{personal photo}

If your handwriting is anything like mine, there’s no chance you’d even consider hand-writing your place cards {or any other paper aspect for your event}. But with this fun and easy tip {spotted last year in the Weddingbee forums}, you can easily fool your guests in to thinking you have a knack for gorgeous calligraphy. That is, of course, if you don’t post an image like this to your Facebook page, and have guests over later that day who happen to see that very same image :)

How to DIY: The trick is to use a very light colored font before printing, then just use your pen of choice and trace the letters. For my Thanksgiving place cards above, I chose a heavy kraft paper card stock with Nelly Script Flourish as my font, and I then used a white gel pen to trace. I was going to use a metallic silver pen, but couldn’t find it on time.

Other ideas: use a larger font size and create a menu board for your wedding or Bride & Groom, Mr. & Mrs., Mr. & Mr., etc. signage, use a fine-tipped glue pen and dust with glitter for metallic place cards (I’m totally doing this for an upcoming project), or use black paper with a white pen to achieve a “chalkboard” look.

Easy, fun, and best of all: inexpensive. While nothing will replace the value of hand calligraphy that a talented calligrapher can do for your paper design, this is a great option for smaller scale events where the cost/time of a professional calligrapher just isn’t in the cards.