So, Wordle is a (free!) website where you can make your own word-art picture-things. They call them 'word clouds.' I call them geeky fun!
With starting up grad school soon (less that a week!!), I've been looking at planners and how to balance classwork and work and chores and workouts... you know, juggling life. At the moment, Life is balanced between several notebooks - my main planner, my food journal and my workout journal (still trying to get those last stubborn pounds!), and a small notebook for notes, to-do lists, positive thoughts, etc. I record a lot on my Google Calendar too, since that syncs to my phone very well, and I love being able to turn on and off the different layers in my calendars, but my phone won't cover everything I want my "paper brain" to do. I do record a lot of my workouts via my phone, but I'm not crazy about the food journaling apps I've found (including WeightWatchers, even though I love their online site). Just not as user-friendly for me. And I've yet to find a good to-do list app that would act as my homework checklist, chores checklist, etc. I like Evernote, but it's not quite as editing-friendly as I'd like. I use it a lot, but for other things. The daily jotting-down of lists really does end up on paper a lot for me, which is fine. I just want it to be all in one notebook, not in three smaller ones.
After a lot of playing around in Word and Excel (not a Photoshop guru, to make a pretty, fancy set-up), I designed both monthly pages and daily pages that I liked. There are places for my meals (food journal), my exercises, my daily agenda, things to remember looking ahead, homework or planned school reading, daily chores... Yes, I'm in a highly dorky, happy place :)
And before you even ask, yes I love my office supplies; the above Nerd Girl Quirk is pretty accurate (this one's #111, though the number was cut off). And since I've
already found my perfect ball point pen (Pentel RSVP, if you are
interested), I'm working on my perfect planner!
So, what does that have to do with Wordle? Well, the new planner needed new dividers, so I designed "word clouds" to be the focus of each monthly divider. Because I can! The more your repeat a word, the larger is it in the word cloud, so the month on each page is repeated 15-20 times (depending on how many other words I was using), then the more major holidays or attributes of the month (ex, "spring" in April) were repeated 3-6 times, and minor descriptors, characteristics, associated words, and random holidays were repeated just 1-2 times.
So, what does that have to do with Wordle? Well, the new planner needed new dividers, so I designed "word clouds" to be the focus of each monthly divider. Because I can! The more your repeat a word, the larger is it in the word cloud, so the month on each page is repeated 15-20 times (depending on how many other words I was using), then the more major holidays or attributes of the month (ex, "spring" in April) were repeated 3-6 times, and minor descriptors, characteristics, associated words, and random holidays were repeated just 1-2 times.
For this set here, the font is Berylium. I adjusted the color palettes to match the calendar pages I'd designed (which in turn, had their color schemes determined by the word art I was using as their headers, found on a free calendar online). If you're playing with the colors, there's plenty of options, and just keep clicking Recolor until you find one that you like. The format is Half-and-Half on most of these.
I also made one with my name and words about me (hobbies; places I've lived; stuff I love, etc) for the cover page in my planner, but since that one's pretty personalized, I'm just going to leave it up to your imagination.
Oh, and if you like playing with these, there are others like Wordle. Tagxedo is one that lets you make shapes too (or rather, fill in pre-designed shapes). These are pretty, but I liked the general cloud from Wordle better. I found these two through Pinterest, but you can find some others if you search a little.
And as a final nerdy note on this post, when I was looking for the above Nerd Girl, she also has a Nerd Girl Quirk for Wordles, #215, which I didn't find until I was in the midst of writing this post :)
Oh, and if you like playing with these, there are others like Wordle. Tagxedo is one that lets you make shapes too (or rather, fill in pre-designed shapes). These are pretty, but I liked the general cloud from Wordle better. I found these two through Pinterest, but you can find some others if you search a little.
And as a final nerdy note on this post, when I was looking for the above Nerd Girl, she also has a Nerd Girl Quirk for Wordles, #215, which I didn't find until I was in the midst of writing this post :)
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