Chocolate Text Tutorial

Based on the Chocolate Text Tutorial by John Shaver, using the tools currently at my disposal (Linux Mint + Gimp).

CREATE HIGHLIGHT

Step 1 New document, gradient background

New Document Dialog
1900 x 1280

I decided to go large, as in the original tutorial, and size it down after completion. At first I was annoyed at having to create a 2nd gradient, why not just add the yellow to the gradient, ie yellow to brown to black? The answer is because the yellow gradient is on a separate layer with opacity scaled down to 20%. If you can figure out the color that is brown with 20% opaque yellow on it, you can make a single gradient. Since this involves too much backtracking, it's much more simple to make 2 gradients.

Brown 7d553c to Black 000000

Dark Yellow d7af3c to Transparent

Back?

Time to give this yet another stab.

I have Linux, and I am a graphic designer. I learned to use Adobe, but I could not afford the ridiculous prices they charge. I went searching for software that would replace it. I believe my version (Linux Mint) came loaded with Gimp, a popular and suitable replacement for Photoshop. It's been several years now, and I can't remember for sure. I could do most things that I wanted, but I missed Illustrator a lot. It didn't take long for me to discover Inkscape, and I am SO PLEASED to be drawing again! The shortcuts are not at all the same, so there is a learning curve to it, but it sure beat the alternative (which is nothing, because I'm broke at the moment). It also has really nice documentation, including for those migrating from Illustrator. The Inkscape community tutorials are also pretty awesome too. There is actually a lot of content out there that supports this software.

Anyhow, that's enough back story. Just wanted everyone to know there are GOOD alternatives out there!!! Really. Enough. Moving on...

My niece brought a coloring book to Thanksgiving this year, and I have been inspired to make something of my own. It's still in progress though, so no previews yet. Instead, some simples that caught my eye.



As seen on a Pinterest pin tutorial that links to an Instagram page that I couldn't find the original link for. :( The tutorial looks like face painting guide, but I knew as soon as I saw it that there had to be a way to make this in Inkscape.

Sometimes I see things that practically shout make me! Here is cute little label, which I may in the future make into a free printable.



There's more where these came from, but that's for another day.

Cheers!

Retired

Awww nuts! This blog is closing! Not to worry, find everything you were looking for at http://nyllix.blogspot.com

Blog Vacation

So... Now that I am able to get back into the swing of things (somewhat)... my iMac died. *sob* Some of the data got backed up, but accessing it right now is problematic. And then my server had a hardware failure, from which it has yet to recover. All in all, this blog is barely limping along. Since that server also hosted most of my pics, this blog is in sad, sad shape. My editing tools were all on the iMac too, so it may be a bit before things get back in order. In the meantime, I hope to be sharing some new things soon.

Tea Party

My daughter is way into tea parties. Last April my mother, aunt and cousins staged a "grown up" tea party. There were biscuits, real flavored tea, good china, Easter party favors, desserts, and all the guests dressed up. Ever since then, she has been asking me for another one. Since summer is just about the busiest time of year for everyone, it hasn't happened yet. Settling for second best, we have been having "tea party" lunches. I took some pictures of our 'al fresco tea party'. We pitched a tent in the yard and set up a laundry bin with a tablecloth. A blanket sufficed for carpet in the tent. Mom claimed dibs on a small pillow to sit on. The menu was 'fruit plate' - cut up fruit and veggies, some chips, crackers, cheese, dip and sandwiches to round it out. 'Tea' was some grape juice drank from fancy cups with matching glass trays handed down from my grandma. Very nice! But too hot to hang out for very long. The light inside the tent was very yellow (for obvious reasons). I did the best I could with the photos, but they're still pretty yellowish. Oh well.

Paisley Pattern

Check out what I've been messing around with. Paisleys! I saw a really cool font that wasn't quite as complicated as this pattern, but it did have paisley cutouts in all the letters. Really quite neat looking. So that'll be the next step to see if I can transform this lovely pattern into an actual font that can be typed, scaled, etc. I have some fonts that I've made before, but they were all vector art in Adobe Illustrator. You know - make a copy of each letter and position it just so... again and again until you've spelled something out. Uhg. There MUST be a better way, I just haven't gone out there to find out how. Anyway, here are some lovely paisleys to brighten up your humpday.

Unoriginal Monday

Despite the negative feelings I have about 'puffed up' content on many of the blogs I visit, I am here today to share something worthy. Worthy of what, I leave up to you. Thus the title of this post, because there isn't going to be anything I did myself in this post. Well, other than possibly view it before you did.

