Turn Handwriting Into a Font via Calligraphr

Starting last year, I decided to convert the Dumpling’s handwriting into a font every year to document the evolution of her penmanship. Her dexterity has progressed tremendously in the past 12 months — while she was only able to trace when I first started this project, the Dumpling can now free-write block letters and numbers.

And yes, I do realize a mistake in my pangram as it should use “jumps” instead of “jumped”.

Calligraphr

I used the Calligraphr website to convert the Dumpling’s handwriting into a font. The steps are straightforward — fill out a template and re-upload it back onto the site.

But…and this is a big but, it would have been difficult to expect my toddler to write within the boxes and lines, so I had her scribble the alphabet and numbers on a piece of scrap paper first.

Then I digitally “cut” the letters and numbers in Photoshop, scaling each to the proper size and erasing stray marks along the way, and “pasted” them onto the template. I uploaded the completed template back onto Calligraphr to generate my font.

Below is the Dumpling’s font from last year compared to this year.

2018: Tracing (three years old)

2019: Handwriting (four years old)

I can totally forge notes with this!

Turn Your Child’s Handwriting Into a Font

It started when I noticed the Dumpling drawing lines between random dots on her magnetic doodle board two months ago, so I began making more dots for her to connect. She got really into it, so we moved onto shapes, numbers, and letters and are now even solving simple connect-the dot puzzles! 

As much as I want her penmanship to improve, I know that I would miss her scribbles one day. Wouldn’t it be great if I could archive her chicken scratches forever…without keeping piles of paper?

Enter Calligrphr, a free app that I used to convert the Dumpling’s handwriting into a font. I downloaded their template, filled it up with the Dumpling’s traced numbers and letters, and then re-uploaded the template back onto the site.

I used a pencil to create the dotted letters and numbers, had the Dumpling trace them with a marker, and erased my markers when she was done.

If anyone is interested in downloading the font, click here! (Please note that only numbers and capital letters are available…no lowercase, punctuations, special characters, etc.) 

This would make great “handwritten” holiday cards or letters to Santa!

I plan to turn the Dumpling’s handwriting into a new font annually and to track how her handwriting progresses!