I've put the fonts in the .fonts folder (as suggested on this forum), but I'm still not able to use them in GIMP. Keep getting this..."Invalid UTF-8 data in file '/home/bliss/.fonts/LITTLELO.TTF"

?

I usually put my fonts in '/usr/share/fonts/' and then you choose the folder corresponding to the font format you're willing to use. You should have a '/usr/share/fonts/truetype' folder. You'll notice that fonts are there in separate folders. I usually create another folder for the new font I want to use. For instance, I would create a folder name 'ttf-littlelo' in the '/usr/share/fonts/truetype' folder. You have to do this in root though. Try this and tell us if it works