After I’ve come up with a phrase and done a preliminary sketch of the type I have in mind, I jump onto Adobe Illustrator to start building. Letters are all made up of repeated shapes and one of the nice things about this kind of hand-lettering is the simplicity of those shapes. Once I had the structure established, I added in the decorative elements indicated in the graphic above.

With an illustration like this I love a drop shadow with an outline.

Once I’m happy with the typography I move onto the composition. With this piece I decided on a shape that worked with the lettering and phrase, then arranged graphic flowers I illustrated around it, focusing on keeping the artwork balanced.

One great way to maintain balance in a piece like this is to reflect the design, so after I organized the flowers on the right side, I just flipped the artwork for the left.

This is my favorite part! I’m all about the embellishment so I like to play around a bit in this stage with outlines, graphic elements, drop shadows, etc. I just keep changing and tweaking things till it feels right.

Last but not least is color. For me this is always the hardest part. If you’re familiar with my work you’ve probably noticed I have a tendency towards orange and pink…

Color plays a large part in contrast, balance, readability, and the overall vibe of the artwork…as you can see from the several failed combos I tried above.

Once my gut approves and I’m done tweaking the artwork, I place it into the downloadable artwork template I have and export it as a high res. to be added to fun products on Printful so they can be purchased on my shop!