Fearless Flourishing: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Embellishing Your Hand Lettering with Swirls, Swoops, Swashes and More

I love this work book! First off, it's absolutely beautiful and the examples are GORGEOUS! But more than that, this book is truly a workbook. It takes you through the process of learning hand lettering step-by-step. Starting with a comprehensive overview of what types of pens, brushes, papers, and other materials to use, it then goes on to teach you the very basics of how to form the letters. I love how Alissa built her book around drills and muscle memory. She has you start with the very basic building blocks, and master that before you move on to anything even remotely more intricate. Then, each flourish stroke is explained and taught separately, before even attaching to a letter. When it comes to putting a word together, she walks you through the steps of deciding what look you want and how to create it. This is a book that gives you all the tools you need to master the art of flourishing - and it goes beyond letters into other embellishments! Would highly recommend.

This book is so very cute and visually appealing, I can't get over it! It makes me want to make all my written work fall under this aesthetic. I love the flourishing style and the book does an awesome job of starting you off slow and giving you space to practice. What I really appreciate about this style is that the text is still very easy to read, even with all the pretty flourishes. Sometimes I find flourished text difficult to read, but I didn't have any issues with the content and method taught in this book. I absolutely recommend this to anyone who makes a lot of posters (teachers, I'm looking at you!) or kiddos who do a lot of projects. It's a really great way to embellish and class up a presentation or flyer without breaking the bank of getting super elaborate.

I bought this based on reviews saying it was a great workbook. With that description I was expecting a lot of practice pages to copy and ultimately add-on to. There are some, but they are limited, and only to a few flourish designs. I also expected a lot of different samples, and I found this book lacking that as well. From a quick perusal, I find the "workbook" to be overly texty: more tell than show. And I'd expect the inverse from a workbook. I do like the chapter that shows flowers, leaves, etc... I do realize that partially one has to find their own style, but I was hoping to get a better foundation practicing copying and playing with someone else's style, which would ultimately give me the tools and confidence to build upon that. This book doesn't give me what I was looking for and isn't a workbook as I normally think of one.

This is a great book for anyone. Fearless Flourishing is a step by step workbook to embellish your handwriting. Practice pages are included that can be copied for additional practice. There are 7 chapters. Introduction, Basics, Letters, Words and phrases, Beyond letters, In the Spirit, Compositions, of Flourishing. Supplies needed are minimal. Pencil, pencil sharpener, eraser, ruler, compass, paper and light box. If no light box is available to you, just use a window. Paints, pens and brushes can be added. The terminology knowledge used is very involved. This was new to me, but once I learned it, I will use it the rest of my life. This will take doodling to new heights.

I have a few books on calligraphy at this point, and this one about flourishing is really helpful in that it establishes that these seemingly easy flourishes can be hard or tricky and to just keep trying!I have a baby shower coming up and I was hoping to make some signs with some of these flourishes and if nothing else, maybe I'll just do a little tracing!! My favorite part is actually learning how to make banners - it looks complicated at first but the breakdown of the steps makes me feel dumb I didn't already know how to do it!

I LOVE this caligraphy book!!! I've gone through a lot, most of them helping with lettering and such like that but after you perfect lettering, it's easy to want to move on to something next. There's only so much you can do with letters by themselves. This book is the PERFECT accompanyment once you've aised your letters --> although, it does cover a bit of lettering for someone looking for all encompassing - this is PERFECT!!! I really loved all of the fun swirls, lines, dots, filigrees, dividers and more that this book went over! After this book you'll be ready to design any invitation, thank you card etc. Perfect for the DIY-er in your life. For $17 you might end up saving hundreds on invitation costs etc.

Flourishing is probably the most used of all calligraphy techniques, especially with extravagant or sweeping curves and lines. This is what most people use when they write invitations or posters for school, church, or stores. If you have seen chalkboard menus or stores demonstrating their sales- that was probably created by someone who has practiced flourishing of their own handwriting. This book describes the materials needed (photo- brush pens, paint pens), types of paper (smooth, tracing, or grid paper.) Fearless Flourishing takes the new comer through all that is needed for drafts – using regular pencils, erasers, ruler so there is no need to use your good supplies for practices. By drawing in the air and using a regular pencil, I got lots of no-stress practice. This book helped me keep my writing balanced – and of course, legible. The examples (photo) in the book guided me, since the ultimate goal is to be able to read what is written!

I think this book works best if you have another book that is more dedicated to teaching letters. The thing is, those books tend to stop at step 1: you make the letters. And while the letters look great, the whole point of calligraphy is fun and creativity! That's where flourishing comes in. Once you've got a hang of basic letters, this book shows you how to take those letters up a notch by adding a huge variety of curls, loops, double letters and other fun accents. The result is that my writing has a lot more personality and feels less formulaic. Also there's a section for numbers and punctuation! Those things are important too when writing invitations, but they get overlooked.

Very thorough book on adding flourishes to modern script writing with plenty of practice sheets and opportunity. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to further their calligraphy

I love Alissa’s encouraging pages. Practice pages and she teaches practical use so that you can reuse the pages. Beautiful scripts!!!Would buy for gifts for anyone who loves lettering!

Me parece un buen libro pero me esperaba algo más, sobre todo en las ilustraciones, ya que al ser un libro en inglés es un poco lioso, por lo demás bien

very informative and interesting - encourages the reader to improve - many diagrams to aid understanding