Making a Font from My Daughter's Handwriting

Whether this counts as "making" something is debatable, but...

My daughter, almost 5, apparently learned all the hiragana syllabary by watching her older sibling — so I went full proud-parent mode and turned her handwriting into a font.

You can create TTF or OTF fonts at PaintFont.com:
http://www.paintfont.com

Download the template

Click "Create and download templates" on PaintFont.com.
I tried selecting "Japanese", but asking a kindergartner to write every kanji as well is clearly impossible — so I hit "Remove All characters" to clear the slate.

Then in "Enter Additional characters" I typed all the hiragana syllabary and clicked "Add characters".
Don't forget the small kana (っ, ょ, etc.), voiced marks (dakuten), and semi-voiced marks (handakuten).
If you're feeling ambitious, add numbers, punctuation, and symbols too.

PNG is the recommended output format.

Getting her to write them

Printing the template and having her write directly on it would be too much for a kid who just learned hiragana. At least for mine.

Instead, I gave her a blank notepad and had her write out whatever words sounded fun, working out all 46 base characters through different combinations.
The combined-kana variants (voiced, small, etc.) I handled later in post-processing, so she didn't need to write those.

Once done, I scanned it. Ended up looking something like this:

Tracing

Copying the scan directly into the template brings in a lot of noise, so I traced each character using a vector path tool.
Illustrator works best, but PowerPoint and similar tools can work too.
Result:

Placing characters in the template

The traced characters are all different sizes, so copy-paste each one into the template while scaling to fit.

For the small kana (っ, ょ, etc.), just scale down the base characters.
For voiced/semi-voiced marks, copy the dakuten or handakuten and paste as needed.

Once all characters are placed, select all and normalize the stroke width.
Going slightly thicker gives it a more handwritten feel.
Save the PNG at the highest resolution possible — it's fine to go larger than the original template resolution.

Generating the font

Back on the PaintFont site, upload the finished PNG file under "Upload your completed templates".
Choose your preferred Font File Format.

Font generation takes a few seconds. Download the file, double-click to install on your PC.

Using it

After restarting your PC, just select the font in any editor that supports font selection.
You can amuse yourself writing things no 5-year-old would ever say, and pretend your child is a genius — or go with simple parental self-satisfaction like "daddy love you lots".