10/15/2009

Fontcapture...



When I first started scrapbooking, I refused to use my own handwriting on my pages. Not because I hated it.  Yes it was messy and uneven and all that, but mostly because I didn't want to spend several hours working on a scrapbook page, to ruin it with an ink smudge, misspelled word etc.  And so I typed all my journaling and collected hundreds if not thousands of fonts along the way to use for my journaling.  But I wasn't really happy being tied to journaling on the computer.  And my friends started to tell me how important it was to have your own handwriting on the page.  I poo pooed them and continued typing my journaling. 

But then something changed.  I'm not sure what, but I slowly realized having all these font at my disposal was making journaling even harder.  I would spend far to much time trying to pick the perfect font for my journaling.  Writing and often rewriting my journaling trying forever to get it just right.  Only to discover that after I thought that it was perfect that it didn't fit the space I left for it.  Yes it made my layout neater and left them looking crisp and clean but it also left them feeling cold.   And forget about doing even simple journaling at a crop.  I was tied to my computer and printer.  And I didn't like it.  Not one little bit.  And so this caterpillar slowly began out of desperation to transform into a butterfly by first writing just the important stuff on layouts dates or names.  And well from there I just kind of bloomed slowly writing more and more on my layouts.  Nowadays it is rare for me to type any kind of journaling.  I found a new freedom in putting pen to paper.  Do I sometimes make mistakes?  You bet!  Do I sometimes misspell words? Yup!  But more importantly I am getting the story down.  Does it always fit into the space I've left for it? No!  But you know what? I have the whole back of my layout to write on if I need it. 

But, a part of me still sometimes misses the clean linear lines of a simple layout with clean typed journaling.  And well rather than using some unknown strangers handwriting on my layout I've found a site that will turn my own handwriting in to a font for free.  Check it out here.  I can't wait to try it out myself.  I have the form sitting on my desk...

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