Using WORD Text Boxes to create your sentiments

As promised this post shows how to use WORD text boxes to create your sentiments for your cards. I do have a more in depth version that includes pictures but Blogger limits the amount of pictures I can upload per post and I had too many for the tutorial. Also the pictures weren't loading properly....they were looking mighty tiny. So below is a short version. If anyone would like the longer more in depth with pictures....just leave me a comment with your email address and I will be happy to email it to you. Just let me know if you would like it as a WORD document or a PDF file.

Here is the short version. Please note that basic knowledge of how to use WORD is required.

How to use WORD 2007 to create your sentiments

1. Click on the "Insert" tab to your top left

2. Click on the "Text Box" tab to your top right and insert the amount of simple text boxes you want for your sentiment.

3. Now divide your sentiment into the separate components and type into the text boxes.

4. Change your words into the fonts and size of fonts that you want. I almost always use at least more than one font on this part. I also will put an emphasis on some words by making them much larger than the other words.

5. Once you have your sentiment the way you want with fonts and size you will then click on the text boxes highlighting them. While highlighted right click...click on "Format Text Box". In the window that pops up you will see a "Transparency" toggle. Slide that all the way to your right for 100% and then click OK. Do this to all your text boxes. This will make all your text boxes transparent so that we can now move them around and overlap with no problems. At this point we will leave the black lines around the boxes for easy movement.

6. Now move the text boxes around to the positions that you would like them. You can move the boxes by highlighting them. I love this part and sometimes spend a lot of time playing around with this stage to get the sentiment the way I want it. Sometimes after getting it into position I might even decide I want to change the font or size. Once I'm done with this stage I sometimes will print a test run to make sure it is going to look the way I want. Now that your done with this stage move on to the next step.

7. Press and hold down your shift key. While holding down your shift key, highlight each and every text box. Once you have highlighted each text box (keep that shift key down) right click and then click on "Format Text Box". A window will pop up showing the line color (below where you toggled the transparency toggle) and a down arrow next to line color. Click on that arrow which will pop open another window showing you all the colors available. Click on "No Color" below the color choices then click OK. This step just made all your text box lines go away. Don't let go of that shift key just yet though! Holding that shift key move on to the next step.

8. Right click again and click on "Grouping" then click on "Group". Now you can take your finger off that shift key. By grouping the text boxes you are now able to move the sentiment around your page to wherever you want it as one unit. Pretty cool huh?

Hope this quick tutorial helped you with using text boxes and I hope you have as much fun as I have been having with creating sentiments for my cards using Word text boxes!

I will be posting my stick pin results in my next post...soon!