2008 January | Scraps Of Mind

Archive for January, 2008

Posted by karooch on

January 15, 2008

Where do you hang out on the Net?

Welcome to Scraps of Mind. I'm delighted to see you. Why not check out the site, and if you like what you see, subscribe to my RSS feed and get daily updates delivered to you. If you're not sure what the RSS thing is, then check out this 'RSS made easy' post. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to seeing more of you.

Social media sites are the current phenomenon (try spelling that after a couple of glasses of wine) on the Internet.

There are heaps of them out there:

StumbleUpon
Facebook
MySpace
Twitter
Digg
Kirtsy

Just to name a few.

I’ve joined a couple of them myself, but I don’t know if I fully understand what they’re about.

Facebook

I have a Facebook account (click here for my Profile Page. And maybe join my friends list). There are lots of little cutsie things to send to friends on Facebook but I’m not quite sure what else to do with it. To be honest I find it a little bewildering. I tried finding some old school friends from my life back in England but had no luck.

Are any of you on Facebook? If so it would be good to add you to my list of friends (maybe you could leave your link to your profile page in a comment below if you would like other Scraps of Mind readers to find you too). And perhaps you could help me discover what I’m not getting out of Facebook. I’d really like to use it more but I need more understanding of how. I’m sure that some of you have a Facebook account and are much more savvy than I so please share. I’m probably not alone in trying to work it out. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by karooch on

January 14, 2008

Why I won’t be upgrading to Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Let me start by saying that I am a devoted Adobe Photoshop Elements Girl.

At Christmas last month I decided to give myself an extra present and upgrade from Photoshop Elements 4 to PSE6. So I downloaded the free trial that’s available on the Adobe website, taking a ‘try before I buy’ approach.

Thank heavens I did!

Now don’t get me wrong. PSE 6 has got all the functions that you would expect it to have. And one special one that really pushed my buttons was a huge level of control over the drop shadows, compared to PSE4. Photoshop Elements 6 lets you control not just the angle, and size of the shadow, but also its colour, opacity and distance from the object. If any of you have watched my video tutorials you’ll have seen how I compensate for the lack of drop shadow control in PSE4. With PSE6 I was in drop shadow heaven!

So what’s the problem, you may ask?

Why aren’t you hightailing it over to the Adobe website and downloading this wonderful new PSE version right now?

Well the reason I won’t be heading off to Adobe and upgrading to Version 6 is that the User Interface colour is truly truly terrible!!!

Whilst the black/charcoal screen may look very cool and modern. And whilst it serves to highlight all the tool bar icons that are now in colour, it is a nightmare to use!

Although the text is printed in white to contrast with the black background (this (white text on black background) actually flies in the face of accepted usability standards) all the other bits are still in black. Things like the arrows on the drop down menus and the slider bars for opacity and tolerance are black on charcoal. In other words all the control spots for managing your work. HOW DUMB IS THAT?

I went to the Adobe site to share my unhappiness with them and surprise, surprise. I was not alone. But it seems the general vibe is that this problem is unlikely to be fixed until PSE7!

And to add insult to injury, a suggestion was offered that users go and buy an ‘inexpensive’ calibrating program from Amazon for $60.

So I’m devastated! I can’t move to PSE6 when I have to click around like a mad thing to find the right spot on the screen to make things happen. It would drive me nuts.

If anyone out there has already upgraded and knows a solution please please let me know.

And thank you for letting me vent on you today.

Words to Live by

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania some time of the night,

Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight

William Shakespeare (A Midsumer Night’s Dream)

Posted by karooch on

January 11, 2008

Five Freebies on Friday - 11 Jan 2008

Welcome to this week’s edition of Five Freebies on Friday.

Please don’t forget to leave some love when you download your freebie. A thank you comment costs you nothing and means a lot to the designer.

Brittneycreations is offering a pretty Quick Page made from her Purple Passions Page Kit.
Kylie has a striking mini kit for you at My Digital Life. Love that linen background.
There are some beautiful pastel ruched ribbon borders and bows over at June’s Cen’s Loft. Not sure how long these will be available so get in quick.
Obsidian Dawn has some amazing artistic brushes. Just go check them out.
And finally Michelle has a collection of freebie elements for you at Michelle On-Line. Why not click over and take a look?

Get a Great Deal on The Scrapbooking Edge Video Tutorials

I’ve just got to tell you about this Great Deal that Digital Arts Cafe are offering on the Scrapbooking Edge Video Tutorials right now.

All Scrapbooking Edge Video Tutorials 30% off

And if you buy the Frame Cluster Tutorial you can get a FURTHER 40% OFF on the Cut Out Text Tutorial.

Giving you a whopping 70% off!!!!

Animated Layout Tutorial | Cut Out Text Tutorial | Frame Clusters Tutorial

There are 3 to choose from and in each Video Tutorial Package you will:

Get a high resolution video (much better than any YouTube quality) that you can run on your own computer.

