Free Fonts With or Without Commercial License, Where To Find Them And How To Install

I love fonts, there is so many to choose from and some of them are just so pretty. I've been going through them so many times trying to "downsize" the amount I have had installed on my computer (it can slow the speed of your computer if there is too many installed in computer) but some of them were just so nice that I kept thinking I just have to have them....I thought about it a lot and I realized, that I will probably never really use the fonts that are not commercial. There is a copyright on them and so if I would ever use those for logos or any kind of graphic I would not be doing the right thing. I always tried to use commercial fonts for everything anyways leaving the pretty fonts untouched so I decided Its time to get rid off them. I kept only the ones that comes with commercial license (the only way to determine if the licence is the one you need is to read the read me file that usually comes with the fonts when downloaded.) I went down from 1000 fonts to 200. Seems my computer is a little faster now too:-D Everyone does it differently, some may be happy to have them all in one place, I find it difficult to find what exact license goes with which font after they are installed so I solved my problem by doing this too.

There is plenty of sites that offer commercial fonts. One of them is fontsquirrel which is offering only commercial fonts. Obviously again, you do have to read the license that comes with the font after you download it, just in case...Another large site is 1001fonts. They also offer fonts for personal use only so you have to make sure that you tick the little tag button next to "your text" window. There is also fontspace that works similar way and you have to adjust their filter to get the commercial fonts to pop up. There are many more sites and blogs that offer free fonts too.

If you have a windows 7 or 8 on your PC the easiest way to install a font is to double click on a font file to open the font preview and select "install". Another way is to find file called 'fonts' in your control panel, open it and drag and drop in the actual font file you want to install.

If you have Mac, easiest option is to click on your font to open preview in Font book and then click install button.
Another option is first close any open applications, drag and drop the unzipped fonts into the Fonts folder in your user's library folder found here: /users/Your_Username_Here/Library/Fonts. (as of OS Lion, the library folder is hidden from users unless you hold down the Alt/Option key while clicking on the 'Go' menu in Finder.

Note for cricut users, you have to restart DS and your installed fonts should be visible from fonts drop down menu now.

Hope this helped a little

Some of my favorite fonts with commercial license.

Banners

Banners are awesome...They are pretty, very easy to make and you can make a banner for almost any occasion. I try to make mine about 5, 5 inches tall so there would be more of them fitting on the page. Obviously you can make almost any size up to almost 12 inches. But this way it does saves a lot of cardstock. I love 3D effect so my banners a usually made from 3 and more layers. I also use punch tool to create a little hole in corners to run the ribbon through. You can just use one long ribbon or tons of small ones to hold the whole banner together, but if you use one single piece, you can adjust the size of the banner for bigger spaces and spread letters a little more if needed. Here is a few pictures of banners I made

Wall Art For Kids Room

Ive been thinking about what to give for my friends son's birthday. I wanted something personal and at the same time something that would decorated his room that he could also keep when he is older. Ive ordered bunch of vinyl and decided to make something a little bit different. Picture with the name and positive or favorite things starting with the same letter as the name. Each word is in different font style and all are in blue and green shades. I didn't wanted to put any background there but unfortunately after Ive finished everything I realized that picture isn't going to hang on the wall without the back of it...

Yard sale treasures

The other day we went to a yard sale that was in my in law neighborhood where we found large decorative frame for one dollar. I wasn't sure what to make out of it yet but I knew that it would just be too good to pass despite the ugly color of the frame and funny flowery print. (Unfortunately Ive not made a photo of what it looked like, but it wasn't very pretty and I wouldn't get anyone to hang it in their house thats for sure). 

So we were debating if we should make it a chalkboard (about a year back my husband really wanted one and I told him that he isn't gonna get one because it would be all the time in mess....) or something else. I decided to go with chalkboard after all and started working on it. I painted the frame with Waverly Inspirations agave chalk paint made by Plaid, that I found in walmart.

 It came out really well. I also bought vinyl that I thought was pretty and if the chalkboard wouldn't work I could use instead.

Well at that point I realized that I don't actually have any black chalkboard paint at home, which I thought I did so I decided to go with the vinyl instead. I added some picture wires at the back and attached photos with pegs and this is what we ended up with....

