Tutorial - Using Dingbat Frames

Remember my scrap page of sleeping Charlotte about a week back? For my journalling, I used a dingbat frame with a text box since I just detest my own handwriting.



Since it is not generally intuitive on how to include a text box in a dingbat frame, I thought a tutorial was in order so you too might use it as part of your hybrid paper crafting.

(Note: Click on any of the following screenshots to make the image larger for easier viewing.)

1. Open Microsoft Word.

2. From the drop-down font menu (shown in the following screenshot), choose your dingbat font. (In this case, I have used the free frame font Doodle Frames from The Scrapping Cop.)

(Tip: Did you know that if you place your cursor in the font menu and enter a letter(s), Microsoft Word will scroll the menu to that letter? This makes finding your font choice a lot faster [especially if your system has a ton of fonts like mine!].)

3. From the drop-down font size menu (shown in the following screenshot), choose your font size. (In this example, I inputted 200. To do this, simply place your cursor in the font size field, enter the number of your choosing and press Enter.)

4. Now type your letter (in this example, the letter is J).

(Tip: When you download a font, typically a preview is offered which shows you which characters/cases were used. In the free frame font Doodle Frames, only upper case letters were used. Use these previews as a quick guide to choose the frame of your liking.)

5. Using your Drawing toolbar (typically displayed on the bottom of your screen), click the Text Box icon (as shown in the following screenshot).

(Note: If necessary, click View > Toolbars > Drawing to display the toolbar.)

6. Using your cursor (which should now look like a crosshatch instead of an arrow), draw a box inside your frame (as shown in the following screenshot).

7. Unfortunately for our purposes, Microsoft Word will include a line around the text box by default. Since we don't want that there, right-click the text box.

8. When the menu displays (as shown in the following screenshot), click Format Text Box.

9. When the Format Text Box window displays (as shown in the following screenshot), under the Line field, from the Color drop-down menu, select No Line. Click OK.

10. As shown in the following screenshot, enter some text (using a font and size appropriate for your journalling/sentiment).

Voila! Your finished product. A terrific addition to your paper crafts especially if your skills are lacking in the doodling/handwriting department!

Any questions? Leave me a comment and I will edit the post if necessary.

ETA: You can (typically) find your fonts stored here: C:\WINDOWS\Fonts. If you double-click any of your font icons, a character map will display: