Writing Calligraphy on an Acrylic Surface | Tips & Tricks

This is Elizabeth of Eliza Ann Calligraphy and I'm just hopping in here today to talk a little bit about writing in calligraphy on an acrylic or glass surface. This is an acrylic piece of plexiglass essentially from Home Depot or Lowe's. You can purchase it at either place and some people for wedding signs often want calligraphy on these clear surfaces for signs and then they tend to prop them up with little wood stands on the bottom. So I thought it would be fun to do a quick overview of the supplies you need and how to do that. So to start off you're obviously going to need a piece of acrylic to use and to write on. Sometimes it helps to have a colored background so you can kind of actually see what you're lettering as opposed to doing it on if you have a white desk or a white surface there's not as much contrast to see what you're doing. So I keep I'm keeping this here for visual purposes. I'm using P.H. Martin's bleed proof white ink. There is a link in my profile for that and then I have a Nikko G nib with a Tachikawa nib holder. I should also mention that you definitely want to have paper towels on hand as well as some kind of glass cleaner. This is just a generic brand from the local grocery store and I'll be using that to clean off the acrylic before we start writing on it because the last thing we want is to have any kind of smudges on here which you can see a couple of them throughout. So let's go ahead and start by cleaning off our piece of acrylic. One thing that you're probably going to have to do when you purchase the acrylic is cut it down to size. I know that I had to cut this one myself and there are tools at Home Depot and Lowe's that you can use to do that. So we're just going to make sure that the surface of this on both sides is completely cleaned off. We don't want any oils or anything to get in the way of the ink when we are writing. All right I've gone ahead and pulled in a piece of paper here because what we're going to want to do is actually write on this paper first and that way we can actually put the acrylic on top of it to see what our design looks like and what our layout needs to be. So I'm just going to choose a generic quote which is one of my favorites and I'm going to go ahead and kind of create my layout on the paper here. Now I went with a really loosey-goosey and kind of whimsical lettering style and that's something that I'll kind of tweak and make look a little more professional and centered and better lettered when I actually transfer over here to my acrylic piece. So the nice thing is if you at least do this part first you can kind of center it on the piece. So obviously this would be too low, this would be too high, but we can go ahead and do it right here in the middle. And by the way I have tried to find a source for this quote and I have not been able to find credit for it. The credit is unknown essentially. All right so I'm going to open up my PH Martens bleed proof ink and for those of you who have not used this before it actually comes very very thick and so you need to dilute it with a little bit of water before you begin using it. So mine has already had water added and I'm just going to ahead and stir it up to make sure that it is ready to be used. And I always keep a paper towel on hand, multiple paper towels, so that way I can go ahead and put my little toothpick that I've used for stirring off here to the side. Now the really cool thing about this is that you can use a nib to write directly on the acrylic. A lot of people don't necessarily realize that. They think you need a special marker, a special type of pen, but as long as you have ink and your favorite nib you will be able to write on the surface. So I'll go ahead and show you what this looks like. It is very temperamental and it has a completely different feeling than paper, so you actually don't need to apply as much pressure when you're writing on acrylic as you do when you are writing on a paper surface. I'm actually running into a couple problems here. The ink isn't sticking as well as I would prefer it to. All right, so as you saw there we ran into a slight problem, so I went ahead and grabbed my rubbing alcohol really quick. Acrylic can be very very finicky, so like depending on the day, the temperature, the humidity, like I'm not even kidding, something may work one day that it doesn't work another day. So in this case my glass cleaner was not a good cleaning element for my acrylic surface. And like I said, I mean I've used it before and it's been fine, but I'm gonna go ahead and start again and I'm cleaning it off with rubbing alcohol. And by the way, the ink comes off very easily. You can just use a little bit of water or rubbing alcohol or anything like that. So once it's clean, definitely don't get any oils on it or anything or your lettering really won't stick at all. To be honest, I'm actually kind of happy that that happened while I was showing you guys because it just goes to show that a lot of projects take a lot of experimentation and trying different things that might not always work depending on what you're doing. So we're gonna go back in here now and try to do this again after cleaning off the surface with the rubbing alcohol instead of with the glass cleaner. So definitely put a paper towel down, excuse me, just to not get your hand, the oils of your hand on the surface anywhere. Already this is working so much better. And like I said, I'm not entirely sure why that is, but that's why I have a couple different things that I can use for cleaning the surface. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and remove the covering, the white sheet from underneath so that you can see a little better how this is turning out so far. So it's completely opaque and clear and what you might have noticed before when I had used the glass cleaner is that the lettering was starting to kind of like pull apart and split on the surface and look really splotchy and that is obviously a look that I did not want. So using the rubbing alcohol made that completely better. So there you have it. Here is our final piece and I'll go ahead and remove the paper from underneath and keeping the black backing like I said, just so you all can see. It turned out really, really well. We have a little bit of splitting of the ink on the end right there, a little bit on the tail of the G right there, but otherwise it's very, very opaque. And so the key to this is just obviously letting it dry fully as well as possible before handling it in any way. It makes the perfect little added touch to a special wedding sign. It would be great for table members or something like that. So hopefully you all enjoyed this video. Once again, I'm sorry that I was absent from the YouTube platform for so long. Feel free to find me over on Instagram as well. I'm super active over there at Eliza Ann Calligraphy and comment below if you have any questions. I also have the links to purchase this holder, the nib, and the ink. So check those out as well. Thanks so much guys. Have a great rest of your day.