The bottom 4 measurements are for text. Tracking, Text Scaling, Kerning and Line
Spacing.

There aren't too may workarounds for your WordArt situation.

Try this: After you have inserted your picture into the WordArt, copy, paste
special as a .wmf. Ungroup. There are many layers in the WordArt now, some you
can delete, the lines can be given a smaller weight. You now can nudge the
letters closer together.

When you have two lines of text, it is going to make your WordArt even harder to
do what you want. Create each line separately. In an editing program crop your
photo in half. Insert each half into each line.

That's what I thought you might mean. Doing it the way I did, one line at a
time and moving them around is too easy and not a problem for most people.
I've done that (letters with picture showing through/in them) using
Photoshop. Not sure if I've moved them around, or closer. I think I did with
this, but it's not Publisher.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y212/starchild_dreams/blossom_love.jpg

I'll try it in Publisher, I enjoy a challenge and chance to learn.

sorry for the double entry....

the first attempt took forever to try to go and then said it wouldn't go...
so I sent it again... and then they both come out here!....

I haven't done much with WordArt in Publisher, just insert some and pull it
around at times.

I  wrote 2 lines with it just now, and openned the format Word Art and
where it says  SIZE and height, it says 100% I put this at 50% and then 10%,
which squashed it together, but by pulling it around I think I got it closer
together, overall.

 I think there probably should be an easier way to get the text spacing
closer like you want.

  Though if there is a way, someone here would know it.

Seems like you should be able to reduce the space, and there are boxes that
look like this, as you say they aren't active.
But, if the MS experts here don't know, I don't know what else we can do.
I have looked up, downloaded, but not yet tried, some "fat" fonts (free)
Don't know how they'd work of it they'd be close together in lines.
Dividing the picture up and assigning a piece of it to each line sounds
possible, but kind of time consuming. Getting just the right part of the
picture in the right words/lines.
  I'm glad you posted about this, I never did much with Word Art (at least
in Publisher, mainly just for occasional headings in Word) and this has
openned up something new for me to play with for awhile.

So, you are saying the wordart character spacing tool doesn't work?

Flash is Macromedia Flash (now it's owned by Adobe, the newer versions, I
have an older one called MX when it was Macromedia) that makes animations,
like movies. I know some who have gotten it, bought a book or looked up
tutorials and learned it and do things with it like make and send Christmas
cards (in email) where you can click and drag and decorate a Christmas tree
(LOL). I have tried learning it many times, and it doesn't come easy for me.

It's animation/movies. When you open a webpage and something flahes on the
screen (an ad, usually) and moves around, sometimes you can click something.
There are also games you can fine and silly little movies and music. Some
who really know how to do it can make complex ones, with layers and scenes.
You can search for "online flash games" etc.

The program side of it (not what one sees when it's done and uploaded)  has
a timeline and frames and you can add things to, make them move, or frame by
frame animation. You can add action scripts (Java scripts) that tell some
what to do. Make buttons to click on that do things, interactive stuff.  It
also has a lot of fun graphics you can do, even if you don't make movies
from them.

You probably see it all the time and don't realize what it is.

Like on YouTube. If you right click on it, and it's flash it will say so
(and not the usual copy/past/save as, etc)

some of my practice pages (from when I was first starting out. You might
have to click the page to see/start it)
http://www.kingcon.com/starchild/flash02.html

http://www.angelfire.com/art3/starchild_dreams/shapes2.html (I shouldn't
have left the outline on the shapes)

Most of my practice I don't put on webpages.

There's a great site, an example of interactive flash ecards, if you look
up jacquie Lawson. I don't want to put the link because maybe we're not
supposed to put links to commercial sites (that aren't Microsoft) here.
There's also one called jibjab that makes some really detailed flash movies,
and has had some passed around a lot about the country, presidential
candidates, etc.

I'm trying to think of how to tie in the topic of  Flash with Publisher to
justify this (LOL)

Just that you can make graphics in Flash (without animating them) and save
them or copy paste them into publisher.