I Believe in Unicorns - Adding Glyphs to Fonts

Hi Silhouette Fans! Niki here with you today and I have a tutorial on how to add 'glyphs' or special characters to your fonts in Silhouette Studio.  This technique doesn't work with all fonts...it depends if your fonts came with any special characters. This is for those special fonts you have downloaded that were advertised as coming with glyphs and special characters. Some of these are available for free (I stalk a couple of sites for special offers) but some you have to pay for in order to release the special characters. For my example I have used a font called 'Streetlight' that I got for free when it was on special one day. Offers are always coming up, so if you are looking for something similar then don't give up if nothing is available today, check back tomorrow!

I began by typing in the text using the Text tool

I have then changed the font using the Text Style window. I selected the font 'streetlight' becuase I know that one came with glyphs.

This is where is becomes a touch confusing. You can't open the glyphs by clicking or typing something into Silhouette Studio. You have to access them from somewhere else on your computer.

Go to your windows key and in the search box type in 'character map'. When under 'programs' it appears, click on Character Map. This will open up another box.

In the Character Map box, use the dropdown box to select your chosen font - in my case 'streetlight'. This will display all the characters available within this font in these little boses. They are very tiny and I'm yet to figure out a way to make it display bigger, so get your magnifying glass out to figure out what character is what. As well as all the regular letters, you should see the ones with special characters.

Select the special character you want. In this case you can see that I have selected an 'e' with a curly bit. It was selected by me clicking on it. It then appears in the box at the bottom that says 'characters to copy'. You can add several at a time into that box. Once you've selected your characters, click 'copy'

Now click back into Silhouette Studio and right click, then paste. Sometimes your chosen characters will appear in Silhouette Studio - if they do, then great! If not and you get a strange little box, do not worry. Simply select the box and go into the text style window, and change the font to your chosen font (in my case Streetlight' and the character will change to the special character that you chose.

You can then re-size the letter and move it around like any other letter. I used the exisiting 'e' on the end of 'believe' as a guide so that I could get my new 'e' the same size. I then deleted the original and replaced with my new curly 'e'

Once I have my new characters in place, I can weld them as I would usually do.

Here is my finished design complete with lots of special characters and all welded together.

I then backed the words with bright colours and created my layout around my lovely curly title.

I love to make the most of the fonts I have installed on my computer and there are so many free ones around with lovely special characters. Releasing them for use within Silhouette Studio means there are so many possibilities for titles. You can also use the knife tool to cut the curly bits off and add them to other fonts that do not have special characters - I'll show the step by step for that one next month maybe! Enjoy using your glyphs xx

My blog 'Being Scrappy'

Instagram: @Nikiclaire

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