Texture on canvas

This time I used 5x5 canvases. I used pink, teal and navy blue and green colors and blended them together on textured background.

Small canvas art

The other day we went to michaels and bought awesome deep canvas packs. One of them was 4"x4" and there is 9 of them in one pack. They were all on 60% deal so they came to something over 7$ for all of them. I wasnt quite sure what to do with them at the time, but then I got home and found a wood filling paste....There is a lot you can do with the that. I used stencils I made with cricut and a little bit of paint and this is what came out...

Elmo Birthday Banner

Last year I made a birthday banner for our son's party and I really liked how it came out. This year I really didn't want to do anything like that but then my hubby got me the cricut and I also looked the ones they sell and decided that I have plenty of paper and Sesame street cartridges so I just have to make the decoration again.

I love how they came out. I used 8x8 colored textured cardstock with 5x5 square on the top. Letters are also textured with polka dot embossing folder. To make it toke about 2 hours. 

Extra large art for your livingroom

It had been quite a while since we moved and pretty much since the day we moved in I wanted our living room to had some dark blue accents but at the time it was almost impossible to do because of our baby boy just starting to walk and holding onto anything he could have. For those reasons curtains and large art pieces were out of the list for a long time. This year our son turned 2 and before his party I decided I really have to do the livingroom by then.

Our wall in the living room is 20 feet long with 9' ceillings so it was going to cost fortune to cover it with frames and for those reasons we decided we are going to make our own stuff...Well I did. My hubby somehow ended up making a canvases for all 3 of them. After our "wood" research we decided that we are going to make each 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Got the wood cut in home depot and also went for 2,5 inch wood that was used to frame it on sites. The pricing all together for each picture came to about 80$ but there was a tons of left over paints and wood so I ended up making a smaller pictures with flowers too.

Another awesome t-shirt

Driving in the car with my hubby, we started talking about what else we could put on the t-shirt. While back he got me a screen printing machine but I ve never used it. I think I just find the whole process more difficult then it could be so I 've never even tried it. I've put it up for sale and when I finally got someone interested, my hubby told me that he wants to keep it. That was almost a year ago. However our conversation in the car made me think he may will even use it.. one day...For now I"ve taken over his awesome idea and this is my end result.

Elmo's world...

Today I finally finished some of the pictures for my son's wall. Few months ago when I got the explore machine for Christmas I started cutting out shapes of sesame street characters thinking that I will use them sometimes for sure and this way I will also learn how to use the machine properly. It toke me a while I have to say. It also toke a lot of unhappy faces and a tons of patience since I just couldn't figure out why is the blade not going through the paper all the way. Well I've learned one thing for sure, I will never use the cricut mats as a mat for glue gun again... Even if I scraped the glue off  (and I thought I did a good job) machine still thought there is something wrong with mat and just was not going through as it was meant to and I just didnt thought that that was the reason for bad cuts. Well we all learn somehow:-)
Anyways, I love my machine now and yesterday I realized we got few picture frames in the garage and this is what came out. My son seem to love them and few times since hanging them up he pointed at them with a wow expression on his face. Exactly what I was hopping for:-)

Freebie file

Click here for free download:
https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B0CpSc6Tw2vRSVFkcWYwY2xZMG8

Hope you guys enjoy free birdies. Happy Valentine's day!!!

Living room wall art

Combine cricut cut and a watercolor background and you get awesome pictures to fill your wall for almost free! I found those cuts in between cricut images and I just loved the bike. And the blue background..well I am still decorating our house since our move (yeah I know it happen while ago too) and I decided to go with dark blue and a little amount of purple accents. I have the picture with my head but unfortunately it isn't as easy to "just re-decorate" with a toddler climbing on tables and grabbing everything he can reach.

What is SVG file format

I keep hearing people with explore machine asking this question all the time so I decided to make this post only to explain what it is.

SVG stands for scalable vector graphic. And the exact definition is: SVG is an XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation. The SVGspecification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999. SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files. 

It pretty much means that it is computer calculated image and you can resize it how ever you want without losing a quality of your picture.  For example if you enlarge JPG file, your image can become "pixaleted" and have funny looking squares all over it. It isnt sharp and pretty much not nice anymore. But if you enlarge SVG, you wont get any of that. Image appears same as before you resized it.