all about fonts

Not to be goofy or anything, but if you say, "all about fonts" quickly enough, it sounds a bit like elephants, which happens to be the mascot of Ella Publishing. And speaking of Ella Publishing, I hosted the blog yesterday talking about, you guessed it, fonts!

Here's yesterday's blog post over at Ella.

Helloooooo out there, do we havy any font geeks in the house? I'm going to guess there are a few since some of you are so kind to have purchased some of my art prints on Etsy. I have to tell you that I feel so lucky to be part of the Ella Friends team. They are a great group and very creative. 

Wow, inspiration is all around us. We're bombarded every day with so many images, sounds, sights and smells to excite our senses. It can be overwhelming, yes, but oh so interesting.

I'll just focus on one sense today...sight. One of hot trends the past few years has been Subway Art, which is a collection of words or phrases on consecutive lines in varying font styles and sizes. More often, the type is white while the background is colored. Occasionally, the type runs in different directions. I happen to carry a collection of Subway Art prints in my Etsy shop but have never incorporated the idea of a collection of fonts for a layout. Why? Don't have a clue. But, now that I've done it, I can see so many possibilities for even more layouts using this very same idea.

Today, I'm going to share layouts that I made for the girls and for Zach, who just happens to be the best big brother, ever.  Don't be fooled, even though he's older, he is very aware of the ratio of layouts I make for each kiddo...he does not want to be left out. After all, who doesn't enjoy reading a story about themselves from another person's perspective, especially your Mom's perspective.

I've already scrapped the joy I feel when I see my daughter playing with the same animals my son played with many, many years ago, but I have not journaled about the number of messes she makes in a day while playing. It's really quite frustrating, but I keep reminding myself that I will miss this next year when she heads to Kindergarten and I'm home all alone. Although in my journaling, I address each of the words presented in the square featuring four different fonts, I focus on the word PLAY and the messes she makes {and doesn't clean up} as she goes about her day.

Each square on the 12x12 template has room for a 4x4 piece of patterned paper, photo or other piece of ephemera with a 1/8" border all around. Oh, and there's plenty of room for journaling, too. I even used gender-neutral design so that you can scrap babies, tweens, teens, boys, girls and even adults!

Same layout, same design, different ink for the journaling. Even though the same sheet of patterned cardstock was used for both layouts I used different portions of it so that in the first layout, the focus was on the red in my daughter's shirt and in my second layout, the focus is on the varying shades of turquoise and blue in the fanciful get-up my oldest daughter has on. I didn't use any additional embellishments on this layout, choosing to keep it simple and sparse because 1} there's already a lot of color going on 2} there's quite a bit of journaling and then also the font block and 3} i'm using patterned paper which is full of movement.

On this third layout, not featured at Ella yesterday, I focus again on the word PLAY; this time how Zach plays with his sisters and how much fun he makes it for them. For a change, I journaled around the 3 squares holding photos, leaving white space on the corners of the subway art square as a focal point.

Because I have three kids and they each have their own scrapbooks, I often create 3 layouts using the same design, varying the patterned papers and embellishments to fit the persona of each child. I love it because I complete three layouts in just about the same time as it would take me to complete one. Three stories captured, three happy kids, one happier mama.

I promised you an 8.50x11 template, too, didn't I? The squares on this template are sized for 3.25" x3.25" square pieces of paper or ephemera with an 1/8" border. Since I scrapped the three kids already, I decided to add one to the "WE" book of Gordon & Monika {which contains 8.50x11 layouts ONLY}. It's a Date Night layout, without a photo of us. Instead,  I used this photo showing the olive oil stain on the kraft paper tablecloth at one of our favorite eateries, Bonefish Grill taken with a Blackberry of all things. Love me some Bang Bang Shrimp!

I hope you have as much fun using these templates featuring fonts as I did creating them for you. I can't believe I completed 4 layouts in practically no time at all.  The downloads are available in the download section in the sidebar or in the menu bar under the blog header.

If you're looking for more scrappy inspiration, be sure to check these out oh, and this one, too, where there is a double-page layout by yours truly!

The fonts I used for these templates are available for download here {all but the PLAYFUL font are free}:

EAT       | Jailbird Jenna 

PLAY     | Cheri  

SLEEP    | My Topher 

REPEAT | Playful