Stamping Word Nerd Has Fun

Giggle! I got FOUR shipments this week, one each from Stampin' Treasures, A Muse, Clear and Simple Stamps, and StampinUp. This postal joy comes to me courtesy of relatives who gave me money for Christmas!

I love Christmas. And my relatives.

Anyway, I'm madly trying to play with it all at once, which, as you can imagine, doesn't work very well. Today, let's take a look at the damage I did with the new Hero Arts crossword puzzle background:



The new crossword puzzle stamp had to be MINE, not for artistic reasons but simply because I am a highly-trained word nerd. It's only logical I own it AND PUT WORDS ON IT.

Sorry about the shouting. I'm just a tad geeked out here.

The stamp is huge, just shy of 5.5 x 4.25 inches. Using the whole thing in black on a standard card is, shall we say, not visually attractive. There's just no place for the eye to rest, especially since the stamp leaves no border. I need to try it on a 5 x 7 card, but for now, I've experimented with cutting the image down. I like the result.

The alphabet here is Hero Arts Bird Branch Alphabet. I have about a dozen aphas that will fit this puzzle, but it would look really cool to use a pencil and fill in the squares by hand. Except I hate my handwriting. Does anyone other than Dawn McVey and Becky Higgins like their own handwiting?

This card is going to the troops, so I turned it into a Miss You/Love You card. But can you see the possibilities? Any words you want!!!! (I'm trying not to shout, but it's coming out italics.) Filling in empty spaces with tiny shape stamps allows you to balance out the design. OH MY GOSH!

Sorry.

I need to practice with arranging the words and filler images to make a pleasing composition. There's a bit of trapped white space under the word you, and you would look better right under miss. But this isn't bad for a first effort!

CAS Design Tip: Trapped white space is essentially a hole in the design. See how that 3x3 grid under the word you is completely enclosed by words and hearts and a solid square? It's even got a black square in the center to reinforce the idea of a hole! That's a design no-no. White space needs to have an escape off the page.

And now for a comment about the cool caribbean card base. I tried putting this on a white base, and blech. So blah and unappealing. The cool caribbean makes the red pop prettily and makes the whole card more fun.

Wow! Thanks if you made it this far, and have a great weekend!