Changing Outline Color and Overlapping Letters

Use 'Properties' to change outline and use 'Grid' as alignment guide.

The next step is to change the outline color. With all words selected and the Pick tool active, select the Properties icon on the Tool Options palette to bring up the Vector Property dialog. Now we can change the outline/stroke color to green. Note that you can also change the stroke width in this dialog if you feel the outline is too thin/too fat.

Next we'll mix up the alignment of the letters to give it a fun, festive look (this is optional, of course). Before we can re-arrange individual letters, we have to convert them to separate shapes. With the Pick tool, select text, right click, select Convert Text to Curves > As Character Shapes. If you have more than one line of text, this has to be done to each line separately unless both lines were created at the same time (as one object). If you entered text one word at a time, then you have to convert to character shapes one word at a time.

Once text is converted, select each letter to move them closer together.

Note: The easiest way to select just one letter/character shape is to select it from the Layer palette. Click the + next to the layer button to reveal the sub-layers and click a layer button to select a letter. The text of the layer name will become bold when selected and a bounding box will appear around the selected letter.

Arrange letters so they are slightly overlapping each other. Rotate some of the letters left and some right using the rotate handle on the bounding box of selected letter. I also made the C and M appear as 'capital' letters by dragging a corner point of the bounding box until they were slightly larger than the other letters. Refer to example shown here. In the screen shot here, the Grid Guideline is turned on to assist in aligning each letter and centering the words.

You'll notice the letters/character shapes are arranged on the Layer palette in reverse, with the last letter typed as the uppermost sub-layer. When you overlap your letters, this arrangement will cause the letters to overlap right to left. Overlapping letters seem to look best when they overlap left to right (probably because we read left to right). To have the letters overlap left to right means the first letter needs to be the uppermost layer. To reverse the palette arrangement, drag each letter button on the Layer palette until the letter order is switched. In other words, to have letters overlapping left to right, 'Cinco de Mayo' should be spelled out top to bottom on Layer palette.