Playing with Words

On Valentine's Day, our Letter Love 201 exercise was to write the words, "Love, love, love. Do what you love" (I can hear you from here Leah! LOL). So I played with different letter styles and had some fun.  I especially like what I came up with for the last word at the bottom. 

 I really liked how using the word to create the word worked for me, and I thought my clever (if I do say so myself) little hearts wrapped around the bottom border where fun. I also really liked the black and white, so I left it there...

Then, this morning I decided to play some more with this technique.  I wrote the words "Play with your words", again using words to create the letters.  I also hid a subliminal message in the page...

I like the ribbon effect that I'm achieving, and I had fun again wrapping it around the border.

This page didn't pop, probably because everything is the same weight and there's really not focal point, so I got the Tombow's out and created a shadow effect with this pretty aqua colour.  This close up shows the effect of the Tombow before the ink was activated with water, creating the sharper shadows (right and bottom) and the softer watercolour effect achieved by activating the ink with a water brush (left and top).

And here's what the whole page looks like: 

The hidden message...the large words obviously say "Play with your words".  The word play was made by repeatedly writing play as you can see in the close up above.  However, with is made up of the words 'but' (the w and i) and 'not' (t and h) and the word 'your' is made of 'with' (y and o) and your (u and r) and then 'words' is made by repeatedly writing 'food'.  My mother's in my head today. :o)

Now, you've all heard the expression "Leave well enough along."  I wish I had...

Perhaps if I go back and do some more, stronger watercolour in the negative space I can salvage it...or maybe I just put down the brush and walk away...