Jim's Pancakes Totally awesome (bees are my FAVORITE!) One of his works was featured in a magazine ... I think AARP. Nope, I am not that old yet, but my mom is. We totally drooled over the whole site. I watched the videos too. Pretty clever, he uses those ketchup bottle things and a lot of ... creative coloring agents. Stale turmeric? BLECH!! I'll just stick with food coloring, thanks.

Penguin Pancakes

I totally copied these guys over at Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons. LOVE it! Check out the whole rest of her blog, it's pretty awesome. This was really fun and easy to make. Here is my version.

Here are the parts in progress. Made the body and head with a bigger blob on bottom, and smaller blob on top. I used pancake mix divided, part with a little cocoa added. I ran out of the lighter colored batter, so this one has all choc. parts. They are supposed to be oval shaped for the wings. Not perfect, they still taste great. I think they look fine as 'organic' shapes too.

Here is the finished penguin.

I had a lot of fun making these. The beak and feet are made of orange sections, and the eyes are whipped cream and mini M&M's. Yummy! The kids were not too hungry, so I cooked up the rest of the batter. We will be having penguins the rest of the week, yay!

In The Garden

I took these photos a few days ago. I love having a garden (but hate weeding)! Just have to show off and brag a little.

When we moved in almost 9 years ago, my mom n dad helped me build this cute little raised railroad tie bed in the back yard. It was a lot of work, because they overloaded their trailer with dirt to fill it up (somebody somewhere in Iowa had a mysterious gash appear in their ditch), and one of the trailer tires popped under the load. My dad chain-sawed 2 ties in half to make the short ends of a rectangle. He had an extra-long drill bit and some spikes that he used to fasten the ties together sort of lincoln-log style (or maybe more like legos, where they overlap). They have one of their own just like it in their back yard, though they covered the corners in metal press plates mom got from her work at the newspaper. At any rate, we covered the bottom over with black silo plastic as a weed barrier and poured in the dirt. Presto! Instant raised garden. I use it almost exclusively as a vegetable patch, with the occasional herb or two thrown in. This year we updated our medicine cabinet. The old one was rusted on the bottom. Instead of throwing it out, I had my husband drill some drainage holes in it, and bolted it to the side of the RR ties.

Abandoned blog

Okay, so I haven't kept anywhere near my goal of posting (at least) once a month. In fact, it's been about half a year since I've posted. A lot of time (just look at the header!), and a lot going on in my life... a baby! Now 10 months old, and the associated aches, pains, and sleeplessness have kept me away. Not to mention a healthy dose of blues stemming more from our underemployment than postpartum. BUT, we are finally back on track, at least temporarily. DH has a new job on 3rd shift, and things are FINALLY starting to look up. A big adjustment for all of us, but my hope is to be able to get on here more often.

So, to get myself inspired and re-engaged in blogging, I visited some other blogs. I have a long list of bookmarks in a folder I call 'browsing for inspiration'. I started with my cousin's blog http://craftynan.com , and visited some of her links, then vistited their links... until I had a very full folder. So... today in honor of getting motivated, I decided to volunteer my two older kids to get involved in the organizing challenge from A bowl full of lemons. We're not officially signed up because the challenge is half over and we're just starting. And let's face it, it's not as high on my priority list as laundry (the washer was out of commission for more than a week - we are drowning in laundry), and I only have limited time when the baby lets me on the computer. That said, who doesn't love a clean house? Here are the pics, one junk drawer for each of us.

Fish Eye Squares

A twist on an old classic. This week's freebie features a traditional pattern - moire-like dots that get larger nearer to the center. A centuries old trick to fool the eye into seeing patterns of light and dark based on how close together and how large the dots are. This flavor however, uses squares rather than dots. Enjoy!

FES

Garden Plot

Mother's Day, May Day, and spring officially arriving. That's what's on my mind at the moment. Also, so much for my goal of posting once a week. It turns out that it's closer to twice a month or so. It just takes up a lot more time than I thought it would, and I have less and less of that lately. So, as I've got other things taking higher priority for the time being, I'm scaling my goal down to posting 2 times a month. Means I need to get back on the horse again next week.

Meanwhile, I hope you all enjoy the new header. In keeping with scaling back, I've updated the DS theme to something that will last longer than a month - spring! My garden volunteered 6 garlic bulbs, several parsnips, and (weird) a couple patches of leaf lettuce. Can't wait to go shopping with my mom for seedlings for this year's veggie garden! With that on the top of my brain, I have whipped out a little doodle for you. Hope you like it, let me know in the comments!

Descending V's

Today's freebie looks very simplistic, so I thought I'd give an example of a blog design to show how this one can shine. Sometimes simple is better. I think you have a lot more options and freedom of choice with a simple design. So without further ado...

