January 10 - Title With No Letters

JANUARY 10: Titles with NO Letters

Welcome to day 10 of the 9th annual Month of Challenges here at the Lilypad! We are in the double digits now! You're doing great and if you haven't started, it's not too late! Today’s challenge is the Titles with NO Letters layout.

As a kindergarten teacher, one of my favorite things is teaching my students about how to make letters and numbers. Once they start recognizing these important characters, they see them EVERYWHERE... in the cereal at breakfast, in the clouds, in the raindrops on the car windows. Today, we are going to channel our inner kindergartner and create a layout that has a title that doesn't use any traditional letters or numbers. How do we do that, you ask? You will build, repurpose and reimagine elements to become the letters and numbers you need for your title.



The rules for this challenge:

Your layout must have a title that is distinguishable as a title. Meaning, it must be a word or phrase that is larger than any other text on the page.

Your title must have at least three letters, numbers or symbols. You can use as many characters as you want but this is the minimum amount.

You may not use any actual characters, alphas or fonts of any kind for your title. You may use them in other parts of your page but not for the title. You may not use anything in your title that a designer meant to be a letter of the alphabet or number (anything labeled as an alpha, word art or a font).

The only way you may alter elements to create characters is by resizing or recoloring. You may not stretch an element or remove portions of it (although you may hide parts of it behind something). This goes for papers, too. You can use paper elements (word art strips, borders, torn paper pieces, etc.) to build letters but you cannot create your own strips or shapes out of paper by altering them digitally.

You can use the same elements for different characters in your title. If you want to build all the letters in your title out of sequins, ribbons or flowers for instance, you can.

Everything else on your page is up to you! The rules only concern the title.

Here are examples of ways you can and cannot make the letters you need for your title:




Here's an awesome example by Amanda Resende:

And here's a great example from MiekSter. Can you see the FUN?


Other important rules for all challenges:
Your page must be a new page in order to count for the Month of Challenges. Your page must be posted in three places:

1. Uploaded to the TLP Gallery (not an outside hosting site).
2. Posted in your page thread you created in the MOC Layouts Folder. You should have one post per completed challenge page. If you complete all 31 challenges, your thread should contain 31 posts. Please do not comment in the participants’ page threads so we can keep them clean.
3. Posted in this thread. People can comment here if they wish.

Your page must contain Lilypad product (pages with photos and font only do not count). If you use product from other stores, your pages must contain at least 75% current Lilypad product (currently for sale in the store from either permanent designers or guest designers).

I hope you enjoy today’s challenge. I cannot wait to see the creative ways you create your title!

 

This post is reserved for answers to questions

Does the entire title needs to be done this way? I know you said the title needs to have at least 3 letters but I wonder if a sub-title can be normal alpha?
Yes, as long as the characters of the main title are not alphas, a smaller subtitle can have traditional alphas.


Are we allowed to take a photo of perhaps cereal spelled out to make a letter or other household items to make a word?
As long as at least three of the letters or numbers in the title are made of elements, you can use a photo for a letter, if you want. But you can't spell out the whole title with a photograph.
Here's an example of a layout that is acceptable because she used the photo for the "L" :



Can the & symbol be used as an E if it looks like it?
View attachment 427816
Thank you for your question. It can't be used because it's still a character.

May we put paper squares behind our created letters or paper shape behind the whole title or does it have to be on the background paper free floating?
If you want to use the paper behind as an accent, that's fine. As long as the letters are made of elements, you can put whatever you want behind it.

If my title is 8 letters, could I have a mix of elements and letters as long as I include at least three elements as letters?
Thank you for your question! What others have done this in this challenge is to make the main word of the title completely out of elements and added some smaller supplementary words with traditional alphas. The rules are that the whole title word needs to be made out of elements and that it needs to be at least three letters long so I'd rather you didn't mix traditional alphas in with it, please. You can see lots of great examples of how people challenged themselves to creatively use elements to make letters throughout this thread. I'm excited to see what you come up with!

 

Yes, as long as the characters of the main title are not alphas, a smaller subtitle can have traditional alphas.