In the words of the Late Great Prince ,” Dig if you will a picture…” : You lay out all your sample sheets . Dozens of designs you have painstakingly collected and organized that cover a wide variety of subjects. Super heroes , butterflies, floral masks, monsters, sports…etc. The pre-teen that has been leafing through them for two minutes turns to you and says” can you just write a name on my arm in black? ”
“Really?” You think ” 54 different designs available , all these colors and you want me to doodle on you?” So here is where Graffiti comes in handy!
You don’t have to be the best at it. I certainly am no ” Wizer Oner” , but with some easy bubble letters and a few one stroke flowers you can turn a four letter word like “LOVE” into something spectacular!

First load your sponge with whatever rainbow cake you prefer then pinching the sponge lightly to shorten it lightly press out blocks of color in the amount of letters needed. (four in the case of “love”)  Make sure to flip your sponge in different directions to make the color layout more interesting. The simpler the word the better. You can abbreviate names to make them easier to paint but if you have a lot of letters in the word , use a  one stroke cake  and a flat brush. You can overlap a bit.

Decide where you want to add blossoms and  use your favorite “one stroke ” cake and 3/4 inch brush to add a few blossoms to the blocks and then a few green leaves.

The next step is writing the letters. I like to lay down my white highlights first and then using my black to outline the letters . (that is just my preference. If you are a newbie I suggest laying down the black letters first and then the white highlights.)

Once you outline the word love you can outline the flowers and add a few more embellishments. A final sprinkle of glitter will bring your art to life!

If you are feeling a bit more creative you can add arrows to block letters to make them more artsy. If you don’t feel too confident to design your own letters a graffiti generator like http://www.graffiticreator.net/  can help you create some. Play around with your composition. Add different elements to your words or add textures to your letters using stencils! The possibilities are endless!