Art Deco

Well, some health issues have kept me from my goal of (at least) once a week posting. So, to make up for lost time, I've decided to post several Art Deco designs I've finished. I'm not terribly crazy about Art Deco in general, but these ones pass the muster. At least for me. Hopefully, I'll be back to posting regularly after this.

Concentric Circles

A cool optical illusion inspired freebie is here this week. Concentric circles! I like this one so much I mocked up a totally cool new theme for my website, but haven't committed to switching over to it yet. Bees, my favorite! The pink is awfully feminine, but fitting for the month of February I guess. Take a peek and let me know what you think!

Ana's Cross Stitch

All right, this one isn't mine, but I helped, so I'm putting it up here anyway. My daughter has recently joined Girl Scouts. The other day, she begged, whined, and wheedled her way into this project. She wanted to do some 'stitching'. Does this have anything to do with joining Girl Scouts? Maybe not, but I'm sure she can get a badge or something for it. Anyway, she knows paper is my medium, my motto being 'I hate sewing!' That doesn't mean I never do it; on the contrary, I keep trying to get into it, but not finishing what I start. So when I dug into my fabric project chest, I was able to find this cute counted cross stitch kit. She loves this project to pieces, but has set it aside for the moment. (A lot like her mom? I swear I didn't do it!)

What she has done so far she completed in 2 days. With some help from mom. I thread the needle, I tie the knots (yes I know, I showed her how to sew the ends of the thread under, but we felt knots were going to be easier). I help her counting, and show how to read the pattern. So she gets lots of support, but it's still mostly her making x's - mom does the rest. :P Still, she's proud of what she's done, and I am too!

Nick's Birthday Invites

This year we're getting the invites out late. Oh well. I had Nick design his own card, and after he had the idea all mocked up, I did it up in Illustrator on the trusty Mac here. He did a really good job I think, and only needed couple pointers. So I made him make the letters all capital (capitol?) but otherwise, he had very clear idea how to make the letters, and the rest was pretty easy. Love it when a 'client' knows what they want - no guessing! Anyway, I thought I'd share the finished product, and if you like it let me know in the comments.
So printing this didn't go exactly as planned. :( I burnt it off to disk, but left the files in AI (native Illustrator) format instead of a PDF. We have a color printer, but I have learned the hard way that printing color in any sort of quantity (these cards are 2 up, front and back, and we needed 26 finished pieces) is fairly expensive because of the ink. So I decided to take my disk to the public library and print it out there - which I have done very successfully in the past. So... I after getting out of bum mode (shower, shave, dressed, etc.) I run some errands and then go to the library media center, which has been relocated to the mall ever since The Flood Of 2008. However, it turns out that I have a hefty fine from a book that I lost, and I can't even log in. So I go up to the counter to take care of that, and after waiting behind some clueless Lutherans for 10 minutes or so, I get up there and pay for my book, then go back to the media center. Whereupon I discover what I have on my disk is a bunch of AI files. Fortunately for me, the library uses Adobe Reader 9.x, so it has no trouble opening up my files. But then I find out they only have one printer. GRRR! It's black n white. They tell me to try FedEx/Kinkos just down the way a bit. So after another errand in between that's where I go. Just the one manager guy there, but he's very nice. I ask him if they can work with AI files I have, he says yep, printing in color on cardstock is close to $2.50... PER SIDE. That is so not doable. Regular paper it's still $1.xx per side. So he suggests printing b/w on colored cardstock. That was $0.40 or so. So I pick out red paper (Nick's fav color) and he was nice enough to give me a proof copy before doing up the rest of them - my gigantic run of 12 more copies. So even though it wasn't exactly what we wanted, it turned out pretty well. And got some nice colored paper which wouldn't have been possible at the library. Ended up costing about 4 bucks. Used their gigantor paper cutter (free) to cut em all up while I was there too. They turned out really well for not being designed for b/w, and the manager guy I think liked them too. We chatted just a little, told him my son came up with idea for the alphabet. He was very personable, but I think he was just lonely all by himself there, not polished customer service kind of thing. Anyway, got them off to school, and they're all delivered, so now we're just waiting for the calls.

Alternating Lines Zigzag

So this week's freebie is a little later than I would have liked, but here it is, one of my more favorites, though I do like them all. This one also was inspired by a Dover book. I might wish for more creativity to come up with these all on my own, but everybody needs a starting point, and those Dover people make some of the best stuff ever.

Alternating Lines

Today's freebie is a simple optical illusion design I created from inspiration in a Dover book. It's quite simple, and was easy to create in Illustrator, my creation tool of choice. Check back next week, I will be posting more designs later on.