Using Pens
By Angie Felix

Sometimes a paper-crafting project needs a little oomph to make it perfect—a handwritten word, a journaled note, or even just a bit of outlining. It’s easy to add that special touch—all you need it the right pen for the project.

Our designers love to use penwork in their designs. Here are a few ways you can, too.

Using Pens With Templates

Susan Cobb loves to use a metallic gel pen (she especially loves the gold and silver from American Crafts). Susan uses the pen to trace the design of a Diamond Fold or Lattice Fold template onto the back of a piece of vellum or patterned paper, then turns the paper over to cut and fold the pattern. This results in perfectly accented design that coordinates nicely with embossed charms, gold or silver fibers, etc.

Outlining With Pens

Penwork can also take the place of a second mat. In this layout, Paris used one of Susan’s techniques to trace over the patterns in the blue and white papers as well as to add a blue line on the vellum mats. She used a silver pen on the blue snowflakes paper and tag edge and a blue pen on the white snowflakes paper and the vellum edge. The penwork makes the designs stand out, and gives the photo, and its mat definition.

Journaling

Our designers frequently use a simple black pen to journal on many of their projects. Adding your own handwriting to a page or card makes it even more personal. Susan used a black pen combined with alphabet tiles for her journaling on this wedding page. It coordinates perfectly with the black and white papers and photos. TIP: If you don’t care for your own handwriting, do what our designers sometimes do—computer journal in a handwriting font, then trace using a light table or window—it looks like you wrote it yourself!