The Illuminated Page

The hottest hobby right now (scrapbooking, duh) often relies on a decorative font to enhance the history being recorded. Looking back sixteen-hundred years, we see the same thing accomplished with illuminated manuscripts. Books of great literary, historical, and liturgical worth were decorated in order to support the message written. Check out the Lindesfarne Gospels. They're just so beautiful. Scrapbooking is not so different from these vellum treasures. We don't however, have to send our pages out to some monestary for them to be illuminated, we're able to do that ourselves with a p.c. and some fabulous fonts.

I have a confession to make: I am addicted to fonts. Good thing this addiction comes cheap. There are so many great font sites out there. On some sites you're required to pay a nominal fee for downloading the font. On other sites, well, their fonts are, free (it's a lovely word, isn't it?). I'm partial to dafont.com and scrapvillage.com for my font-ing needs. I find these sites easy to navigate, and downloads are a breeze. Here are a few of the fonts I use most often (most of the featured fonts are from dafont.com).

I'm just noticing that most of the fonts I'm currently using are grunge-y, and worn-out looking. Of course, in a house full of boys, things start looking grunge-y and worn-out real fast. Probably why my font trend follows suit.

Next time you're illuminating your page, remember the men that sat in monestaries sixteen-hundred years ago unknowingly setting the trends for modern day scrapbooking, and be grateful for your comfortable chair, adequate light, and the accompaniment of your iPod while creating.