Newbie needs lots of help!

[momof3girls]

I finally have it all! Scal, inkscape, a font manager, and of course my Cricut Expression with all the bells and whistles. I've has my cricut since last Christmas but have never really worked with it due to the high price of cartridges. Then about a month ago I was searching for computer programs for it and found out about the SCAL and the Cricut design studio. Well that choice was one of the easiest I've ever made due to Scal being 1 price and the Design studio requires cartridges wich mean multiple purchases and are too expensive in my opinion.
I've been spending the last few days getting aquainted with the new programs and downloading lots and lots of fantastic fonts! Thank you all that have posted fonts on here by the way! =) I'm loving all the cool things that I can do with SCAL. Most of all I love that I'm SAVING SO MUCH MONEY!
Where I'm having problems is with Inkscape. I have found some fonts that I would like to tinker with but can't open up in inkscape. Here are the steps I take and maybe(hopefully) someone can tell me where I'm going wrong. First off, I have Vista. Now the font I chose to work with is actualy a dingbat. I downloaded the file to my desktop(I have read that this is what many of you do) and then unzipped it. I open SCAL and choose the actual image I want to work with and choose "save as" from the file menu. Then I open Inkscape and from the file menu I choose import and go to the exact folder where the image is but its not there. I noticed that it was only looking for Inkscape files so I changed it to all files and the icon for the image is there. I click on it and try to import it but from Inkscape I get an error message that states "Failed to load the requested file..."(...=file destination). I have tried this for multiple images and get the same message everytime. What am I missing? I do the SCAL part to choose the individual image out of the whole font file, maybe this is where I'm going wrong but it won't allow me to open the whole font file either. I'm going insane trying to do this! Could someone PLEASE help me!
Thank you in advance!

[HeatherM]

If you want to work on a dingbat in Inkscape, you need to either install the font, or open it and then open Inkscape. Use the font tool to bring your dingbat image into Inkscape. Make sure your dingbat is selected, then from the menu, Path/Object to path. See this tut for more detailed instructions. http://susanbluerobot.blogspot.com/2008 ... inish.html

[momof3girls]

Thank you so much Heather. I'm starting to get it now. I was getting along fine and tracing an image, then inkscape closed on me and I hadn't saved a thing! Does this happen often?
Also I have a few letters that I've been trying to find full fonts for but keep coming up empty handed. I really like the few letters I have and was wondering if there might be a program out there that will allow me to make my own font alphabet from these letters.