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Calligraphy Starter Kit

what you need to kickstart your journey

  1. Calligraphy 101 – The Beginning
  2. My Nib Collection
  3. Let’s talk Holders
  4. Calligraphy material save or splurge
  5. Let’s talk Words
  6. Get Better Hairlines
  7. My Top Black Inks
  8. Whiteout: White Ink Showdown
  9. Calligraphy Starter Kit
  10. Handmade Pen Holders

Calligrpahy requires a lot more tools than most other writing instruments and not a day goes by that I don’t get at least one message of people asking what tools they need to get their own calligraphy adventure started.
I am writing the calligraphy 101 series, which should give you a general idea on the tools needed, but for some people that is not enough. Some people want to know exactly what products they should get. If you are one of those people – this post is for you.
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Luis Creations Soap vs. Intllab Magnetic Stirrer

Battle of the Ink Mixers

  1. Luis Creations Soap vs. Intllab Magnetic Stirrer
  2. Battle of the 2-in-1 Pen Holders – Deuce vs. Moblique
  3. Colored Fudenosuke Brush Pens First Impression / Review / Comparison to Zebra Funwari Pens

The moment you first experience the joy of having a little device mixing ink for you, you’ll never want to go back into a non-automatic ink stirring reality. I had seen people using Lab Stirrers quite a while ago, back when I was still mostly brush lettering and only dabbling in the world of Calligraphy. Back then I knew I couldn’t even justify spending $50 on a gadget that sure would use up quite a lot of space. But then my obsession happened. And then Luis released his video of a pretty, compact, absolutely adorable ink stirrer for Calligraphers and I knew I had to get it. And I did. And ever since that and the Launch of the InkMeThis stirrer the Calligraphy World is rediscovering stirrers. I very often get people asking me about supplies on a budget and as a student I 100% understand what you mean. So I jumped on Aliexpress and ordered a cheap lab stirrer and decided to do a comparison of the two. (Sorry guys, not many pictures this time round though…)
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Whiteout: White Ink Showdown

The Good, The Amazing, The Worst

  1. Calligraphy 101 – The Beginning
  2. My Nib Collection
  3. Let’s talk Holders
  4. Calligraphy material save or splurge
  5. Let’s talk Words
  6. Get Better Hairlines
  7. My Top Black Inks
  8. Whiteout: White Ink Showdown
  9. Calligraphy Starter Kit
  10. Handmade Pen Holders

White Inks are a whole subject of their own. A while ago I wrote about black inks and the different types of inks available, so I’ll just reference you to that for this kind of information. This time round, I dug out all of the white inks I had available (and bought some new ones) to give you an ultimate white ink showdown.
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Automated Discounts & Fees

Add or Remove Money based on Cart Data in WooCommerce

I haven’t written a proper nerdy post in a while, and since it took me quite a while to figure this out in a way that worked for my use case, I decided to get this all written up, in case anyone else here takes enough pride in their coding, that they just refuse to pay 150 bucks a year for a thing they can write up in under two hours.

What am I even talking about? Discounts and fees, based on the Items added in your cart. I’m not talking about applying some Coupon Code based on the Cart Information, but a proper positive or negative fee, that shows up as it’s own line in the Cart. Here’s how you do it.

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My Top Black Inks

Plus you’ll also learn about different types of ink and which aren’t vegan

  1. Calligraphy 101 – The Beginning
  2. My Nib Collection
  3. Let’s talk Holders
  4. Calligraphy material save or splurge
  5. Let’s talk Words
  6. Get Better Hairlines
  7. My Top Black Inks
  8. Whiteout: White Ink Showdown
  9. Calligraphy Starter Kit
  10. Handmade Pen Holders

Me and black ink have a pretty strong bond and somewhat of a long history. Back in my school days I got/had to use fountain pens every day and I’m gonna be honest, I just never liked the default royal blue. That was before Social Media and before I learned about this wonderfully amazing thing we call Online Shopping so all I knew was a very limited palette of ink, notably Royal Blue (urgh), Dark Green (not allowed in School), Red (loved it, also prohibited), Pink (my top favorite, but also not okay in school) and black (OMG, it’s allowed to use, it’s not freaking royal blue and it’s kinda awesome!). Me and black ink were a pretty big thing and if you look at old notebooks of mine, before all of my dark reds and burgundies and turquoise they are pretty much exclusively written in black. So to say that me and black ink go way back is a bit of an understatement, since it’s basically been with me for most of my life, since I was around 8 years old. But black and me in Calligraphy didn’t have the easiest of starts, because I tried a lot of inks I didn’t like. That has changed now though.
So let’s talk about my Top 5 (alright, it’s 6…) Black inks. But first we’ll dive a bit into different types of inks you can get nowadays and learn all about the differences. When I shared some information about this on Instagram a while ago I was contacted by a few vegans who were a bit surprised but also really thankful because they hadn’t realized that those paints were not animal-product-free. I personally eat meat and am thus not a vegan, but since I know a bunch of people in this lettering community are, this might be helpful to you. And I think it’s generally very interesting.
Continue reading “My Top Black Inks”