Recently, a new trend has been becoming apparent in scrapbooking. I’ve been in denial, thinking it wouldn’t take hold, hoping it wouldn’t become widespread. Perhaps it would remain just a fad and not graduate to a trend, I hoped. But I can no longer hide from the mounting evidence. It’s time to haul out the pen collection again. Handwriting is back.

Back when I first started scrapbooking, about 7 years ago, almost all of my pages had handwritten journaling on them. I had a collection of colored pens and guide templates to make straight lines. But despite my best efforts I never liked the results very much. I just hate my handwriting and have since I was very young. And as a consequence, my early pages never had much journaling on them because I hated to “ruin” my pretty pages with my ugly handwriting.

Then I discovered the wonders of computer journaling and could journal away to my heart’s content without worrying about spoiling the look of my page! A simple click or two could adjust my journaling to make the size and style work perfectly on my page. No more laborious rewriting of a whole paragraph because of one misspelling or pen smudge. And the results were beautiful every time! There were even fonts that were made to look handwritten! I could have the style without the agony and the imperfection! The pens were retired to gather dust in a drawer and all was happy and harmonious in the journaling department of my scrapping.

But alas, it looks like the pens must come out of retirement. Heidi Swapp has written a new book about improving your handwriting, and anything she touches is an instant trend. I am also seeing discussion of pens and doodling on internet message boards, and more and more pages posted online and published in magazines that have handwritten journaling. The snowball has started…I can’t avoid it now.

I used some of my old pens – and a recently acquired new one – to create an example for you all of why I hate my handwriting. The dark pink is textured paper and the lighter pink is smooth paper. It definitely looked better on the smooth paper, and my favorite by far of all the pens was the new American Crafts Pigment Pro. It is the bottom two lines on the dark pink and the top two lines on the light pink. It was smooth and I love the 03 size tip. I guess I had better get in some practice and resign myself to using it. And I hope Santa brings me Heidi Swapp’s book! If she can help me, she can help anyone.

So tell me readers, what are your favorite pens? When you hand journal do you use smooth or textured cardstock? Throw me a lifeline here before I drown in a sea of ugly ink!

But before you think I am totally surrendering and giving up my fonts, stay tuned to Inside Scrapbooking for my next entry: a list of my current favorite fonts!