Fonts Are Cool

I love fonts. I have just been on a shopping binge for fonts. I am so excited by the ones I got!

My new fonts

I got these at FontRiver. There are thousands of fonts there...and thousands I haven't even seen Yet.  I am really glad these people offer FREE fonts and amazed by the people who design all the wonderful fonts and then offer them for free. Yesterday after lusting after some great fonts for a while, with some help from Edward I learned how to unzip and install the fonts to my font folder. ("Font folder" I had no idea, and I can honestly say I had never been in my Control Panel before.)

I have no idea how I would ever use the magical unicorn font, but it was too fun to pass up. I love the Jane Austen one that is based on her handwriting.

I used the Adine Kirnberg font on this Shakespeare themed pillow cover I made.

Shakespeare Romeo loves Juliet Pillow

And the very pretty Chopin font for this one, that isn't sewn yet.

Imagine Peace Pillow

My brain is pretty worked up imagining all the things I can do with these fonts. I am offering personalized pillow covers using a choice from five of these fonts in my etsy home decor shop.

Shakespeare and Me, My First Digital Collage!

Yesterday I created my first digital collage. It was fun, challenging and above all (at least at times) frustrating. And I am eager to discover that perfect image that will click with a new idea and get back at it today.

I am still very much in learning mode with my imaging program, and also in a love-hate relationship with it. I have used GIMP for quite a while now, and use it fairly frequently to do minor editing and mostly things like straightening up, cropping and adjusting file sizes on pictures of my art and jewelry. Making a collage takes a lot more skill, knowledge, and in my case, trial and error. Some of those functions just don't really explain what they do, and more importantly I usually had to hunt and guess to find the hidden button or function to do what I wanted. The undo function was well used. "Undo" good.

The theme of my collage was William Shakespeare and The Globe theater. I was immediately drawn to one particular image of Shakespeare, which rather resembles my own Edward. Besides Will and a 17th century rendition of the Globe, it includes what is believed to be Shakespeare's handwriting, a bit of an old map of Stratford on Avon and his signature.

The past couple of days I have also opened a shop on Zazzle and been experimenting with putting some of my images on products there, so when I completed the collage, I tried it out on a black T-shirt.