Ladybug Layouts Weekend Retreat

2011 Retreat Dates

June 3-5 (CANCELLED due to location issues)
October 21-23, December 2-4 (BOTH CANCELLED due to family committments)

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Today's Tip!

Enhancing With Words

A great way to express yourself is through words. Have you ever heard the expression, " A picture is worth a thousand words,". Well it's true! Through using words, you can make even the plainest page look fabulous.

There are many different ways to use words.

  1. A definition -- ex. if you are making a baby page, you could put the definition of sweet, baby, mommy, family, love, and more on there. Cut it out of a dictionary or you can copy and paste it onto Word from an on line dictionary . The overall appearances better if you print it out just like it was in the dictionary.
  2. A background of words -- ex. if you are doing a page on a sports event, you could go into the newspaper (spray the paper to make it acid-free) and cut out of the Sport's page.
  3. Word Collage -- ex. go into the newspaper (spray the paper to make it acid-free) and look at the headlines. Another great place to go is a magazine because their headlines or large fonts are colorful. Cut out (or use the ripped effect) letters for a title on your page. This give a great randomized effect. ** Another great use for magazine collages are borders. You can do a color themed page. For my baby girl page, I choose a pink border using this method. I went through magazines and found little dabs of pink (all around 2in. by 2in. at least)
  4. Overlapping -- One way that you can use this tool is if you want to emphasize on the title, you can write it really large and in a light color. Then, on top of that word, write the same word in a darker color. It will really go well with your page and help a lot with the color theme.
  5. Emphasize -- If you are adding a poem of any other text into your page, you can use this. ex. I loved my baby the minute I saw her. Go in and choose main and important words: loved, baby, saw her. There are several things that you can do at this point. 1-- outline the words or letters of the words in a different color. 2-- get a different colored sheet of paper, write the same word on it in the same size, and paste it on top. 3-- simply make the word bold-ed by outlining it several times in the original color.
  6. OTHER -- crossword, word search, riddle, thoughts, quotes, poems.