The why

If you are not aware of Ellie Kime, AKA The Enthusiast, you must immediately go and enlighten yourself. In a frankly terrifying world, Ellie is a champion for the simplicity and joy of unashamedly embracing what you love. I just think what she’s doing is great, and lovely, and generous, and so I sent her this email:

Hi Ellie!
I’ve just read your guilty pleasure article on Restless and I loved it, natch. And it also reminded me to finish the ENTHUSIAST sign I’ve been wanting to make for more time than I care to mention. I love your enthusiasm mission. In a scary world it is so rare to find a message so truly joyful, and that’s worth celebrating! So, I’d like to paint you a small token of my appreciation. I’m sending you the design first, in case you have any particular colours you’d like. For the yellow stripes on the front face of the letters I’m going to try out doing stripes with directionally burnished gold (I am extremely enthusiastic about gold). This may or may not work - we’ll see.
If you hate it and this whole email is unbearably embarrassing then just say - no offence will be taken!
Hope you’re having a nice Tuesday,
Esther xx

Luckily she didn't hate it. She did suggest the excellent colour scheme, for which I am very grateful.

The how

I wanted the design to the simple, bold, joyful. The letters are tall with pride, and I deliberately kept the design tight in to the bounds of the plywood board because I wanted to give the impression that it was just about to burst out. The gold stripes were an experiment. I used a stencil to make sure that the lines were the same thickness (I am terrible at estimating measurements and need guides for everything I do). After a few false starts, I found that the stencil worked for the lines that were burnished with the length of the stripe, but for the perpendicular burnishing I needed more control. I used the gold transfer paper as the edge, and just did very small strokes to define the edge of the stripe. That was enough to create the definition required to make the stripes pop. This is a painstaking technique and I’m not sure I would attempt it on this scale again (unless I’m paid a shit tonne, obviously).