Less Is More: Things with Legs

I am so not a summer person.  I love fall and winter.  I love the colors of fall and winter.  So I am already putting away pastels and flowers and butterflies and thinking ahead to rich colors and autum leaves and Halloween images.  The Less Is More challenge this week - Something with Legs - was easy - a spider!!  They definitely have legs!

I am such a geek!

Let me tell you the story of this card.

I knew that I wanted this spider dangling into a frame with a fun sentiment in the corner.  The problem was that I didn't have an appropriate sentiment.  So I hopped online and googled "Halloween Digital Stamps", then I realized I got better results with "Halloweed Word Art".  And as I was looking at those results I found a fun Word Cloud site.  Word Clouds have been around for awhile but I certainly haven't done anything with them.  But they are so fun and so easy.  Here's how...

WORD CLOUD SITES

I used Wordle.  It was the first one that turned up when I checked popularity.  There are many others - but this one had a lot of great options (although it does appear rather "bland" on the surface).  It was also a site that clearly stated you could use your clouds for anything - print them, on your blogs, make T-shirts. 

PICK YOUR WORDS

Click on Create and then you can type a bunch of words (or copy text from elsewhere).

• The size of the words in the Word Cloud is based on how many times the word appears in your text.  As I was using a spider image, I typed "spider" and "web" more often to get them a little bigger.
• You don't need a lot of words.  I typed the words you see on the card, just typing "spider" three times and "webs" a couple of times.
• If you want words to stay together in a saying, such as "happy fright night", you type them with a tilda between each word, i.e. happy~fright~night.
• Be warned that once you create a word cloud, your typed words are no longer there to edit.  So, I actually typed my words into a Word document then copied them over then I could change them and re-use them as needed.

CREATE AND PLAY
At this point, just type "Go" and it creates your cloud.  And now the fun begins!!  You can play with that cloud until you like what you see. 

The menu that includes "language", "color", "font" and "layout" is the fun part.  If you click on "language" you can choose upper case, lower case, etc.  "Layout" lets you pick if you want horizontal or vertical words or a mix.  "Color" and "font" are probably self-explanatory.

I wanted my cloud to have open space for the spider.  First I changed the colors knowing I want blacks and grays.  Then I just kept playing in the Layout section until I got one with open space.

FYI: On your word cloud, you can delete a word.  Just right click, the remove.  But...the entire layout changes when you remove a word.  I was so close to the layout that I wanted, I just had one word hanging out too far, so I removed it.  Bummer - everything and my layout was GONE.


COPY IT TO YOUR CARD
Now you need to get it to your card.  Wordle has an FAQ section and they talked about converting to PDFs and then special software, etc.  You do not need all of that.

I simply took a "Screen Print".  In Windows, on my particular keyboard, I just hit "Shift" and "Print Screen".  When you do that, nothing seems to happen, but it is actually sitting out on a Clipboard.  So I popped into Word and pasted - there it is!!

Of course, because I copied the entire computer screen, I had EXACTLY what was on my screen, e.g. all the internet stuff also.  So I simply clicked on the picture and got options for formatting.  I selected crop and simply drug the edges in until the only thing left was the cloud.

Then, for my card, I stretched it a little horizontally so it fit a standard card front.  I copied and moved it around on my "landscape" Word layout until they were on the bottom half of the paper and I could get two cards out of it.  I printed onto white cardstock and I was ready to decorate.


FINISHING TOUCHES
To complete my card, I stamped the spider.  Then I used a rectangle nestability as a template to draw a square frame leaving it open near the spider.  I also left some small white openings on the upper right side so that I could dab on some Stickles.  Then I used a straight edge to add the little line of web down to the spider.  A bunch of Orange Peel Stickles and a little bow of Martha Stewart twine and I have my first Halloween card of the year!!

I hope you enjoyed this.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

• Stamps: Memory Box Spider
• Ink: Stampin' Up Markers in Basic Black and Basic Gray
• Paper: white
• Accessories: Orange Peel Stickles