Round and round challenge card

This card I made for the CAS-ual Friday CFC-59 Challenge has the requisite circles, as well a lot of other trendy features all rolled (pun intended) into one. I’ve got a bicycle, a banner, some bakers twine, some washi tape, some neon colors and some Tim Holtz embossing all represented. This card also features print and cut with my Silhouette SD using a character from Lauren Ashpole’s awesome Bikes dingbat font as a digital stamp. And the banner is cut out using my own Banner Bridge font which you can find here.

Character map templates for Inkscape and Illustrator

Back in the day, there was a great free program for the Mac called TypeBook, which I used to print specimen sheets and character maps for my fonts. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the leap to OS X. I have been using an Excel spreadsheet to print character maps for my giant collection of dingbat fonts in the intervening years, but wanted to make something easier to use and to share. The result is my Inkscape version that you can download here.

And I also made a version for Adobe Illustrator that you can download here. Illustrator has a built in character table (Type menu>Glyphs), but if you want something to print out, this will come in handy.

Here’s what a completed page looks like for my 09kutups font.

Make a dingbat font with Inkscape

Buried in Inkscape .47 is the ability to make your own SVG fonts. This isn’t all that exciting because even Inkscape can’t use SVG fonts. However, pair this with a free font conversion tool and you now have a way to create your own TrueType fonts for free! The font creation features are not well developed yet, and there is precious little documentation, but after playing with this quite a while I have finally come up with a set of procedures that works. View/download the tutorial (PDF) here. View the video here. If you develop an original font for digital diecutters, please let me know so I can post it on my fonts page.

Related links

• fontstarter.svg file Inkscape file to be used with the tutorial
• Dingbat map webapp (Windows) for viewing your completed font
• Online Font Converter or Free Font Converter
• Inkscape documentation covering font editor
• See and download some example fonts at Denise’s Scrapbooking Room

New free dingbat font for die cutters

I am proud to introduce 09 KutUps, a shapes font made especially for SCAL, MTC, Silhouette Studio and other cutting software that can cut truetype fonts. From the ground up this font was designed with diecutting in mind. Every shape has been optimized for cutting and even the font name and configuration have been chosen to make it easy to use with diecutting software.

I have been the recipient of much generosity recently. For example, in 2008 I spent a month’s worth of nights in the Ronald McDonald House near where my son was hospitalized. If you enjoy using this font, I hope you will be generous the next time this fine organization asks for your support. Download the font here. View/download the character map here. 09KutUps is free for personal and commercial use, but may not be sold or shared without my permission. Please also do me the courtesy of directing others to this blog post rather than to the box.com link. And of course, I would love to hear your comments.

7/24/09 Update: This font has become very popular, and many of you have told me that you have honored my request that you make a donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities in return. Thank you so very much. My son had to be admitted to a hospital in another distant town for the last 2 weeks. Once again the Ronald McDonald House there provided support for our family.

5/11/13 Update: This font has been downloaded tens of thousands of times and I am overwhelmed by your response to it and your willingness to honor my request. I have eliminated the mediafire link that had gotten too aggressive and switched over completely to box.net which should be a simpler download. My son has been off treatment for 3 years and  has graduated from college and gotten married. I will forever be grateful to the Ronald McDonald House for being there is our darkest days. Thank you for your continued support!

A new font from old shapes

As promised, allow me to introduce PunchDings, a dingbat font I created on YourFonts.com by gluing shapes from my (much bigger than I realized) collection of craft punches onto the font template.

Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Download the TrueType font here. If you’d like to share this font, please help me publicize my blog by sharing a link to this page instead of just the font file. The sharing button in the right hand column makes that easy. Thanks!