My Favorite Fonts...

Boy, can we fill up our computers with fonts. Anyone that does a lot of designing on your computer seems to feel we can never have enough, right? So many fonts are similar to each other, that we often have to go through and clean them out.

When you're looking for a specific font style to use on your project, you find a whole new world of fonts you have missed or never seen before.  So that one font download now turns into 20 font downloads.

Well I'm maybe going to add to that collection.  I have created a list of my favorite fonts, and I'm sure I've found some of these because of other people's lists of their favorite fonts...so the list travels.  Most of these fonts can be found on http://www.dafont.com, which is one of my favorite places to find fonts.

One question I have seen asked a lot in Silhouette forums is, "How do I install them in the Silhouette program?". There isn't any need to completely install into Silhouette Studio. If you install the font on your computer, it will show up in Silhouette. If you have your program already open when you install the font, you will need to close everything, and re-open the program to see that font.

Now let's do some font organization...

If you download a lot of fonts...haha, you want to be careful if you have a computer crash. You could do a backup of all your fonts in your Windows Font Folder, but that could be a problem later.  So what I suggest, is you keep all your fonts that you download in a folder named Downloaded Fonts in your Documents Folder.  That way a backup is easy and you know those are fonts you use often. You can install from there into windows.

There is another program I highly recommend. When we download fonts, there are often glyphs included.  What are glyphs? They are alternate letter styles or even graphic designs included with the fonts.  In windows you can view these by opening your character map.  That to me is a pain in the butt. So I downloaded a program, BabelMap, it is FREE.  I love working with it.  To learn more about it and download it, visit their website. It is especially nice if you have purchased the Samantha Font.  It is also nice when viewing a ding bat font without having to type each letter in.

Well, I hope you found some value in today's post and let me know if you have any questions.

My Must Have Craft Room Supplies

One thing about doing crafts is having the right supplies.  We all try and save money, so that our dear husbands don't go through the roof with all the money we can spend on supplies, but sometimes, cheaper or not having it at all takes all the fun out of creating. So I have put together a list of all my favorite must haves!

Scotch Advanced  Tape Glider
I love this adhesive tape.  I got mine at Amazon and love it.  It really goes a long way.  I also love the fact that you can buy replacement rolls at most craft store if you suddenly run out.
They run about $22 on Amazon.







Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive Glue
If I'm going to use a liquid glue I usually need it to set up fast.  I've tried lots and lots of different brands over the years and found this one to actually be the fastest with the best hold.  I do find the top gets stopped up often, so keep a pin or needle on hand. You can find this in any craft store or even on Amazon

Hook & Pick Set 6 Pc  Weeding Tools
I recently found out about these from one of my friends on facebook.  I purchased them to use with vinyl.  Makes weeding very easy. Best part is the quality is fantastic and they are cheap. You can get them at Harbor Freight for only $3.99 + $6.99 Shipping.  I also found a great set of scissors  there to offset the shipping.  Because they charge you a flat rate, look around for some other deals if your ordering online.  They were on sale for only $5.99 for the set.

Silhouette Studio and Vinyl Ring Dish

Today I decided to make my daughter in law's birthday present.Her birthday is today... oops...it needs to be mailed two states away, better late than ever, right?

My daughter's birthday is in a few days, and also needs to be mailed....Guess you can say I'm running late.

Oh well, I decided to make them both ring dishes with vinyl. I didn't want to do a monograph like everyone else is doing....they seem to be a dime a dozen, so I created a pretty motif with their initial and name in 3 colors.  I did the layer method to set them up.

You can download the free studio file here.

Create a 5 x 7 Card Box With Your Silhouette Cameo

I belong to a group on facebook, Beginners Silhouette Cameo, and this group was formed to help all the people who got a cameo for Christmas this year. We are a smaller group, which gives everyone a good chance that there questions will be answered quickly and not get lost in the feed.  If you new to your cameo or portrait, please join us.

When you find groups on facebook that have a lot to do with silhouette, they are often referring to using it for vinyl, so I created a project to do with card stock, since this is what most were requesting.

This is my first video tutorial I have created, so bare with me.  It is a big one and takes you from beginning to end.

I'm so lucky!!

I really am the luckiest woman in the world. My husband of 38 years has always given me the privilege of doing what I like to do. When I was raising my 3 children, I was a stay at home mom while they were young, something that was done more often in the 70's than now. 

For as long as I can remember, I've been into some kind of crafts. I have a sign in my craft room I made that says, "I was Crafty when Crafty wasn't Cool!".  That fits me to a tee.  I started out doing counted cross stitch and needle work.  That lead to working for a home party company, "Creative Circle".  I did that because it could be arranged around the kids.  Then as they entered school and we moved a few times, the crafts changed.

In the 80's and 90's, my husband and I owned a woodcraft country store.  I stumbled into tole painting which I found out I could do. Plus owning a store made it easier for me to schedule my time around the kids activities.  My husband cut out almost 80% of my wood and we sold Amish furniture that I painted on. He did all that while still working his full time job. We had our store for over 15 years.

But I do get bored, so I decided to close the business and move on. The kids graduated and so my hubby and I decided to move closer to his work and get a nice piece of property and settle down.  We moved to a beautiful 16 acre property in the country,  Hence the "Country Acre Crafts".

Since I had all this time on my hands and was tired to painting, I decided it was time to try something else.  Plus with so much land, I had pretty much lost my wood cutter.  He was too busy clearing land and what not.

I started scrapbooking over 10 years ago and it has evolved into card making and now vinyl art. After all, I had so much supplies, there had to be something I could do with it. (By the way, that idea never works, we always need more.)