WordArt

The Girl Scout Leaders Camp was definitely an experience! Felix and I had not been camping since childhood, and being out "in the woods" was an eye-opener after many years of city-living! It was so beautiful out there, but it was a big change for us. We taught 3 Basic Scrapbooking classes and made lots of new friends. We were in a Unit House, which had a large room where the tables were set up, a bathroom, and a kitchen. We had everything we needed, and they were kind enough to serve us lunch, too. We hope we helped give inspiration to these leaders who attended the classes, to perhaps begin working with their troops on their scrapbooking patch and introduce their girls to the wonderful world of papercrafting. We brought with us many different examples of papercrafting, not just the scrapbook layouts. We brought paperbag books, cards, stamped candles and tile coasters, a starbook, a maze book, etc. There's so much you can do with paper, and we wanted to showcase it all. We're really looking forward to working with the Girl Scouts again at the Hornets game in November. Stay tuned for more details on that!

We have a Basic Stamping class coming on this Thursday, October 18th, at 6:30 PM. It is only $15 and everything you need is included in the class fee. You only need to bring a paper trimmer, microtip scissors, a bone folder, and good adhesive. If you have purchased a couple of stamps and given up on stamping because you never seem to be able to get a good impression or you think you can only do one thing with that stamp, you really NEED to come to this class. I will show you how to get a great, clean impression EVERY time you stamp, and I will show you several different things you can do using the same stamp. I will also teach you how to heat emboss, which so many people love. It is not too early to start thinking about Christmas cards, and once you learn how simple and rewarding stamping can be, you will probably never purchase pre-made Christmas (or birthday, anniversary, thank-you, etc.) cards again!

TIP OF THE DAY
For today's tip, I want to talk to you about using WordArt in Microsoft Office Word. While the tip I'm going to give deals with one specific type, please play around with it and experiment, and see all the wonderful different things you can do with this tool. If you have questions about it, feel free to e-mail me or if it is during store hours, call me and I will walk you through what you are working on. It really is easy, just take your time and play around with it.

You can create a title that looks matted by doing the following: In Word, select VIEW on the main toolbar, then select TOOLBARS from the drop-down menu. Another drop-down menu will pop up--go down to the bottom and select WORDART. When the new WordArt toolbar pops up, click on the tilted "A" on the left of the toolbar, and then just click OK. You don't need to select anything, just leave the selection that comes up first. Type in your title, then select the font you want to use, and the font size. Making sure your text is still highlighted, select the icon that looks like a little paint can and brush. If it is grayed out, your text is not selected. Simply highlight the text, or click on the text block, and the entire toolbar should come back available. Once you click on the paintcan and brush, a screen will open up giving you options for FILL and LINE. The FILL is the actual color of the text. Select the color of the text you want. The LINE is the size of the "mat" around the text. This will be in black. You can thicken your line by increasing the points on the line weight. Play around with it a little bit until you have it where you want it. You can redo it as many times as you need to, until you're satisfied, as long as the text is still highlighted. When you are satisfied with everything, click OK. Another thing you might want to keep in mind is that you can specify the size of your text by clicking on the SIZE tab after selecting the fill color and line weight. Again, play around with it a little bit until you're satisfied. The result will look like you have matted your text/title, and you can either print it on vellum or cardstock and either leave it in a rectangular shape or go ahead and use an Exacto knife and trim around the outside of the letters to cut it out. Have fun!

Until next time, happy scrapping!

Dee