Personalizing Your Ketubah: Stencils + Handwriting
Filed under: Easy, Personalization
Okay, you’ve done some preparation. Now you have a sheet of paper in front of you. There are so many things you can do with it! I’m going to show you a bunch of different ways to personalize the top of your ketubah. Today’s project will be the first of many.
Do it Your Way
The project we’re going to do today uses a combination of stencils, simple capital letters, and cursive. My motto in general is: play to your strengths. If you can’t be super refined and elegant with your hand skills, be funky and contemporary. That’s what I did here.
Because I want to show you just how easy it is to personalize your own ketubah, we’re going to use English only in this project. Traditionally, you might also personalize your ketubah in Hebrew, but as I’ve already mentioned in the kit, these are not traditional texts to begin with, so let’s keep it simple. I’m planning some Hebrew personalization projects for future posts, so stay tuned, if that’s what you’re after.
Materials
You probably already have most of these things in your home. Even if you don’t, you can use substitutes. I always favor using what’s lying around, because you can get started right away and it’s free!
Paper
Pencil
Eraser
Ruler (You can use any straight edge if you don’t have one.)
Pen (I like size 01. You can also use any ballpoint pen.)
Letter stencils (These are optional, but fun!)
Preparing
Grab the introductory text you want to use and write it out a few times in your regular handwriting on a scrap piece of paper. You’ll immediately get a sense for line length. The names in my example, for instance, are kind of long. I personally decided that I would use small letters for those to try to keep them all on one line. You might use multiple lines for the names, and that’s fine. Just get a sense for how you want to break things up before you start lettering your text.
Practice makes perfect
Before we even get started, a gentle reminder: there are going to be multiple drafts involved here. To the right, you’ll see the first attempt I made. If you click on it to see the full-size version, you’ll notice that I messed up “San Francisco,” amusingly. I also made the top a bit crooked, and the “g” in “together” is pretty awkward.
But, hey. This was just an initial stab to see whether the general idea would work, and by those standards, I’d say it came out alright! Just be cool with making mistakes, and you’ll end up with something good.
Draw a Grid
The first thing you want to do is draw some soft horizontal lines in pencil that are spaced about 1/2 inch apart. Start from the bottom, near the text from the PDF, so that you’re working up from the lowest point you want to go with your hand-lettered introduction. Don’t worry about getting the lines exactly spaced. Just move your ruler or straight-edge up a little bit and draw lines.
This is just a basic grid you’re going to use to keep things straight. If you want your introductory text to be flush with the type, you can also draw vertical grid lines at the right and left edges of the text, so that you have a sense of the edges you’re using for alignment. You probably won’t actually use all the lines, so don’t sweat anything. We’re going to erase the lines in the end, anyway.
Lettering from the bottom up
Like the lines you pencilled in, you’re going to be lettering from the bottom up. It’s kind of awkward, because you’re not writing sequentially, but it means you’ll do a better job of judging the space correctly.
Pick the last line of your introductory text as your starting point. If you want to play with the stencil, choose a smaller-sized letter. I used the 1/2″ tall letters because those seemed to be the best size to fit my text. I also used some simple capital letters and cursive, which I practiced a bit before I got started.
Note for lefties: If you’re left-handed, you’ll want to write right to left to prevent smudging, or put a glossy piece of paper under your hand. (Discarded photos work well, because they don’t smudge and they keep the oils from your hand off the paper.)
Mix and Match Styles
My approach is to vary the lettering style line by line, and sometimes even within each line. From a design standpoint, you usually want to keep things looking really alike, or really different. Going for really different is easier, and also more fun.
You’ll notice that no one line is all stencil. That’s because I like cheating the space with a different mix of styles. If you use a stencil to write in a whole line, sometimes you go way under or over the line length you want. I found that by changing up between stenciled letters, capital letters, and my (kind of awkward) cursive, I could judge the space as I went a bit more, and make up for line length variation by making skinnier or fatter letters, as needed.
Additional Grid Lines
As you move up the page, writing your lines from the bottom up, you’ll probably find that you need additional grid lines. Every time I finished a line, I judged how tall it was and how much room I wanted above it before starting on the next line. I took my ruler and drew another soft line in pencil exactly where I wanted the baseline of the letters to be for the line above it. This eliminated a lot of fudging.
Improvising
A few times, I got started on a line and realized I was doing something I didn’t plan, either because I remembered the text differently than it was originally written, or I skipped a line, or some such. I’ve found that the best way to deal with mistakes is to lean into them, meaning: go with it! It’s just a piece of paper. Do something different than what you were planning to do–it’s okay.
This made for some fun variation, and in some cases, I found that I liked my mistakes better than the original plan. If you enlarge the various examples you see to the right, you’ll notice that they’re different takes on the same idea. In fact, I skipped stencils entirely on the last version I did. Variation is good–it means you have options.
Erasing the Grid
Once you’re done lettering, it’s time to erase your tracks. Be very careful with this part; vigorous erasing can lead to crinkled paper if you get carried away. Be patient and softly erase each line.
You’re done!
You’ve got a personalized ketubah in your hands. Next time, I’ll show you what you can do with the sheet of paper you just finished to easily make it into a larger piece of art.
In the meantime, don’t forget to share your beauties with me! And if you’re just getting started, you can sign up to get step-by-step instructions to make your own ketubah.
