Fontastic!

Just came across this nifty little site... yourfonts.com. It let's you create a custom font based upon your own handwriting. It's quick, easy and (for a basic font without too many weird characters), free. I downloaded the image template, brought it into Photoshop, used my tablet to create the characters, uploaded the image et voila! "Big Al.ttf", a true type font that only a mother could love.

It would also be great for creating other design elements, say your own set of wingdings created in Illustrator, your signature, glyphs, custom characters and such. A great time-waster, to be sure.