Tip: Fixing Calligraphy Mistakes!

In this blog post, I am excited to share a tip on how you can save a ton of time with two simple tools!

Ever work on a project only to realize you made a spelling error?? 😩✋🏼. It seems to be a common occurrence ever since I became a calligrapher! But before you decide to start all over and spend another couple hours re-doing your piece, make sure to try this calligra-hack first! It literally saved me a couple weeks ago.

Here's the before photo. Right as I was about to ship it out, I thought to myself "Hm..let me just double triple check the spelling to make sure everything is correct". Sure enough, there was an error in her last name. It should have been Dusmann, NOT Dussman! 😩😭

Thankfully, because the number of letters remained the same, I didn't have to erase the entire flourish but only work on fixing and rewriting 3 letters.

Materials You Need:

• Xacto Knife
• Tombow Sand Eraser

Steps:

1. You want to take your xacto knife and gently scrape away the ink from the paper. Depending on how thick your paper is, you may have to adjust the angle of the knife to paper to make sure you are not digging too deep into the paper and causing dents. For this piece, I'm using Canson XL 140 lb cold pressed watercolor paper.

2. After the letters are removed, I like to take the Tombow sand eraser (which has the right amount of grit to remove any other remaining ink that's left on the paper). Again, you want to be gentle when using this eraser to avoid ruining the final paper.

3. Optional step - If you feel that too much fiber got lifted off the paper and you need to smooth it out, some helpful comments I got from my instagram post included using a burnisher tool, kneaded eraser, piece of glassine envelope + bone folder, or lightly apply hair spray to smooth out the fibers. Personally for this particular piece, I didn't do anything other than lightly smoothing out the area with my finger.

4. Now, it's time to write the correct letters! :) Breathe, take it slow..you got this. It was nerve wrecking in the moment, but this is how the after looked like. I don't think it's shabby considering this fix saved me 3 hours of painting/writing this all over again! ❤️

Hope you found that helpful. You can find more of my supply recommendations here. This page will continually be updated with ongoing recs, so be sure to bookmark that page.

Here is the finished watercolor/calligraphy piece that I created for a friend to remember her daughter's birth details 🌸