2008 June | Scraps Of Mind

Archive for June, 2008

Posted by karooch on

June 20, 2008

Five Freebies on Friday - 20 June 2008

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.

And it’s time once again for this week’s Five Freebies on Friday. There are some terrific Scrapbooking Freebie goodies here so enjoy.

Just don’t forget to leave some love when you download your freebie. Remember a simple thank you comment makes all the difference to the designer who will have put a lot of time and effort into creating your freebie.

Aussie Scrappers has a couple of gorgeous old fashioned clock elements. Perfect for those vintage layouts
And you can get this super sweet Precious Mermaids Kit from Mermaids Haven (where else?).
Celly from Scrap Life has three very cute quick cards for you. Not sure how long these will be available.
You can pick up this very sweet Naturally kit at Digital Designs by Bren Boon.
And there are some very nice elements in the Vintage Things Kit over at Herald’s Place.

4 Tips to Make Your Blog Interesting

I read an interesting post on ProBlogger last week about how to be an interesting blogger.

Darren highlighted that when he’s strapped for time and wants the check his RSS feeds (eg Google Reader or Bloglines), he knows he can’t read all 650+ (phew!) and he will automatically aim for the four or so that he considers the most interesting.

Now unless you’re blogging for specifically personal reasons like keeping a journal of your thoughts and feelings or to send a regular update to your Mum who lives interstate, you probably would like to think that your blog is considered interesting enough for your readers to want to make it a daily (or at least regular) routine to catch up on your latest posts.

Scraps of Mind gets between 650 – 900 daily readers (not to be confused with hits which of course is a much higher number). Which I think is pretty respectable considering I don’t generally give many freebies away on my blog. And the thing that most buzzes me out is the thought that people consider what I write interesting enough to return regularly to read more. So after reading Darren’s article I started thinking, what does make a blog interesting?

Interest in the topic.

I’ve been writing about Scrapbooking now for over two and a half years. You might consider me to be interested in the topic.

It can often be challenging to come up with fresh new scrapbook ideas for articles. And of course, wherever possible I like to illustrate my articles with appropriate scrapbook layouts.

I hope I come across as being interested in my topic. Because I certainly am. I think that’s a key factor in keeping readers interested.

Tip 1: Choose a topic for your blog that you are truly interested in and your fundamental interest in your topic will show in your writing.

Write for you readers

On Scraps of Mind I try to find things to write about that my readership would be interested in. So whenever I have an article about something that’s not strictly scrapbooking I like to either give it a scrapbooking perspective or feel that I’m appealing to the art and craft leanings of scrapbookers.

Occasionally I might do a bit of a self-indulgent post but they tend to be few and far between.

Tip 2: We all like to feel that we are the targets of someone’s attention. So if you want readers to keep coming back, try to focus on what they want rather than on what you want. And ask for their feedback. Let them know that you care about what they think

Guest Posters

Having Guest Posters on your blog can be a little bit scary.

Suddenly there’s another style of writing and another voice broadcasting from your ‘baby’.

I think that if you want to include Guest Posters on your blog and still keep the interest of your readers then enthusiasm is the key.

Not everyone has brilliant writing skills but if your enthusiasm for your subject is obvious in your writing, then readers will only notice that. And will be right on board with you.

Tip 3: Pick your Guest Bloggers for their enthusiasm for their subject rather than just for their writing skills.

Feedback

Ultimately your readers are the only ones who will determine if your blog is interesting or not.

What you think really doesn’t matter much. It’s all about them (or in my case, it’s all about you).

So ask them for their opinions and respond to their comments on your blog. Enjoy the conversation with them. I can tell you from personal experience that you will build many great new relationships that way.

Tip 4: Ask your readers for their feedback and listen to what they say. Interact with them to build great new relationships.

And in the spirit of Tip 4, I invite you to share your views on Scraps of Mind with me. Either by leaving a comment below, or by sending me an email (karen(at)scrapsofmind(dot)com).

I’d love to hear your views on whether you find Scraps of Mind interesting and any suggestions you might have that would help me to make it even more interesting.

Madison Avenue Scrapbooking

Here’s a great Scrapbook Idea

We all know that scraplifting is a great way to kick start a flagging inspiration.

Trying to find something new for your scrapbook layouts can often be a challenge.

