Oh so happy moments....
Today I have a little thang to show you. It came about because I, like you, get fed up with almost-used-up alpha sticker sheets. What to do with them? Hang on to them and stash them in case they could make up a word sometime in the future?? So I'm giving you a list of ideas to stretch the use of those alpha's before you just have to toss them. Starting with the obvious of:
-making existing letters into letters you've used up, d for q, p for b, u for n, cutting part of an m off to make an n or a u, same with a k for an l, a y for a v and turning an f into a j. I'm sure you can think of a few I've missed.
- making mixed alphabet titles. This doesn't work for everyone, although it's a look I particularly like, and I find you generally get better results when you mix letters judiciously and the letters have some commonality, either color, SIZE, or manufacturer. For example, on this layout I mixed one tiny alphabet letter of a different color in with the rest of the word, and mixed two different alphabet sets to give emphasis to the "joy" part of the word "enjoying".
- but in the end, I turn the function of my alphabets around and make them work in reverse for me. Instead of thinking of a title and then looking for a set of alpha stickers that have ALL the letters I need AND goes with my layout design and color scheme, I START with the letters. I mostly use this site: http://www.easypeasy.com/anagrams/input.php?name=
I type in the letters I have remaining and see what words it comes up with. Then using the word list I look for photos that would apply to the title word options and go from there. For example with this sticker sheet, I could make these words to use in a title: graceful, sparkle, girlie, jigsaw, lifeguard, peculiar, wildfire, squeal, squeak, daisy, fairy, and many many more. All words that don't need an o, t, m, n, or h. (Fairly commonly needed letters.) As I select a word, I might remove those letters from the anagram list and run another search and who knows, I might even come up with another word to go WITH the word I've already picked. And then the ideas start to flow - of photos I could use or the story I could tell with this one (or two) key word/s.
I'd love to hear some of your tricks to stretch and use up your alphabet stash!
-making existing letters into letters you've used up, d for q, p for b, u for n, cutting part of an m off to make an n or a u, same with a k for an l, a y for a v and turning an f into a j. I'm sure you can think of a few I've missed.
- making mixed alphabet titles. This doesn't work for everyone, although it's a look I particularly like, and I find you generally get better results when you mix letters judiciously and the letters have some commonality, either color, SIZE, or manufacturer. For example, on this layout I mixed one tiny alphabet letter of a different color in with the rest of the word, and mixed two different alphabet sets to give emphasis to the "joy" part of the word "enjoying".
- but in the end, I turn the function of my alphabets around and make them work in reverse for me. Instead of thinking of a title and then looking for a set of alpha stickers that have ALL the letters I need AND goes with my layout design and color scheme, I START with the letters. I mostly use this site: http://www.easypeasy.com/anagrams/input.php?name=
I type in the letters I have remaining and see what words it comes up with. Then using the word list I look for photos that would apply to the title word options and go from there. For example with this sticker sheet, I could make these words to use in a title: graceful, sparkle, girlie, jigsaw, lifeguard, peculiar, wildfire, squeal, squeak, daisy, fairy, and many many more. All words that don't need an o, t, m, n, or h. (Fairly commonly needed letters.) As I select a word, I might remove those letters from the anagram list and run another search and who knows, I might even come up with another word to go WITH the word I've already picked. And then the ideas start to flow - of photos I could use or the story I could tell with this one (or two) key word/s.I'd love to hear some of your tricks to stretch and use up your alphabet stash!
And finally a layout to show you. Saturday I participated in a one hour crop at Sisterhood of Scrap and lemme tell ya it was the fastest I've ever scrapped in my whole wide life!! Do you KNOW how hard it is to thread jute in button holes when you only have 10 mins left to upload??? (The journal/title die-cut came in the March Studio Calico kit and said "Oh so happy to have you..." Wasn't sure when I'd ever use that, so I slapped the "moments" wood-cut over top and Bob's your uncle!!)
I love both those layouts and thanks for sharing the link I will be making good use of it.
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