Genealogy-Gencrafts » Monograms

Browsing all posts in: Monograms

Chinese Character Generators and Caligraphy Generators

February 12

CONVERTING HAND WRITTEN CHINESE CHARACTERS TO A COMPUTER FONT

Sample of Chinese Characters

You have documents with your Chinese ancestors signatures on them but don’t have a clue how to get them typed . . . much less change the fonts as easy as any Roman style type.

The solution is easier than you might imagine.

Do they have an app for that?

Better than an app, translation into other languages and their appropriate fonts are built into the operating system of Iphones, I don’t know about other brands. You can write in almost any language. Just switch keyboards to any language you want. Settings/General/Keyboards/Add New Keyboard.

Then when you want to compose a Chinese character –

Open your email program.
Click on the little globe.
On the screen that comes up, use your finger to draw the character.
A selection of characters that the Chinese translator thinks you may have drawn comes up.
Compare the characters to what you were trying to draw.
Tap the correct character and it pops up to the email message box.
Do the next character you want.
When you have all of the characters you plan to do, email the message to yourself.
Now you can copy, cut and paste the character into many programs.
Make a file/page that has all your characters on it so it is easy to copy for future projects, instead of having to go find them in your email.

All without a Chinese keyboard.. I did not say it was easy or fast, but it works.

It does help if your ancestor had decent handwriting, was not in a hurry, and you have several samples to compare.

NOW WHAT?

What can you do with your new found ability to turn your Chinese ancestors names into something modifiable?

If you want to have a wide selection of Chinese font opportunities, check out . . .

https://www.freechinesefont.com

where you will find 384 different fonts for you to download, including: 44 Cute; 41 Calligraphy; 33 Handwriting; 7 Elegant; 124 Simplified Chinese; 25 Pop; 15 Headline; 2 Song Ti; 51 Traditional Chinese; 29 Modern and 8 Rounded. 21 of which are specifically tagged in “Commercial-use OK”

The “Cute” type styles really made me smile . .

There is even a font with lots of hearts in the characters.

If you don’t want to download and install fonts, ChineseTools.eu has 14 different fonts built in, and all you have to do is paste the word or words into the box, pick your font and size and download the finished calligraphy.

https://www.chinesetools.eu

This site has links to a multitude of interesting tools including: A Chinese calligraphy generator; Stroke order where you put in the character and it shows you the order you should use to write the character yourself; Chinese Family Relationship Titles; Characters for Chinese Tatoos with their meanings; A Character Decomposition tool ; A Chinese Calendar that you can convert any date from the Julian Calendar into the equivalent Chinese date, once you get to the proper month and year calendar it shows the Chinese holidays in that month; A love calculator based on both persons birth dates and Chinese Astrology; and MANY more tools. Some work better than others. You need to make sure the type style is Simplified Chinese. There is also a converter for Traditional to Simplified Chinese.

Here are some of my favorite tools at this site.

https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinesecalligraphy

Screenshot from the Chinesetools.eu Calligraphy Generator

This Character and the ones below, are the Surname “Wong” in different Chinese Typestyles. It was generated at https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinesecalligraphy

This font is very much like many of the family “Chop”s. A Stamp usually carved into soapstone, most often pressed into a red stamp pad to print on artwork or stamp at the bottom of letters and documents. It was generated at https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinesecalligraphy

This style is also a traditional font used for Chop’s. It was generated at: https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinesecalligraphy

This font looks a lot like it is imitating bamboo. It was generated at:https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinesecalligraphy

Wong Character

I have seen these fonts embroidered on Chines hats and robes. This font looks a lot like it is imitating bamboo. They are perfect for bold art. They were generated at:https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinesecalligraphy

https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/drawing-name

JACKIE – Example of Word Art from Chinesetools.eu

Enter your name or any word, pick from one of 14 fonts, pick from one of 35 Chinese Paintings and it will generate same as Chinese Art including the name and a chop.

Examples of two of the pieces of art you can put any Chinese characters you want on.

You may download it and print as you desire from their website at:

https://www.chinesetools.eu/tools/chinese-seals/

Enter Chinese characters and it will turn it into a Chop Seal in either red with white background or white with red background, in one of several different fonts.

You need to convert your character to Simplified Chinese, there is a link to a tool to do that.

http://www.chine-culture.com/en/chinese-calligraphy

Enter Chinese Character onto page. Choose the size of the Chinese calligraphy model. Pick one of 10 Chinese fonts. Choose the orientation of the characters and generate the calligraphy.

http://www.words-chinese.com/text-to-image

Besides the Chinese Calligraphy Generator the site also has Traditional>Simple Character converter and a Pinyin-Converter

There are other great sites, but these are the ones I have been using.

LEAVE COMMENTS BELOW IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN TUTORIALS FOR ANY OF THE FOLLOWING PROJECTS !

Examples of Chinese Monogram Ornaments with Acrylic Dirty Pour backgrounds and 3D puff paint Chinese characters that I made of the Wong, Leo and Chin family names to add to the family Chinese New Years Decorations.

Traditional Hung Bow Lantern designs modified to celebrate Chinese Ancestors

Chinese Themed Pedigree Chart

Family Monograms for Upscale DIY Halloween Pumpkins

October 19

If you need help with the design concept for your own monogram go to my post on monogram resources HERE

Upscale Family Monogram Pumpkin

Supply list: Pumpkin (I used recycled foam pumpkin from last year), Monogram, Acrylic Paint, Graphite Pencil, Paint Brushes Scissors Painters Masking Tape, Ball Point Pen. Optional: Foil Glue, Gold Leaf, Silver Foil

Clean the pumpkin with a steel wool scrubby to both clean it and rough up the surface to prepare for painting and then gave it a prime coat of one of the colors you are going to paint the pumpkin with and let it dry thoroughly.

