Saturday, September 6, 2008

A bit of Word Fun!




I discovered the Wordle site yesterday (here is a LINK)

This is the description from the site:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

So, I tried it and it is so much fun - I can't stop!

You can create your own images and either keep them private or share in the Wordle Gallery. There are thousands created and shared each week and it is fun to browse through them. A word of warning, there is no "filter" for adult content when you browse the gallery. So far I have not seen anything offensive, but there could be some that you would not want your children to see.

I have actually spent most of my time on the site creating some of my own clouds - you can enter text (a speech or news article) or "the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed. "

There are multiple fonts, colors and layouts. The picture at the top of this post is one wordle version of my blog and the picture just below is also my blog "wordlelized!"



Below are three versions of the Cricut Design Studio home page - there are endless variations!







You could use these to create unusual journal blocks for your scrapbook pages or to create personalized cards for any occasion. You could enter all of the characteristics you admire about a person and do a page with the wordle and their photo.

You can also use this to create ideas for ways to combine words in a design studio file. Below is the phrase "Now is the time and this is the place" - I typed "time" and "place" three times each so they would be larger.



Here is a screen shot of this "translated" into Design Studio with the Opposites Attract font



and after tweaking the design a bit to keep it all welded in one piece



All of the designs above were created on http://wordle.net

You can save ("print") these designs as PDFs and SVG (scaleable vector graphics) files - there are directions on the Wordle site in the FAQs.

I do have more Design Studio designs to post but wanted to share this site with you - have fun with it!

9 comments:

  1. i discovered this site a while back saw a post about it on tallyscrapper.com I would love to know how to copy a design into to design studio though. I am sure i can figure it out. Your so talented.

    tweetybugshouse

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  2. WOW that is fantastic thanks for the ideas

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  3. How cool is this?!!! Thanks for the link.

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  4. What a wonderfully clever idea! But you are are wonderfully clever person. After I saw what you came up with I realized how much you would enjoy this site. It is beautiful and my kids love it as well. Think you can make the turtle in DS??? Let me know what you think.

    http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf

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  5. I found this about 4 days ago and I can't stop playing. This is so much fun. Now I need to figure out how to save these so in the future I can use them. Can you tell me how to save them on my computer? I always like to hear about things people find that we can use and have fun with.

    Thanks, Vickie

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  6. Kisatrtle - I am working on that turtle - what an interesting site! I have to try to take screen shots as the animation goes along to see just what they used where!

    Vickie - Look at the FAQs on the wordle site - they explain how to "print" as a PDF. You can also print the design and the scan and save as a JPEG. Hope that helps!

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  7. OMG! I never thought to combine wordle with DS!!!

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  8. Just saw this website featured in a magazine - either BHG Scrapbooks Etc or Digital Scrapbooking. I wasn't impressed, but you've inspired me to try it out! Looks like it would be fun just to get your creative juices flowing!

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