My (Steph’s) mom kept a baby book for me while I was younger and in it I have a birthday card from my maternal grandpa written by him in his own handwritting. One day when my mom was in town, we were looking through that book and came across that card. She looked at the card and was emotional as she told me that she is not aware of anything else with his handwriting on it. I feel as if I have a piece of him with me now as I look at his handwriting.
I was thinking the other day about this and about how seeing my own mom’s handwriting effects me. To me, it is easily identifiable. It is a beautiful script! My mom often wrote me notes as I was growing up in her own handwriting. When I see something written by my mom, I am instantly filled with a warmth and comfort, like a favorite blanket. As I thought about this, I wondered if my own children would have that experience? Would they even be able to recognize MY handwriting? I’m not sure they could as most of my notes, letters, and journaling on scrapbook pages are in one of my favorite fonts (arial, traveling type writer, times, etc.) There are not many things with my own handwriting on it. I have no excuse for this, I make fonts, I could totally make my own handwriting into a font…but I hate my handwriting! I do have one font in my store that is very similar to my own handwriting and I was nervous to put it “out there” because of how much I hate my own handwriting, but the font became a favorite of my customers. So, this post is as much for ME as it is for YOU!! I want my family to have the warm fuzzy feeling when they see my handwriting, just like I do my mom’s and she did her dad’s. So, I am setting another scrapping goal to start using my own handwriting on my layouts AND my notes to my kids! It will take some courage to do, but I am going to conquer my fears and DO IT!! 
Here are some great ways to add your own handwriting to your layouts:
Wendyzine has an action that will turn your handwriting into brushes. I love any of Wendy’s actions because she really knows what she is doing and they ALWAYS work without any fuss (which is important for me). This action would be especially great for those people with several different styles of handwriting.
Darcy does a great job of turning your handwriting into a font for you and it is very affordable! She offers an exclusive (you are the only person to use it, own it) or non-exclusive (she has the right to sell the font in her store) options.
Darcy also sells handwriting font packages, so you can look for a font that is similar to yours if that works better for you. She has given us a coupon code for that too
TDD-fontsrock
Expires August 31, 2009
30% off any font pack purchase (excludes scoops)
Lastly, lots of scrappers turn to the Fonts for Peas by Amanda when they want a handwritten font. If you want to scan and send Amanda your handwriting (following these directions), she just might choose it to be fonted and give it away on her site!
So, let’s go! Let’s add more of ourselves to our layouts so our loved ones know what our handwriting looks like (and don’t mistake it for one of our favorite fonts 
).
Darcy is a FAB font maker! And you should check out her unique templates, too!
I did a font with Darcy and love having my handwriting on my digital LOs! And, LOL, a designer did her CT call in “my” font. And, another digiscrapper did a very emotional LO in my handwriting – amazingly enough it was a story about her marriage and a crisis in it that I could’ve written about my own. It’s kind of weird to see, but kind of flattering that someone likes your handwriting enough to buy it!
Once again, you’ve hit on a topic that I’ve been mulling over for months…having my handwriting put into a font. The coupon code will make it especially wonderful!
Thank you so much for your site. It is my absolute favorite stop in my list of digi sites. You have such perfect timing. So often, I’ll check in and see that you’ve written a post on the exact questions or skill I was wondering about (i.e. putting borders around pictures in PSE)
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
It was seriously shocking to me when I saw Darcy “write” in my handwriting for the very first time. That was MY handwriting!! It was amazing!! I totally encourage anyone who wants to see their handwriting on a layout to use Darcy, because she is the real deal. TOP quality, SUPER patient (and I was a bit of a pill . . . and totally nervous, to boot!), and she wasn’t satisfied until I was satisfied. I was a little TOO satisfied, so I ended up making my font exclusive. It’s eerie to see your handwriting in a sentence that you KNOW you didn’t pen!!
That was one of the things I loved about paper scrapping, that even though I hate my handwriting, I know it will be important to my kids to one day have that “little piece of me” recording our lives through scrapbooks. I have christmas labels and birthday cards with my grandparent’s handwriting on them, and I have my mother filling out a memory book for my kids by hand, about memories from her childhood and family traditions. I already got my font from Darcy Baldwin, she did a great job (although I do tend to stray towards ones I like better from time to time!)
If you are doing this because you want that warm feeling when you see the handwriting in 100 years, then I think you really need to pick up a pen and write. A font of your handwriting is just not the same, the personal touch is lost in a font, it becomes too neat and uniform, and the very fact that a person has picked up a pen and written those words is special.
I think this is a wonderful idea! I actually have two versions of my handwriting as fonts. I use them on almost every layout I create. It’s really important to me for my children to see a part of me on their pages. My handwriting is not the best, it’s actually quite messy, but it’s mine.
I wanted to mention this website: http://www.yourfonts.com/. I made my handwriting into a font for free. It’s not perfect, especially if you’re writing a double letter, because they look exactly the same. I love having my signature in there, though. I use it as my watermark on all my pictures I post on the web. If this is not o.k. to post, please feel free to delete it
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Amanda J.
I just wanted to add that a custom font makes a great teacher gift, too. My husband is a teacher and I gave him a custom-handwriting font and he LOVES it. He uses it on all his hand-outs and images on his class web site.