Monograms

By rowarrior

Monograms have suddenly gained popularity as a way to emphasise initial letters either in titles or to be the entire title. They come in a range of styles and sizes, and it can be as easy to make your own as it is to buy the ready made ones courtesy of the likes of Basic Grey or Heidi Swapp. The main thing to remember is that they should be large, at least in comparison to your journaling, so start thinking big font sizes! The main categories are stamped letters, stencil letters, letter tiles and computer font letters, and can be made as follows:

Foam letter stamps are an easy choice for stamped monograms. With Making Memories leading the way, and several other companies jumping on the bandwagon, there are now a dizzying variety of sizes and fonts available – arm yourself with your foam brush and acrylic paint and get stamping!

Stencil letters can be either shaped in the traditional office supply store style (and don't forget to check in there to get some to use for their intended purpose as stencils to make your own) or can come like the MM Poolside or Philadelphia fonts punched out of chipboard. Don't forget that you can use both the positive and the negative of the shapes in stencil letters, ie the inside and the outside.

Letter tiles are the best way I could think of to describe things like the Lil Davies Designs chipboard letters, which have letters printed on colourful backgrounds on chipboard.

Computer font letters are ones you've either printed yourself or bought ready made such as Basic Grey's letters. To make your own ones on patterned paper or cardstock, you will need to employ Word Art, and the instructions on how to print text in reverse found in the Handcut Titles article. Quite simply instead of entering a whole sentence to be reverse, you just enter your chose letter, then resize it as appropriate before flipping it and printing it.

To give you some ideas of where you can take monograms, check out the layouts below: