As crafters, we are fascinated by some of the swirly fonts around and there are many we just have to have. The problem is that until the past 3 years or so, most font developers designed their fonts to be used by graphic designers who had access to programs such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe inDesign or Corel Draw. These programs tend to be prohibitively expensive to people who just want to play.

Beginning with Laura Worthington and Yellow Design Studios designers began to understand the needs of crafters and started to make their fonts accessible to those of us who love swirls and curls by using PUA coding.

PUA stands for Public Use Access and is part of the font map that can be accessed. Here is where designer “store” the glyphs and alternate characters for fonts that don’t fit in with the normal font coding.

More and more designers understand that there is a huge market for PUA coded fonts among crafters and so many more are now available. BUT, before you purchase a font, make sure that it PUA coded unless you are using one of the programs that can access the non-coded glyphs.

To use any PUA coded font, follow my directions for using these PUA fonts check Samantha in Windows or Samantha in Mac. All PUA fonts use the same process.

Now here are some of my favorites: