Your computer is a great scrapping tool. Though I would beg to disagree that it is as essential as say, your paper trimmer, I'd be the first to admit that it's one equipment that would definitely add some WOW points to your LOs – fast and easy.

Let's not go into Digital Scrapping, digital photo retouching and computers. I'm talking simply of basic scrapping and the use of computers to print your “journaling.” Most scrappers can't seem to live with their handwriting and would always opt for the nice, clean, “measured” text from their printers.

The growing market for fonts in the scrapbooking industry attests to that. Scrappers can't seem to have enough of fonts that they hoard ‘em like crazy too, dumping them into their systems as fast as they can install or download them from the net.

That's something I can relate to. I've been hoarding fonts since the early 80s. Having all types of fonts is a crucial part of my job.

The one thing people don't know or choose to ignore (which I learned the hard way) is this: fonts can slow down your computer to a crawl. The more you have installed, the more your computer boot-up time (start-up time) gets longer. The more fonts you have in your computer, the longer it takes for you to pop-up that font display tab in MS Word (most scrappers use Word a loooot. Some don't use anything else BUT Word!) to display everything graphically.

So how many fonts can you install in Windows (sorry Mac users, I'll be addressing most concerns in the Windows platform but feel free to read-on)? Well for Windows XP/NT/2000, get this: there are NO LIMITS but the time it takes to start-up your computer will get longer and longer as the number of fonts installed increases. For Windows 95/98/Me, about 1,000 fonts.

The question is this: do you need that much? (I can see the likes of our Web Editor shouting YES!)

Granted that you INDEED do NEED every font you have then the question is simply a matter of font management then – how you manage your fonts so you can have as much as you want and NOT make your computer speed suffer.

There are two ways of doing that. The first way is to type all the keyboard characters you have in a file AS A SET, make a set for every font you have AND PRINT IT. That way, you have a “library-printout” of all your fonts and can easily look into that printout when choosing which font to use for every journaling. You can then install that font into your system when you are about to use THAT specific font and uninstall it after when you will no longer use it.

Of course this assumes that you have pruned down your installed fonts in a minimum and KNOW which fonts NOT to uninstall – the ones that came with Windows are CRUCIAL and are suggested NEVER to be uninstalled. (Read the notes below on what these fonts are!)

The second one is getting hold of a font management utility that could make installing/uninstalling, filing, viewing just a matter of clicking. I've been using one great font management utility for several years now. It works flawlessly as I migrated from Windows 95 to 98 to ME/SE and now to Windows XP.

What is it and how do you get your hands in it?

I'll be teaching about it in ScrapMeet Two and yes, I'll be giving away copies of it together with some cool fonts that would work great with your LOs for your kids – fun fonts I call 'em.

Oh… and I get to discuss another great software for digital photo retouching. The guy who developed the software (he's from France ) gave his blessings to the site not only to teach it and to give copies of it but to have a regular column for it.

Newbies and Mommies who are “technologically-challenged” (like Lala) can come up with great scrapping stuff using their computers. It shouldn't require much know-how or plenty of computer time to master (knowing how scrappers always complain of not having enough time to scrap, I won't add computers to the list of things you got to do BEFORE you can scrap better). It simply is a matter of choosing the right software (that will not overwhelm you) – and that is what we intend to show you.