Posts tagged ‘fonts’
10 more great welding cursive fonts for diecutters
Here’s a list of 10 more cursive fonts that cut and weld wonderfully, and, as you can see, they look great as well. Download at the links below the graphic.
1)Alex Brush 2)Arsenale White 3)Bira 4)Dancing Script 5)Grand Hotel 6)KG Always a Good Time 7)Monoment 8)Sacramento 9)Sofia 10)Xiomara
10 great free dingbat fonts for diecutters
Free dingbat fonts are a great source of images to use with your diecutter, but how do you know which ones cut nicely? I’ve done the trial and error for you on these ten fonts that are perfect for diecutting. Links are listed below the graphic.
1)09kutups 2)Efon 3)Board Dudes 4)Damask Dings 5)Hibiscus 6)Kalocsai Flowers 7)Peoni Patterns 8)ND Urban 9)Sepeda 10)Sewing Patterns
10 great Doodlebats for diecutters
Cool online tool for diecutters and other font lovers
If you follow this blog you know I love web apps and I am always on the lookout for new and cool ones. Mariairie left me a comment a couple of days ago with a link to IcoMoon, an icon font generator for web developers. At first I didn’t understand it or see any application for us diecutters, but the more I played the more excited I got. Here are some things you can do with IcoMoon:
Easily export all or selected glyphs in a font to individual SVG files.
- Go to Free Font Converter, browse for your font and set the “…format to convert to” to SVG and click the big blue Convert button. An SVG font with the same name as your TTF will be downloaded to your computer (SVG fonts carry the .svg extension, just like a single SVG image)
- Click the Import Icons button in IcoMoon and select the SVG font that you just generated. You will see all the glyphs from that font appear under “Your Custom Icons”
- Click on the glyphs you would like to export to SVG. Selected glyphs will be outlined in yellow. To select multiples at once, click on the first and then hold down the shift key while clicking on the last one you want to select
- Click the Images button. A zipped folder containing SVG versions of each glyph you selected will be downloaded to your computer. How cool is that?! Perfect for creating a specialized alphabet or for sorting images from a mixed theme dingbat font, among other uses we haven’t imagined yet.
Create a personal favorites dingbats font.
- Go to Free Font Converter and convert each of the source fonts to SVG as shown in step 1 above.
- Import your first font into IcoMoon as shown in step 2 above, select the glyphs you definitely do NOT want and press the trash can icon to delete them
- Repeat this process with successive fonts until all your favorite glyphs appear under “Your Custom Icons”
- Select the glyphs that make the final cut for your favorites font
- Click the Font button
- Type a character in the top box above each glyph and/or drag and drop glyphs to set their encoding (which key you will type to access each glyph)
- Click the gear/flower icon and type a name for your font in the box and click the X to save it. (choose carefully as internal font names are not easily changed)
- Click the Save button. A zipped folder containing TTF and SVG versions of the compilation font will be downloaded to your computer
Note: The key word here is personal. Use these “mix” fonts on your own computer only. Please don’t use this technique to redistribute copyrighted fonts/glyphs/images.
Make your own dingbat font.
- In Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator or other vector editor, create a set of SVGs you would like to compile into a font. (I am still experimenting with the format but starting using a 512 x 512 pixel high document seems to work.)
- In IcoMoon, click the Import Icons button and navigate to your SVGs and import them.
- Click and/or shift-click to highlight all of the SVGs which are now showing under “Your Custom Icons”
- Click the Font button
- Type a character in the top box above each glyph and/or drag and drop glyphs to set their encoding (which key you will type to access each glyph)
- Click the gear/flower icon and type a name for your font in the box and click the x to save it. (choose carefully as internal font names are not easily changed)
- Click the Save button. A zipped folder containing TTF and SVG versions of the compilation font will be downloaded to your computer
Caveat: So far I have only been able to get IcoMoon to work using Chrome as a browser.
Cursives for Diecutters
New owners of digital diecutters often ask what are the best fonts for welding (or “connecting” if they haven’t been indoctrinated into our odd vernacular yet). We may give a few suggestions but usually brush them off with something about personal preference. It turns out that there are some fonts that are inherently weld-friendly thanks to their attentive typographers.
