Hi everyone, it’s Delphine (@delphinesjournal) from the Archer And Olive (@archerandolive) ambassador team. If you’ve been wanting to add calligraphy to your 2025 bullet journal spreads but you don’t know where to start, this blog is for you! We’ll be using the Calliographs, which are double sided brush pens, to practice basic strokes, create an alphabet and play with lettering variations. Let’s start lettering!

Supplies

• Archer And Olive Notebook 
• Calliographs  
• Fineliner

The calliographs are perfect for exploring calligraphy because they have a broader and a smaller brush, which makes them super versatile. They come in a kit of 10 pens, and the color selections are always top notch! Don’t forget to use my code DELPHINE10 for 10% off your purchase at Archer And Olive!

Before we start 

The most important thing to remember when learning calligraphy is to put pressure on your pen when you do a downward stroke and to remove pressure when you do an upward stroke. This is the core movement to practice! 

You can also attach the upward and downward strokes together, and this will make it easier to form letters later

Step 1. Creating a Guide in your Bullet Journal

If you want to practice your calligraphy, I find a bullet journal to be a great canvas because you can create a lettering guide to become more consistent and personalize its height. This would actually allow you to practice with both sides of the Calliographs.

In the lettering guides below, the two full lines represent where the core of your letters will be, and the broken lines are the upward and downward guides for letters like a “d” or a “j”. 

Feel free to recreate the guides I drew in my

… but if you’re pressed for time, you can download this printable, and we can practice our lettering together!

Step 2. The Basic Strokes

The theory behind traditional calligraphy is that learning a few basic brush strokes will create an entire alphabet. The picture below illustrates those basic strokes, and I identified when I did an upward stroke, and when I did a downward one. Remember to add pressure with every downward

* Please note that since I wanted to fit all of those movements in one page, I did not follow my lettering guide.

These strokes can be combined in order to form an entire alphabet, which I’m illustrating in the picture below using different colors of the Calliographs. I personally find this method too rigid for me, but it’s great for understanding the logic behind traditional calligraphy.

Step 3. Creating your Alphabet 

Once you practiced the basic strokes and you feel comfortable with the basic movements, use your lettering guide of choice and start experimenting with different variations of each letter. Slight changes can make the biggest difference and the way you form your letters can absolutely be part of your signature

Step 4. Finding your Style

This is probably my favorite step, because finding your style means taking everything we practiced so far and forming actual words. And although this sounds simple, there are so many ways to attach letters together!

You can write in cursive (or not, or even join only certain letters), or in italic (or create straight letters). You could use a smaller brush pen to achieve thinner letters, play with the spacing between each letter to stretch out a word, or use your lettering guide as an option for a bouncier look. The possibilities are truly endless, and I wanted to illustrate this with writing different variations of the word “bonjour” (which means “hello” in French, my first language). 

Before we go…

Learning a new skill is hard. Remember to be kind to yourself, continue to practice and soon enough you’ll see your own evolution in your bullet journal spreads!

Video

If you’re more of a visual person, take a look at the YouTube video below and let’s practice our lettering together! 

If you end up trying calligraphy after reading this blog, please tag @archerandolive, @archerandolive.community, #AOShare and #archerandolive to show us your lettering! You can also read this blog for more tips for beginners!