Searching for Snail Mail Pals!

I would love to take the opportunity to have a snail mail pal that would be up for exchanging gifts, ideas and letters. What prompted this? I was signing my name at a check out when the cashier, watching very attentively said, “awe man, I wish I could read and write in cursive!” I immediately told her she could with some practice. She then laughed it off like I was telling her to climb Mt. Everest!

So this got me thinking. Even I have been slacking in my penmanship, something that I once took so much pride in.  As a fix on this, I decided it was time to get a pen pal. Someone to provide something other than a bill in my mailbox, as I will do the same for theirs. I’ve tried several sites that promise it but I never get a response back. I don’t want to spend a lot of time and energy on something that won’t be appreciated.

How can you help? Do you know someone who is searching for the same thing? Would you like to have a Snail Mail Pal? I want to gather volunteers for this endeavor. I want to find a creative outlet for those of us who are starving for creative inspirations. If you are interested in this, shoot me an email and lets come up with a good solutions for this need in our world.

Lets beautify the world, one letter at a time.

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Handwriting Practice

I know that I have a fairly decent handwriting for people nowadays, but I always want to be better. Now, anyone that knows me personally, or knows my mom, knows that my mom was always very strict on my handwriting. She knew that I could do better and she pushed me to do just that. Even though at the time, I felt like she was being harsh, I know now that she only wanted me to want to be better and prove to myself that I am better. In kindergarten, she was my teacher. If that wasn’t hard enough, she ripped up every assignment that had less than my best penmanship. Today, I still have a hard time thinking that my handwriting shouldn’t be rewritten over and over.

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So, I started with the sentence that covers every letter of the alphabet. I wrote it in print, cursive, and all caps. These are my typical, everyday handwriting. Then, I tried to do something, different. I must say, that I didn’t like either of these sentences that I practiced. They seemed sloppy and not uniform. Being the perfectionist that I am, I decided that maybe I should try to practice my handwriting a little, especially cursive.

While looking up ways to improve my handwriting, I came across these six basic practice strokes. What I found, going through these strokes is that, some of the basic strokes were actually quite difficult for me. As you can see in the picture below, the 3rd and 6th strokes are where I had the most difficulty. Now why is this, I wonder? If you look at the first stroke, it is straight lines down. I am used to this stroke when I write in all caps, so it was fairly easy. The second stroke required that I draw towards me. As a right-handed writer, I find this stroke to be not only familiar but when I write in cursive, this is typically the angle at which I draw my letters. Now moving onto stroke three, I found this was completely opposite from the angle at which I draw my letters. So I couldn’t keep it consistent, as you can see. The fourth stroke seemed simple because I typically draw straight lines all the time so it flowed still with how I usually write. The fifth stroke was the same as the fourth. It flowed in the direction and angle that I draw on a daily basis. Finally, we move to the sixth shape which was so weird that I couldn’t find a comfortable position to hold the pen that it made it flow.

Moving on from those practice strokes, I decided to look at some basic cursive letter. I am going to start with the lower case then move to upper case letters later.  Looking at the side by side comparison, I can clearly see that just by writing these three pages how well my writing improved. If I continue to practice this technique, I hope to see a larger improvement by the end of the month. After the strokes become more familiar, I will start to write out quotes and sentences that allow me to practice even more.

Have you ever tried to improve your handwriting? Did you use any special techniques that helped you achieve your desired skill level? I would love to know your experiences in the comments below!