Each video is between 18 to 35 minutes long and packed full of heaps of great Photoshop Elements Scrapbooking Tips.

Learn great techniques to create fabulous unique looks for your digital layouts.

Get even more value from your existing stash of digital elements by customizing them for your own scrapbook layouts.

Enjoy clear easy-to-follow instructions on what to do and why to do it.

PLUS - Get all the Scrapbook Elements used to create the demonstration layout FREE with the Tutorial Package so you can get started straight away.

We’ve had some great feedback on these tutorials and I’m looking forward to making more in 2008.

Here are some of the layouts created by scrapbookers who have enjoyed The Scrapbooking Edge Video Tutorials.

Click on the thumbnails to view the larger image

So if you’re a Digital Scrapbooker wanting to add to your skills, or if you’re someone who would like to give Digital Scrapbooking a try please click on over and take advantage of this offer.

If you don’t have Photoshop Elements loaded on your computer you can get a free 30 day trial of Photoshop Elements 6 here.

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Get more mileage out of your digital scrapbooking kits.

Let The Scrapbooking Edge Video Tutorials show you how.

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Posted by karooch on

January 9, 2008

Who Wants to Increase Their Scrapbooking Profile?

Well now that all the dust and confusion of the Christmas Holiday Season is over and we’re starting to settle back into our ‘normal’ routines I thought I’d tell you about a little Scraps of Mind project I’ve been thinking about.

Last September/October, when I was on a 4 week vacation I hosted some Guest Blog posts on Scraps of Mind. You may remember Melo’s articles on choosing scrapbook layout title names and her tutorial on PhotoShop Styles, as well as Kayla’s information packed article on photography and Seona’s experiences as a scrapbooking orphan.

Well I thought it would be cool to inject a bit of variety into the Scraps of Mind writing style by having a regular Guest Post Spot once a month for readers to submit their own articles for all our enjoyment.

The Benefits to You

The benefit to Scraps of Mind readers is obvious: an injection of new blood will make for even more interesting reading for everyone.

The benefits to those of you who would like to contribute are these:

Scraps of Mind has a good profile in the Scrapbooking blogosphere. Your article on Scraps of Mind is an opportunity to showcase your work to a bunch of readers who may never have been to your blog. If they like what they read you may well win new hearts and new readers.

You will get links to your blog when your article is presented. Scraps of Mind is a Google Page Rank 4 (now 2 becaust they slapped me for hosting text link ads) blog so links from here are still pretty worthwhile in terms of building your own ranking in the Search Engines. It all helps to drive traffic to your blog.

You’ll also have a permanent link on the Scraps of Mind Article Page which is a popular resource for new readers coming to Scraps of Mind as well as regular readers.

If you don’t have a blog of your own but would like to see yourself published and know that lots of scrapbookers are reading your stuff, this is a great way to do it. Another boost to your scrapbooking profile.

What do I have to do?

Write an original article on any subject to do with Scrapbooking. This must not be something you have posted on your blog or elsewhere.

Send it to me at karooch(at)scrapsofmind(dot)com

Include in the email:

the link that you would like to use (if you have one)
the by-line you would like to use at the end of the article
any descriptive words about you that you would like to include in your by-line

I will review it, and if accepted, I will let you know what date it will be published so you can tell all your existing fans about it.

I’m really hoping this idea takes off because I think that more writers on Scraps of Mind would really broaden its scope. So I’m looking forward to reading your submissions.

It would probably be a good idea to contact me before you start on your article in case your topic has already been covered elsewhere on Scraps of Mind or by another contributor. If you have any questions that I haven’t answered in this post, please feel free to email me at the above address.

3 Different Techniques for making Artist Trading Cards

Corina from Patchscrap sent me a lovely gift of some gorgeous pieces of brocade lace for Christmas. And since she and I have been playing with ATCs in recent times (see my article on Artist Trading Cards here to get the lowdown on what they are), I thought I might use some of it for a little project I had in my mind about ATCs.

From a scrapbooking point of view, an ATC can be created as:

Traditional, with real life elements and embellishments;
Digital, created as a digital file using all digital elements;
and Hybrid, creating a major element(s) digitally and incorporating it into a design with real life embellishments.

So I thought it might be fun to make three different ATCs, one in each genre, using some of the brocade lace on each of them to link the three together. And you can see each of the different styles and tell me which you prefer.

Traditional Scrapbooking ATC

My Brocade Dream ATC is made with no use of the computer whatsoever. I’ve used the brocade lace as a backdrop for the focal element (the Edwardian lady) and added snippets of the gold brocade to the edges of the flower petals.

The title is partially hand written (I don’t think that it’s come out particularly well, especially after scanning) and partially from a fabric sticker I had. And some bling accents to add some sparkle.

I do enjoy this romantic style. I rarely use it on my Scrapbook layouts but I’m very fond of it for my ATCs.