JOURNALING AND SCRAPBOOKING FONTS

What is Journaling ?

It is a kind of caption for photos that can tell the story of people, places or times taken in the photo and highlighted on the page made. You can add quotes or poems, song lyrics...

For many beginners, journaling is a puzzle that is repeated on each page of the album. It is necessary to find ideas of text in order to make "live" each page of the album and to give a comment to the photos which it underlines.

Fete des meres

Firstly, the title ... It is very visible and gives the general theme of the page : birthday, travel, friends, proverb or quotation ... The title is very important, because it is usually the most visible... And it gives, at first glance, the general atmosphere of your page. The other elements of the journaling come in complement of this title, to enrich or to reinforce it!

The following page was created at the time of the Mother's Day 2008 : it's the title ! A small poem by Anne Taylor well chosen has been added in the series of photos to bring a touch of love and recognition to this somewhat general title.

To more easily determine a general title, ask the "right questions" about the pictures:

- At what time were they taken? Day, birthday ...
- What are the characters present on these photos?
- What are the characters that you do not see?
- At what point were they taken?
- Which season?
- Has a remarkable event happened that day?
- It makes me think of a song title, a poem, a proverb?

All these questions will help you to determine the OVERALL THEME of your page: "a moment of meditation in front of the waves" became "Explore the beach" with a very interesting cloud of words all related to the sea, the beach and the sun! Beautiful evocation of the vacations!

In this connection, a technique often used in journaling is the acrostic ... It is like writing a poem whose initials make up a word.

Watch the little poem written for ELEA which could be an excellent subtitles to a photo page dedicated to her

Eléa est le prénom d'un personnage important
L'héroïne du roman "La Nuit Des Temps"
Et je retrouve en toi courage et douceur
Atouts majeurs pour le bonheur!

Elea is the first name of an important person.
The heroine of the novel "La Nuit Des Temps".
And I find in you courage and gentleness
Major assets for happiness!

To be more schematic, to write a good journaling on your scrapbooking pages, you need to see the answers to the questions of the 5 "W's" rule : What, Who, When, Where and Why!

Just with the answers, you have enough to fill a good page !!

Imagination... It's not always easy to comment on photos on which we have little information... It takes a lot of agility and imagination! For example, if you create an "inheritance" page about your great-grandparents' wedding in 1920... and you have no other information than the date...

Well do an internet search on the events of the year 1920: a great catastrophe, a princely birth, the advent of a great politician. This will allow you to write your diary around this wedding photo!

One could have added to this page some important elements of this year 1920: the birth of the Ford T for example... or the election of Warren Harding to the presidency of the United States or the birth of the violinist Isaac Stern.

These "journaling" texts can be written by hand (for those who have good and regular writing !), from a printer or pre-cut letters purchased in specialty shops. You can also print text on a fancy paper and then cut it into strips like in an old telegrams.

You can also print in large letters on sheets of cardboard and then cut them with scissors or a cutter as in the "I love you" above...

Where to find amazing fonts?

If you print your journaling with a PC printer, you will have to find "nice" fonts. These come with Windows TM can not readily agree : they lack artistry!

Some sites cons are literally packed with extremely diverse fonts. Here are a few, the list is obviously not complete! All these sites offer free downloads of their collections.

DAFONT

DaFont. The first site is most impressive, the most complete. So even that choice is difficult! The police, numbering more than 5 000 are grouped by themes, easy to spot : Fantasy, worn, unstructured, Retro ...

You can also find very nice small logos to decorate your pages. So, for those who do not know, take a look, it's really worth it HERE .

URBAN FONTS

URBANFONTS. It is a very interesting site to more than one way : it is simple, fast, well presented.

Everything is done to facilitate your research and your choice. A peculiarity, as giving a print preview of the font as soon as you move the mouse over it !

Particularly useful the "degraded" scrapbooking fonts you can find under "dirty"... And there's a good thirty pages! This happens HERE .

1001 FREE FONTS

Another site where you will find all the fonts you want : HandWritten or PrintLetters... Of course, everything is free !

MISCELLEANOUS

There are dozens of other sites where you can download a font to enhance your scrapbooking pages. Google is your friend... and a simple search with "free fonts" will give you an impressive list!

How to install a font in Windows?

But what is doing the police ? (The french word Police means also Font. NdT.)

When you download a font, it will come in the form of compressed file.ZIP or .RAR ... For example, I just received the file: artistamp-medium.zip from DAFONT.com

Double-click the file, the winzip window opens (or that of winrar) ... Then click extract to ... and give the name of a location where the file will decompress : I suggest you type c:/desktop.