Once dry continue painting the pumpkin until you are satisfied with the results. Let this coat dry over night.

Have a monogram sized to fit the pumpkin. Pryor to taping the monogram to the pumpkin use a graphite pencil and THOROUGHLY coat the back of the paper with graphite using a graphite pencil.

Tape the monogram to the pumpkin with painters masking tape so that the fresh paint will not pull up when removed.

After positioning the monogram on the pumpkin using the painters tape to make sure it will not move, use a ball point pen and firmly go over the lines that need to be transferred to the pumpkin.

Make sure all of the lines have been FIRMLY traced.

After you have traced all of the lines, remain patient. Only pull up one side of the paper to make sure that you can see the lines well.

If you will not be able to paint within the lines, tape it back down and go over it again a little harder.

To be honest, I could see the lines ok, but they did not photograph well so I went over them with a fine tipped black marker.

At this point you can paint your monogram any way, in any color, that makes you happy.

jlmw-pumpkin-12

It may take 2 coats of acrylic paint to make solid lines solid.

I wanted to use gold leaf to fill in the outline lettering to make it really shiny but I did not have the gold leaf adhesive so I figured the Deco Foil Adhesive should work.

Instructions said to hold the bottle at a 45% angle.

The Deco Foil Adhesive went on REAL THICK so I had to let it dry/set up over night to get to the dry but still sticky point that you can put the gold foil on it.

I placed a sheet of the gold leaf over the sticky area I wanted foiled and used a soft dry paint brush to both press the gold leaf into the adhesive and brush away the leaf were it was not suppose to be.

The thick adhesive made for lumpy gold. If it were anything besides a Halloween pumpkin I would have been starting over. But on a Halloween pumpkin it looked pretty cool.

I did not want the silver foil eyes to be as lumpy as the gold so I tried something different. I used rubber cement and carefully put a thin coat where I wanted the silver foil and let it dry completely. The important issue is to use a glue that when it is totally dry is still tacky.

Foil works different than leaf. It is as thin as leaf but it is on a substrate that keeps it from tearing and floating away, so once the rubber cement is completely dry you place the foil over the area and rub it firmly.

Once you are sure you have rubbed every area you gently pull back the substrait and leaving the foil where it sticks to the glue or adhisive. The rubber cement worked as well as I had hoped.

Once I had finished putting the gold leaf and silver foil onto the pumpkin I went back with the fine paintbrush and cleaned it up a bit with the black acrylic paint.

Finished pumpkin !

Pumpkin on display

If you are interested in ordering from Amazon.com, please click on any of these ads to be directed to their site. Any purchases, while there, will give us a small bonus, at no extra cost to you. This will help fund the Genealogy-Gencrafts work here on the web. Thanks ~ Jackie

“Genealogy-Gencrafts.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking from/to amazon.com.”

Save

My Favorite Monogram Resources

September 8

Even our ancestors were proud of their names and heritage and were probably decorating their clothing and home decor with their initials and family crest since before first set of guest towels were hung on a rod.

Seriously, the wealthy families had crest rings and medallions since before the average man had two names.

Today monograms still give us a sense of family identity. If it belongs to you, you can put your mark on it. Even if it is just your annual pumpkin. Click HERE for the pumpkin tutorial.

jlmw-pumpkin-25

Decorative monograms can be incredibly intricate and designing your own can be quite a task. The simple solution is to not re-invent the wheel and use one of the many reference books available to either scan straight from the books (for personal use only) or use as a starting point.

While it has numerous Art Nouveau Initials in it “The Treasury of Authentic Art Nouveau Alphabets, Decorative Initials, Monograms, Frames and Ornaments” Edited by Ludwig Petzendorfer only has five complete sets of Monograms, every combination of two letters possible. However they have a Art Nouveau flare while still being simple enough for any craft project straight out of the book. This is my go to book as a jump off point when designing my own monographs.

I highly recommend The “Compendium of Ancient Artistic Initials For Vintage Style Monograms“, well described in their Amazon description as “a collection of over 3400 intricate artistic initials largely drawn from Victorian, Art Nouveau and Edwardian eras”. Initials and designs are in larger format (most are 2 inches high or greater) to preserve detail.” With multiple monograms styles from between 1840 and 1850. Most of which are suitable for sewing and craft projects straight out of the book.

5000 Decorative Monograms for Artist and Craftspeople, Edited by J. O’Kane is filled with 2 and 3 letter monograms that have a Victorian (or older) feel and are well suited for embroidery as well as a nice way to add art to pedigree charts and family group sheets in family history books when photographs are not an option.

Monograms and Alphabetic Devices are to quote the preface are “Unabridged republication of the plates from the Dictionnaire du Chiffre-monogramme” published in Paris in 1881. They are ornate but the printing is clear and well suited for the family history book when photos are not an option and with minimal work, suitable for embroidery and craft projects.

The Encyclopedia of Monograms by Leonard G. Lee are elaborate monograms with a renaissance flair. most suited for inclusion in family history books or decoupage.

You can see inside of these books using the Amazon.com links.

I hope you find my reviews helpful.

Jackie