Sometimes I worry about myself...

I used to have a career - a real career.  I traveled, I worked with clients, I have made presentations to auditoriums of hostile people, I out-earned my husband.  But that was a decade ago...now I'm "mom"...and I am beginning to worry about my brain...

Just a couple of days ago, I showed you a card that I was going to be making in bulk for our church youth who were being confirmed. There was really nothing wrong with the card except I had a lot of circles to punch.

At the same time this was going on - I have another project.  Our church secretary has been quite ill so a number of us have volunteered to help out with parts of her job.  One of the things that I am doing is the visual presentation for the service.  It's quite simple - we simply project words for the hymns, the readings and then a series of graphics/photos for the sermon, the prayers, etc.  I try to match all of the graphics to the sermon theme.  For confirmation weekend, our youth each read their faith statement.  Most of them are incredibly nervous - so I have been pondering for weeks what I could do as a graphic that they would enjoy and would have meaning.

The light bulb came on for the visual presentation.  I have had this card technique pinned on Pinterest - it's a simple and very fun thank you card that includes instructions for making a word cloud on Tagxedo.com. I used her instructions and have been working on a word cloud including the first names of our confirmation kids - AND I have done it in the shape of a dove.  I have been practically giddy with excitement over it...that this dove would be projected over their heads as they read their faith statements.

Here's the worrisome part...I had that great card pinned on Pinterest, it gave me an idea for a visual presentation, but I never went full circle and realized that I could also use the word cloud as card.  I am so disappointed in myself - it's a perfect idea.  First of all, it's themed and I'm very, very big on themes.  Second, it's easy - print the word cloud and trim to fit a card.  Third, the kids will like it so much more than a generic card put together by a mom.

Where did my brain go????

So, after all of that, here's the card that I have created for each confirmand...




I used all of the instructions included with the card that I linked to above, except:

• Color Theme: Ocean
• Max Word Count: 100 (for the visual presentation, I used 250 - this squeezes a lot more smaller names and helps define the shape)
• Emphasis: 40%, this decreases the large size of some of the names, which helped me make sure that each confirmand had their name large at least once.

Tagxedo.com is an incredible place to create word clouds.  It is totally flexible.  The downside to the flexibility is that is isn't particularly easy to use - lots and lots of options.  But it does allow you to play with the options and it does keep your history, so if you get somewhere you don't like...just click back.

(Now, I just have to figure out what to do with all of the circles that I punched for the first card.)