” calligraphy. My Aunt had bought me a calligraphy set when I was a kid and I remember how fun it was to dip the pen in the ink and try to replicate the lettering in my instruction booklet, but it takes a lot of practice and a lot of time. For those that don’t have the equipment, skill or patience to master the art of calligraphy, this tutorial is for you!

First, choose a good fine tip ink pen.

I usually like these pilot precise extra fine pens the best, but just bought the foray stylemark at the office store and it’s a good one too.

Now, write your letter. You can do it in pencil first if you prefer, or just freehand.

To give your letter the calligraphy look, you will need to make all of the down strokes thicker and filled in {as if you were writing with an angled calligraphy pen}.

Every time your pen stroke goes downward {as seen with the arrows above}, just draw a close line and fill it in.

See how easy it is?

Here’s another example.  I wrote the word love in cursive:

then filled in the down strokes:

Doesn’t it look fancy?  You can transform your handwriting to make it look like calligraphy very simply and easily with just a few extra pen strokes.

Source: jones design company