2014-2015 / Clients: Victoria Smith of SFGirlByBay; Women & Whiskies - Campari America
I’ve always thought the idea of chalkboard lettering to be super daunting (maybe I’ve been watching too many Dana Tanamachi time lapse videos — how does she do it?!) and when a friend of mine referred me to Victoria Smith (!) as a chalkboard letterer, I almost freaked out and said no. But, we raise our hands and do things before we’re ready right? 😉
I’ve always thought the idea of chalkboard lettering to be super daunting (maybe I’ve been watching too many Dana Tanamachi time lapse videos — how does she do it?!) and when a friend of mine referred me to Victoria Smith (!) as a chalkboard letterer, I almost freaked out and said no. But, we raise our hands and do things before we’re ready right? 😉
My first assignment for Victoria was a large chalkboard cocktail menu. It sounded simple enough in concept, but this was a whole new medium for me. First, I consulted some amazing sign painters and chalkboard letterers (shoutout to Remy Chwae!) for some tool tips (do *not* use chalk — water soluble crayons are the way to go), and got to work. Now, by this time I had a pretty good idea about my lettering style, and it was something I could control on paper, but getting it onto a chalkboard was a big challenge. There’s probably a way easier way to do this, but I started the only way I could figure out how: by printing my initial lettering out in actual size, chalking the opposite side, tracing it onto the board, and using my chalk to fill in the letters.
Really painful process shots here. Notice my mismatched socks (to show scale! Haha!) and cluttered room! It took an entire day (true story) of sketching, overthinking, erasing, aligning, and finally, writing, to get it done. It was an insane challenge, but boy was I excited that I started the chalkboard lettering journey.
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HERE'S MY VERSION OF THE FINAL BOARD:
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But, of course, it looked way better at the actual event. All photos c/o Victoria Smith (SFGirlByBay):
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My second assignment for Victoria was another chalkboard for another party — a holiday one this time. Same concept, same process, only this time, it took me half the time to do. (Progress!) I still did my chalking + outline process (letterers please let me know how you do this aside from being amazing and writing this out freehand).
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Victoria also asked me to write out some tags for DIY cocktails — can I just say that writing things out by hand is one of my favorite things to do? (Well, I wasn’t thinking that by the 20th tag, but still, I had a blast making these!)
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Final board:
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Absolutely loved how they ended up styling this!
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A bonus: a third menu for SKYY Barcraft (via Victoria, too!)
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