My First Year At Lettering

My name is Michaela Cooper (Minni), the person behind the Instagram page @someminspiration, and that is me, below.

I started lettering in January 2018 but I had looked for a creative outlet pretty much my entire life. I tried anything I could think of, scrapbooking, I learnt to knit, jewellery making, you name it but nothing stuck and then I found a lettering account on Instagram which led me to find more and that was it, I fell in love with lettering and a year later I’m still if not more in love with it than the day I started.

If you have just started lettering or if lettering is something you would like to try, I just going to talk about a couple of things that helped me when I first started.

This is my lettering art exactly one year ago when I first started.

1 Practice...

I know that literally every person says this but that is because it is the only way to do it. It doesn’t matter how you practice. Some people like practice sheets to work up their muscle memory and there are so many good ones to use, personally I find those boring so I learnt from tips on Instagram and Pinterest and just wrote words over and over.

2 Follow other artists

Inspiration, tips, encouragement and ideas are all things you gain from looking at other artists work, but I recommend following artists with really different styles to each other because that will stop you from thinking there is only one way to do something and will remind you to do what you like and be different.

3 Reach out to the community

Go one step further than just looking at other artists, comment on their artwork, ask them a question, compliment what you like, you would be amazed at how supportive, helpful and kind the lettering community can be, even the really popular, busy artists are really in touch with their followers and its a real boost when you’re starting out to feel like part of the group.

And one last thing,

4 “your style”

This word goes around a lot and if you’re just started out this is going to be on your mind a lot but I want you to remember something, you don’t create your signature style, you already have it in you, you just have to keep practicing and experimenting and it will come out on its own, I know it’s really hard because you will want to find it as soon as possible so you can have your own “thing” but I promise the more you create a pattern will emerge and all of a sudden you’ll be like “hey this is my style” a Don’t let yourself get stuck because you don’t know what you should be doing, just do!

Keep Practicing and Don’t Be Afraid.

This is my style, exactly one year after starting.

I hope you liked hearing about some things that I wish I could tell myself when I first started, if you read this hit me up on Instagram and we can have a chat @someminspiration

Lots of love,

Minni xoxo