Free Font: Jump Add-On!

Hehehee... Remember my Jump kit?

Made the wordart into a font! It's only the caps, plus a dash, a question mark, and an exclamation mark, but that should allow you to make any alphas you'd want... Click to download!

Free Fonts: Painted & Painted Messy

Oh, it's so nice to have this bit of extra time! I've finally finished the "Painted" font that I started last October, and decided (based on my Skypainting layout) to make a messy version--Painted Messy!

As always, my fonts are free for personal and commercial use, as my way of giving back to the design community. Thank you to all who share their knowledge and goodies! These fonts may not be sold; nor may they be redistributed without the terms of use.

Just click on the image to download the fonts!

A Quibble

I wish I had a reply function to my comments! This is a quickie in response to something somebody posted on my Nanoo Nanoo post.

Anonymous said...


drop shadow tutorials for 2.5 + 3.5 $ = 6 $ ? just do a Google search and it's all for free
October 10, 2010 4:27 AM

Yep, you're not obligated to buy them at all! But they are expressly written for scrapbookers, and they're printable, and well-explained... *shrug* You could also Google on how to use Photoshop & Illustrator, and make your own kits! =) I'm sorry you feel like you have to comment anonymously, though. =(

I put as much work preparing the tutorial as I would to teach a class, and $2.50 and 3.50 is a tiny amount for what you'd pay for a class, eh? What's that, a coffee and a scone? But for me, this is my only income...

And look how much I -do- give away for free! This must be font weekend, here's another coming up (I still have to work on the thick and thin of the strokes, and I only painted the caps last night):

Anyway, be well everybody--enjoy the day you're living, as you'll never get it back!

New Free Font: What Do We Do All Day

I actually made up this font, What Do We Do All Day, for the lettering in the kit of that name that is currently @ MScraps, but it needed some tightening, which I think I've accomplished. I hope you like it! =)

A Couple of Layouts

Everything with "Change" by Three Paper Peonies @ MScraps. Font: DB Poetic. "Little by little, day by day... six years have gone by. April 2004 (1 year old) to April 2010..." =)

For the color challenge @ MScraps (I'm purple). Am I not fortunate to live in such beauty? Everything from the MScraps Collab Fortunate, with papers by Kelly Mickus & Sabrina. Flower also by Kelly Mickus. Wordart by Three Paper Peonies.

This kit is MONSTER! Everything from the "Fortunate" collab @ MScraps (last month's Digi Files @ the Daily Digi). Wordart says: Fortunate to have you in my life--and that's sure what I feel about this little boy!

Everything with Joyce Paul Designs @ MScraps, from her "Lovely Day" kit. Fonts: Sunshine Poppy & Auburn. Journaling reads: "A real, unironed shirt, a pensive expression, hair wet from the shower, in motion, as usual; a neck growing strong, definitely legs growing long: this is you, young sprout in March of 2010."

Did I mention that my Sunshine Poppy font got accepted at dafont.com? I'm so pleased. =)

And have I mentioned that I really like these MScraps guys?? They have terrific stuff, and you know I'm all about STUFF! *giggles* Plus, the forum is rockin'... I'm enjoying hanging out with all my old friends from Pixel Canvas!

Sunshine Poppy (Old Version)

Note: This has been replaced by Version 2, which contains diacritical markings.

***New*** 3D Whites, and a Font!

New at Pixel Canvas!

These shapes are super fun to play with, and they're LARGE! I included the colored sun just to show you what could be done with them...



And, a font! This is just a scramble of "found" letters, and a lot of fun:

Free Font: hlmt-rounded

This one is actually fairly complete, with many diacritical/accent marks. It's very legible, including at small sizes, which makes it pretty useful! Hope you like it...

Font Freebie: Tall Drink

Just a little font I made today using Art Rage, Illustrator, and Photoshop... (and a Wacom, of course.) Click to download...

Font Freebie: Sea Dreams

I made this layout the other day (click to see credits and journaling):



So I thought I'd make a font freebie! (Click on the image below to go to the download area)



This is my first "released" font, and it's not entirely perfect, but it works pretty well, it has both upper and lower case and most of the important punctuation (no foreign letters, though--sorry!), and should do great for creating your own alphas.

This font is free for personal and commercial use (credits appreciated), but it may NOT be resold as part of a compilation or fee-for-download, and MUST be accompanied by the TOU. Thanks for looking, and I hope you enjoy it! (I'd love to hear feedback on it, since I'm a novice at font-making...)

And the font in my banner is...

...not Selfish, which is pretty cool in and of itself, but Porcelain.

Just a note for Ely, who asked (and who has a very cool, new blog, by the way), but didn't leave an e-mail addy.

Leading The Way

Another chapter from the subconscious...


It's important to not only have a focal point in a piece, but it's also important to consider how the viewer's eye is going to move through it. Where is the viewer's eye going to enter? What path will it follow? Will it be recycled and retained, or will it exit the piece at a certain point? I don't -always- thing these things through, but it certainly is a consideration in many of my designs. It's especially interesting when you're considering art in a style which is read from right to left, for example, or up to down and then across.

Anyway... I finished this piece the other day and when I was done, realized that there's actually quite a strong path, or even paths, through the piece. I didn't consciously do it this way--it was one of those "this feels right" and then I figured why afterwards.

(Fonts: Baby Boston & heathert. Frames by Katie Pertiet for the Designer Digitals Web Challenge this week. Everything else mine... =)

From a Western perspective, your eye is likely to enter a piece from the top left (because we're trained to read from left to right, top to bottom), or to be dragged into the piece by the focal point. In this particular piece it could happen either way: the top photo could lead downwards, or the eye could go directly to the big round red spot. However, the rose is pointed up, towards the photos, and so redirects the eye that way in case it got lost. What I found really interesting, however, was the positioning of the tiny little hearts I did. It's really hard to make things look random, and yet retain some control over them. In this case, the little hearts make a nicely subdued, colorful trail that leads you down the photos (with a stop at "Companion" for the pink heart linking the two of us... can you spell "sappy"?), back up to the rose, and right to the final message. Those little hearts are repeated in the background; the repeated elements tend to tie in all the parts of the layout. (Note: the little hearts were punched out of magazine paper, and then I scanned a whole bunch, and then I selected a few out.)

Just something to keep in mind next time you have a layout with a ton of elements...

And a small toot: I was chosen by Rhonna Farrer, of all people (cuz she's like my digiscrapping flourish hero and all *shuffleshuffle*), as the digital member inspiration of the month for how I used her kit in my "A Boy and His Lunkhead... Uh, Dog." layout! *happy dance*

Oh, and speaking of flourishes... I'm thinking of making a freebie alpha with my "Flourished" font, examples of which you can see here:

[no longer available, sorry]

Using fonts for something other than typing

I'm totally in love with Rhonna Farrer's curlicue work--perhaps I've mentioned that before. But besides sitting down and spending hours in Illustrator, you can also work with stuff that you have already, particularly the swashes that exist in certain fonts, such as Easy Street EPS. That's what I did here in my latest digital layout, "fleur."



First, I enlarged a couple of letters in Photoshop to about 240 points or so--I think I was working in particular with the A, C, and V. I used the lasso to select the portions of the curlicues that I liked, then opened a new image and cut and pasted 2 or 3 sections until I had a shape with plenty of interest. I then made a brush out of it, then used the brush for painting, dodging, and erasing both in the green frame, and in the background photo. Turns out kind of nicely, I think!