Cheerful Word Collage

A few posts ago, I mentioned having a bunch of word stamp sets (like SU's Everyday Flexible Phrases) that don't get to meet with ink much. Here's a card that corrects some of that rubber loneliness.

My boys' school has anti-bullying word collages made by students posted all over the halls, and a few months ago, Ali Edwards posted a link to a website that will arrange these automatically. The idea appeals to the type lover in me, and with so many word stamps on the theme of happiness, it seemed inevitable to make one myself. It gave my stamp positioner quite the workout!

Design 101: Arranging all these words is a bit more challenging than I anticipated. In the end, I wanted to add a third reverse-type word to give the whole design a solid visual triangle, but there simply wasn't a spot for it. One thing I did avoid (well, for the most part) was trapped white space. Trapped white space creates a hole in a design, an empty spot completely surrounded by stuff so it's trapped and can't escape off the page. Trapped white space disrupts the balance and harmony of a design. Building the collage from the middle out would prevent creating trapped white space, but I started with the "Laugh every day" stamp in grape jelly Memento ink, thinking the darker purple would help give a visual ground to the random collage.

Because I love the way this turned out (who couldn't be made happy by receiving a card like this?), I'm going to remember to start in the middle next time because there WILL be a next time. Anybody out there got a bazzillion Merry Christmas stamps like I do? Happy Birthday? Thank you? Oh the possibilities!

May your weekend be full of creative possibilities. And don't forget about the One-Layer Wednesday Challenge: Punctuation.

Re: OLW challenges: I'm leaving the current challenge thumbnails on my sidebar and putting them on the bottom of the OLW post. That way, you can easily see all the current week's goodness more easily. You can post your link to the challenge using either InLinkz box, though. When the new challenge goes up, I'll replace the old challenge in the sidebar but you can still see the old challenge cards on the individual challenge posts. I hope that makes sense.

Supplies
stamps: various
ink: Memento
paper: PTI white, SU passion pink
accessories: stamp positioner, dimensionals, corner rounder