I set out to find a dozen or so that are nice looking, fool-proof for welding (as in, type and go; no tracking, kerning, nudging or schooching required, at least for the letter combos I tested) and, best of all, free. Here’s how they look typed out and then welded in preview. Gorgeous, aren’t they?
So here they are, for your welding enjoyment.
Lobster Two Bold and Lobster Two Bold Italic
Once you have typed your word or phrase, the letters should already be overlapping properly, so all that is left for you to do is click on the word or phrase so that the selection box appears around it and activate welding as follows:
In Silhouette Studio : Press the Cut Style button then press “Cut Edge”
In SCAL : On the Appearance section of the Properties palette click the Weld checkbox (unless it is already checked)
In MTC : Click the Weld button or press CTRL + W
It is recommended that you always do a cut preview to verify that any welding is as expected before cutting.
More free gel pen fonts
Now that the Silhouette SD has restored my faith in gel pen drawing with a digital diecutter, I’ve been testing various fonts for that single line look. To recap, many fonts will give a single line look at very small sizes (say a tenth of an inch high or less) but ones that look single line when drawn larger are harder to find. MTC has a cool feature to thin out regular fonts for a single line look but an algorithm is never going to match the aesthetics built in by a skilled typographer so the search continues.
I tested the fonts below with Staples mini gel pens, which have a very fine tip, in the Chomas Creations holder. You’ll get better results at smaller sizes and with broader tip pens such as metallic gel pens, for instance. A sample of my results are shown below. Click the image to enlarge it.
OK at ~ <1 inch tall
OK at ~ <.75 inches tall
OK at ~<.5 inches tall
OK at ~<.3 inches tall
OK at ~ <.25 inches tall
Fifteen Free Ornamental Wood Type Fonts
Whether you know them by wood type fonts, circus fonts, railroad fonts, western fonts or some other name, these decorative, 1800′s wood type inspired, shadowed typestyles are awfully popular these days. And they’re not just appearing alongside the expected themes, but in all kinds of applications with trendy craft designers like Teresa Collins and the shabby chic crowd leading the way. I couldn’t find a good list of freebies anywhere, so I made my own list. Hope you’ll find it helpful, too. Click on the font name to go to a download site.
Cast Iron
(Yellow Circus is a Lettering Delights Alphabet based on Cast Iron. The Cricut Imagine cartridge County Carnival features a similar font as well.)
Still more pre-filled gel pen fonts
All of these are available at fontspace.com. As with the last post, each is rendered at the largest size that will still appear filled in. I’m only printing a few letters of each now for these samples so as to save time and preserve ink.
More filled in fonts
Another batch of pre-filled fonts for your gel pen enjoyment. Be sure to test a letter or two with the font, size and pen you want before committing to the long drawing process. Take this from someone who has run out one gel pen in the process so far. When you look at the regular printed version of the font, you will see how very different they look rendered with gel pens, and this will help you learn to spot good candidates yourself.
Where to get them:
Scanografia (my fave!), YoYo and Needle are available at Fontstruct.com (free registration required).
Debonair Inline
Aria Penci Roman
HV Stripe ExtraB
YngreEBStripe
Pre-filled fonts for gel pens
I had a prior post where I gave a rather contorted procedure for filling in the fonts that you draw with Cricut markers, gel pens, etc. Today I had a better idea. Find fonts that already have a “fill” that works with the Cricut. So I tested a bunch of fonts with my gel pens and when one seemed promising, I reduced the size until the fill looked solid. Some look really nice with the crosshatch showing, as well. All of these are freebies from either fonts101.com or dafont.com.
Keep in mind that these take a long time to draw, so plan ahead. If you want to use markers instead of gel pens, there are many more options, or you can use the fonts above at even at larger sizes. Also see this previous post about single line fonts.
Video: Make a font in Inkscape
By popular demand, a video on how to create your own TrueType font with Inkscape.
