Monday, June 28, 2010

I Love Wordle

Have you heard of Wordle? ( It is another new obsession of mine. ) According to the website, "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."

We were looking to create some cheap art for my sons' rooms. Since they are both golf fanatics, we entered in a bunch of golf terms. Note: I have had trouble when I used the paste in text box. Half the time is doesn't work. I prefer to use the advanced option where you enter in your weighted text. Give the words you want to be bigger a larger weight. (Golf is 1345 on mine.) The numbers I used for each word were totally random.

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One result. Once the wordle comes up, you can hit randomize and another wordle with the same words will appear. You can also change your original wordle by clicking on the menu options.

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Another one.

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In order to save your wordle so that you can manipulate it, you need to download a third-party software program like CutePDF. You also need to download the converter. Once you have done this, select print on your wordle and change the printer to the CutePDF. You can then name your wordle and save it.

This is the wordle that Tyler wanted for his room. I opened the wordle in Photoshop and enlarged the wordle. I made it slightly smaller than the finished size that I wanted. I then copied it and placed it on an 11X14 black background. I did this because Wordle places the words all the way to the edge of the box and I wanted a little more black around it.

I then printed the wordle and placed it in a cheap frame from Walmart. (not the best pic, but you get the idea)

Total cost was around $6.


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I also used Wordle to make invitations for Tristan's 18th Birthday!

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The possibilities are endless. Now go forth and create!


I am linking up to these blog parties today:


The DIY Show Off


Making
Keeping It Simple




4 comments:

Kaysi @ Keeping it Simple said...

Those are so fun! I've never heard of it but now I want to try it!

Lacey said...

I LOVE WORDLES!!! I use them in my classroom for all sorts of decorations, and meaningful cuteness! :) I use our math vocabulary words, or I use the names of my students to make a cute door poster. Just be cautious, because the ones that are posted on their site for you to view are not censored, and contain profanity sometimes, so I don't ever send my students to the site to let them do their own wordles.

Leanne said...

I love Wordle, but I didn't know how to do some of those things you talked about. THanks for sharing! Yours turned out great. I love the look.

Martha said...

Wordle is so fun! I do have a quick question, how did you get Tristan's invitation info in order?
Thanks!
Martha

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