This post is kind of long, but I balanced it out with lots of pictures. : ) It often happens that I have the perfect scrapbook page in my head – the paper, design, title, letters – and then I realize that I don’t have all of the letters I need. Grrr. Here are a few ways I handle that (after I stop growling).
1. Cut or change letters you DO have
Let’s play a game. I’m going to show you a page that I cut or changed the letters on, and you have to guess which letters they are. I play this game with two of my friends. Angie (who isn’t a scrapbooker) can’t usually tell which letter I changed when I tell her I changed one. Yvonne (who is a scrapbooker) doesn’t usually notice that I changed a letter when I don’t tell her. That’s always my goal.
Both e's in the title are actually c's. Since the letters are foam, they’re malleable. I just moved the end of the c over to the curve on the left to look like an e.
The e’s in "see" are 3’s that I flipped over. Since I only had two e’s and two 3’s, I purposefully put both 3’s in the same place so that it wouldn’t be as noticeable.
The o’s are zeroes and the l was a u that I snipped.
The S is an 8 that I snipped.
TWO TIPS: 1. If you do trim your letters, make sure to make it flush with the edges. I usually sand the edge with a small piece of light sandpaper so that everything is smooth and you can’t tell that the letter was altered. 2. I’ve found that you can take away from letters but you can’t add to them. It’s hard to blend pieces of letters.
2. Mix and match letters
I only had enough glitter letters for one word, and even with that, I had to mix upper and lower case (which I ended up loving). I also used small alphabet stickers to finish my title of "and they lived happily ever after."
Not enough space and not enough letters for the whole title, so I snuck a little cardstock in the middle of my title to finish it out: "today we began our forever."
Hey! You can also use negative letters! The a in "cpa" adds interest, takes up a different amount of space, and gives an extra letter. I was careful to keep that donut hole in place.
I’m in love with these tiny alphas especially when you don’t want to waste your good letters on little words like "on" and "the."
I love these letters, but you only get one of each in the set (crazy, right?) and my last name has two of everything. These work great together because they’re the same brand and same design, just different colors. I also mixed upper and lower case because the blue letters were all uppercase, and the pink were all lowercase.
TWO TIPS: 1. If you mix upper and lower case, mix them throughout your title and not just for the one letter you’re missing. That way, it’s obvious that you’re doing it on purpose. 2. When you mix sets of letters, make sure that your more prominent letters are the most important part of the title. For example, in "he makes me laugh until I cry," the important words are "laugh" and "cry," so those are the bigger words to draw more attention. It would be awkward (and a little creepy) if I used the bigger letters for "HE MAKES ME laugh until I cry."
3. Change your title
Sometimes you just can’t make it work. I find it’s better to brainstorm than force it, especially if it means sacrificing the design of the whole page. And I often come up with more poetic titles than the one I started with.
I originally wanted the page to be "christmas dinner," but I couldn’t get it to work in the space I had, and I didn’t want to go off the edges of the cardstock.
I had my heart set on "ecstatic" but didn’t have all of the letters.
I wanted the title to be "we heart this place – Cameron park" so that park/park wouldn’t be redundant, but I didn’t have another "e".
I had to play around to get this title to work. I wanted "faux surprise" but didn’t have the letters, and I was set on using these glitter alphas. I tried combinations with faux/fake/feign surprise/shock. I think the exclamation point makes it.
TWO TIPS: 1. Always always count out your title letters before you start adhering them. You’ll shake your fist in the air when you’re missing your last "e" and everything is already stuck down. 2. Check out thesaurus.com for brainstorming synonyms.
BIG TIP: Don’t forget that people don’t know that you wanted that other perfect title or design if you don’t tell them. They’ll see your page and think it’s exactly how you wanted it. : )
Good luck, and as always, feel free to leave tips or questions in the comments. : )
