Five on Friday #3 (Fonts)

Reviewing my blog posts from the beginning of last year I came across one where I had hand-cut my stamped title (always less scary than stamping directly onto a nearly finished page) and where I admitted to suffering occasional pangs of electronic cutting machine envy: all I have is a Sizzix Sidekick and a few second-hand or sales alphabet dies.  As I said at the time, I soon get over it when I remember that I have free fonts, a printer and a something to cut with!  I then promised to share the computer fonts that I love to hand-cut for titles ... the following week!
HA!
I'm afraid that didn't happen, but I'm here today to resurrect my (also long neglected) "Five on Friday" theme and hereby present to you:

Five Fonts I Like to Hand-Cut

This is the same font as the Banana Frog stamps from the aforementioned page and it's great to print out directly onto your card or patterned paper.  There are no fiddly middle holes of letters to worry about so it's easy peasy to do.

This also comes with a bold version that is the inverse i.e. coloured dots on a clear letter (with a coloured outline).  Upper case only and you could just cut around the outside edges and leave the "holes" in place on letters like A B D O P Q R and even G.

The next three fonts can be printed out onto the front of your card or paper, but I tend to reverse them using my printer settings (or flipping them if they are in a suitable word processing package) and print them on the back of the paper or card, preferably in draft or outline mode to save on ink. 

This uni-case font is a pretty close match to the one used by Basic Grey for many of their alpha stickers - great for adding a monogram to match.

I love the flicks and curves on this font, but it's easier to cut if you choose upper case letters only.  I'm told that cutting with a craft knife on a glass mat is the best way to cope with the more difficult fonts, but I generally manage with a combination of my Fiskars fingerblade on a normal cutting mat and the occasional use of curved detail scissors.  Slow and steady wins the race - and if you snip a tiny bit too much off you can always reprint or stick a flower over the join (see below)!

I have the Banana Frog stamps to match this one too.  The vowels come in upper and lower case variants with the rest of the letters being a mix of both.  Cutting it out is a bit of a labour of love to be honest, but I do love it so I'm happy to labour!  Make your title BIG & BOLD & SHORT to minimise your pain!

These fonts are all free from various sites: Steelfish Outline, Budmo Jiggler, Cafe Rojo, Tennessee Heavy SF, Pharmacy.  Only three of them have the £, $, ¥ and  € signs as well as the important punctuation marks like !, ?, ", &, and various brackets - I hate it when I choose a font, only to discover that half the characters I might need are missing - but for titles I can generally cope without the currency signs!

Do you like to hand-cut your titles?  What fonts would you recommend?

Count(erfeit)ing the Days

It's nearly time for the BIG reveal over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog of August's kit-to-copy ... 2 more sleeps!  In the meantime I can share that this month we have another great sponsor - one that is right up my street - namely Allison Davis of  Sketch support fame.  The monthly blog hop winner will be receiving not one, but two sketch books as a prize - for joining in with the hop or just for commenting along the way.  I'm really looking forward to this month's challenges with our soon-to-be counterfeited kits as I'm sure there will be quite a few sketches featured and I love using sketches.

I also wanted to say that there's still plenty of time to have a go at my Blogiversary Hop - and find out which number is missing from the numerical sequence I shared with some of my blog buddies - ALL of whom have now posted their numbers (hooray!).  The draw will be late on Sunday night (or more probably, first thing Monday morning)!

And if, despite sending me the missing number, you are feeling lucky, then why not hop over to the Banana Frog Blog as they are having their latest monthly blog hop (a summery short one) and have a set of lovely Banana Frog stamps up for grabs - I have won a couple to add to my collection and thought it was about time someone else had a chance!!!

Happy Hopping and please do come back here in a few days to see how I got on with my counterfeiting!