Well, I guess an old dog can learn new tricks. Every once in a while, I'd read a magazine article, ad or email
that said you could download a free font from a certain website. Could I? Really? I like 'free'
but am a little cautious about the technical stuff. It's not hard to find the website and oohhh and ahhhh
over the pretty, free font! Imagine all the things you could use it for - titles on pages, funny journaling - even making
your own chipboard letters. The only problem is...getting the font to magically appear in my word processing software.
Hmm. Can you identify with this?
Once again, while carefully filtering through a scrapbooking magazine, I came across a website offering free downloadable
fonts. This time I was determined to make it happen. So, I went to this website:
http://www.dafont.com/new.php and did a search for free fonts and the search returned 16 choices. The website has a, "Help" section that gives more
specific details, but here is what I did for my Windows operated-system...
1. First, you should set up a new folder on your C Drive for these fonts before going to the website.
You can cleverly call the new folder, "Scrapbook fonts" if you want to.
2. Then, you go to the website, query the search field for free fonts. You are basically going to save the
file to your pc first. On the website, above, you click on the red box to save the file to your new "Scrapbook Fonts"
folder on the C Drive. [These files are compressed in order to conserve memory.] Note: This downloads the
file to your pc, but does not 'activate' it.
Here's where it gets tricky...I found two different types of font downloads. The steps below are for the ones
that have to be manually moved to your Windows, Fonts folder (like, the website mentioned above). Creating Keepsakes
fonts do some of the work for you and are moved from your "Scrapbook Font" folder to your C:/Windows/Fonts folder just by
double-clicking that icon, saving you a few steps.
3. After you have saved all the font files to your pc that you want...
A. close out the website and
B. go to your Control Panel [icon]
C. to open up the "Scrapbook Fonts" folder. From there, you should recognize the font files you downloaded.
D. Double-click on one of the files and it should go to the next level down, possibly showing a Read Me file
and the actual font file.
E. Highlight the font file and
F. move your cursor to the "File" header on the upper left-hand corner of your screen and
G. select, "Extract All."
H. A Windows screen will pop up and ask you to designate the place where you want the font installed.
I. You may hit the "Browse" button to go to C/Windows/Fonts
* The "Fonts" folder is where most fonts are stored on Windows operating systems. You should see lots
of font icons there.
J. Highlight this folder and hit the "Save" button.
K. Your computer may take you to the contents of the "Fonts" folder and show you many font icons. Double
check to make sure the name of your new font appears there. They are usually listed in alphabetical order.
L. Close the Fonts folder window and repeat steps C thru K for additional fonts.
BTW, If your computer warns you that a file may be corrupted, delete it and download it from the website again later. The
computer will also tell you if you already have that font and you can cancel the save.
One more trick: If you want to conserve memory on your computer, you can go back to your original, "Scrapbook Fonts"
folder that you created and delete the whole folder or just the individual files you downloaded so that you can use the empty
folder in the future.