Well I suggest you look no further than your nearest magazine when your inspiration has gone on holiday.

Sit down in a comfortable chair with the beverage of your choice (some chocolate always helps the creative process I find, but this is optional). And start flicking through your favourite magazines.

Half close your eyes so you can’t see the pages too clearly. You don’t want to actually read the articles this time. You just want the pages to make an impression on you. So you can find one that can be translated into a scrapbook layout.

And usually the best page layouts for this will be the full page advertisements!

Don’t forget, these folk make their living by designing page layouts. So it’s reasonable to expect that they know a thing of two about it.

I found this ad for Campbell’s Soup in a women’s magazine a couple of days ago. It was just screaming at me to scraplift it and turn it into a scrapbook layout.

So I did, and this layout of my daughter and her cousins is the result.

So now I guess I’ll always think of Campbell’s Soup as ‘the family soup’

If you haven’t tried kick starting your mojo with advertising inspiration I recommend you give it a try. It will often inspire you to try styles and designs that you otherwise might not have. And it can give you a whole new perspective when you’re designing your scrapbook layouts.

And if you have tried scraplifting from magazines tell us what you did, and maybe share a link so we can go and see and help to boost our own inspiration.

Texture Tuesday with Wildheart

Wildheart of Wildheart’s Works brings you Texture Tuesday. Wildheart is a Paintshop Pro expert, but I know you’ll enjoy the tips and tricks even if you’re not a PaintShop Pro user. And you’ll find plenty of ideas to help you work with textures in your own program.

How to Create Text Effects

You can use various methods to create text effects using textures, tubes, brushes, masks whatever you can think of. Your only limit is your imagination.

Since summer time is fast approaching and the 4th of July, for those Scraps of Mind readers who are in the United States I thought I would do a combination seasonal and holiday type effect.

To attain this effect you need to go into new>transparent>640 by 480

Then select the font of your choice I chose Salmon font at 24 point with my stroke width set at 2.0 and my line style at solid. I chose a color of #df1111.
To fill in the letters you need to take your magic wand tool and then just select somewhere outside the text then go to selections>invert this will give you the ability to go in and fill in each part of the letter.

Now I want to suggest that if you really want this effect to work and look nice you should choose a font that will give you enough room inside the letters to work with.

After I finished this I then went in my gradients and chose foreground red>linear>0 Angle>1 Repeat.

You want to make sure when you do this you are working with your foreground color in your materials pallet.

I then took my flood fill tool and filled in each part of the letters. I didn’t like the slight pixelated look I got so I went into Adjust>Soft Focus set my softness to 26,my Edge Importance to 19 and my Halo Amount to 25, Size to 58 and Visibility to 37.

Before I added some effects inside the lettering, I made sure to continue to keep my magic wand tool selected. I went into my tubes and used the fireworks tube to fill in the letters and then I went into selections>select none so I could add the white sparkles and my copyright. I scaled down both tubes so they looked cohesive with the font size.

You can play around with this in so many ways. This is one of the first things I learned how to master when I decided to get serious about learning Paint Shop Pro inside and out.

To earn this certificate one of the things we had to learn in the course was text effects. You can find this course over at webtechU.com.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you want me to make your name in text just email me at joecheray@gmail.com and let me know what colors, textures,and images you like and I would be happy to fix you something that you can use as part of your signature for blog posts, or even emails.

(Karooch: Thank you Joe. What a great offer!)

The Right Brains have it!

A couple of weeks ago you may recall I posed the question: are scrapbookers right brained or left brained?

And I posted a little survey to sample the scrapbooking community and find out the answer.

Well it seems that scrapbookers are a bit of a mixed bunch. But with over 50% seeing the Dancing Lady turning clockwise, we would have to surmise that the majority of scrapbookers are right brained.

You can see the distribution in this graph.

I’m not sure what this proves…if anything.

But I do find it interesting that 29% were able to change the direction of the Dancing Lady. Does that mean they are very strong minded or that they can switch from being one character to another?

Did you take the survey?

What are your thoughts?

Five Freebies on Friday - 13 June 2007

Here we go with this week’s Five Freebies on Friday. And yes, I know it’s Saturday but I’m still trying to pull myself together after the almost disaster of my server crash. Anyway we’re back and here are some terrific Scrapbooking Freebie goodies so enjoy.