Fathers Day Text Art Gift

Have you ever heard of wordle? It is a site that helps you make word art fairly easy. For Fathers Day we created this custom text art as a gift. It takes a little time to create the word art on the the computer but my Little Chefs LOVED coming up with adjectives or phrases that describe their Dad. They all gave input which makes this gift so special.

I instructed my Little Chefs to come up with one or two words that describe Dad. They followed directions for a while, then came up with short phrases. I thought about helping them shorten their thoughts, but decided not to because it was more authentic.

After the list was complete we got on the computer to wordle.net. Little Chef A and C are pretty good using the computer so they took turns typing in the words. I then showed them how to select the options to create the custom art work. We talked about what they wanted the word art to look like. Do they want it in a rectangle or square shape? Do they want the words up and down only? Do they want the words only across? Do they want the words in a crazy pattern? Do they want it colored, if so what colors? There are so many options. However, once we were able to come up with a consensus about what the final product would look like it was easier to choose the options and narrow the likes. Anytime they generated a word art they liked it was saved to our computer. Wordle does not let you go back to a previous creation so it was very important to save anything that was even an option.

When we had a variety of options saved to our computer we narrowed it down to just one they all agreed upon and printed it out. At first it printed out on a 8 1/2 x 11 page however we wanted a smaller size for our project. In our print options we shrunk it down to 80%. This was just trial and error, printing on a regular piece of paper until we found the correct size. Then we were ready to print on cardstock. Tip: check to see if your printer has a cardstock option for a paper type. It will greatly help the printing process.

Cut a piece of board to your desired size. Sand the edges and paint it the color of your choice.

Take a small piece of burlap and cut it to the size of the board. Place the burlap on top of the board count in from the side two strands and pull the second strand out. Cut in the space created by pulling the strand out. This will ensure you cut a straight line. Repeat on all four sides.

Take a piece of cardstock the color of your choice and cut it 1/4″-1/2″ smaller on all sides then the burlap.

Your ideal size of word art should be  1/4″-1/2″ smaller then the cardstock.

Layer all pieces on top of each other with glue. Add snaps or tacks (if your board is thick enough so it will not poke through on the back side). Now you have a custom word art for Father’s Day.

Let me save you some time and give you a few tips it took a while for me to figure out when using wordle.

• If you want one word larger then all the others repeat the word a few times. The most frequent word is the largest.
• If you want to keep two or more words together put this symbol ~ inbetween the words like this “plays~with~us”
• You are not able to go back. If you like the layout even a little save that image, you can delete it from your computer later.
• How do you save? Download CutePDF – look in the FAQ on wordle for more information.

Don’t forget to link up to Fantastic Thursday.

Still looking for another Father’s Day idea how about our Woven Tie Fathers Day Craft or Printable.