Muses from a Gurly Geek
Jul 2nd, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
I am so excited to be a new designer for Treasured Scraps. They have some really great designs and commercial tools over there. I can’t wait to get my store loaded and have my first sale.
Visit my new store:
Visit my New Store at Treasured Scraps
Jul 2nd, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
It sure is getting hot. We’re reaching temperatures over 100 degrees in our neck of the woods. It is the PERFECT time to stay inside where it is cool and work on some of your design projects. All Dotted Daisy Design items Half Off until the end of July. Hurry now and have fun!
Jul 2nd, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
Nursery prints are so much fun. How about making a fun print to frame and hang on baby’s door or your front door to indicate when sweet baby is sleeping? And how about coordinating that print with a matching nursery print?
That’s exactly what we did here using Zoo Animal Elements by Cupcake Cuties. This set is so fun, whimsical and modern. Loving the fact that there are blue and pink animals to customize boy or girl items.
The nursery prints were made in Photoshop CS2 using lots of layers and adding a “stroke” to the layer style for some of the graphics to make them look like stickers. Customize your print to your liking, print it, place it in a frame and hot glue a decorative ribbon for hanging on your door. Such a fun way to approach a serious subject (do not wake a sleeping baby).
Usi
ng the same set, we made a fun hippo print and it coordinates perfectly. The green in the background was color selected from some of the green in the sets. A paper from the Corrugated Stripes Masculine Paper Pack by Dotted Daisy Designs was used as an overlay for the green background and different blending effects were used to achieve the desired look.
Decorate your nursery with these graphics, design coordinating baby shower announcements and top it off with a coordinated diaper bag tag…all yours for the making…
Jun 19th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
It’s almost Father’s Day. I am very excited. We are having such a great year and have some fun time scheduled for the Father’s Day weekend.
My husband had been hinting for a step ladder to take camping with us and a Cross pen. So, I got him the ladder and the pen, but I added a really neat self-inking stamp that I found here.
There’s not a lot I can do with the ladder to dress it up. I will probably put a little note in his card to go look in the garage at our pop-up camper and have it beside there with a bow.
But, I love the stamp with our names and address on it and it is self-inking. I am going to wrap the stamp and the pen together.
From the kids, we made him a special photo book from Shutterfly and documented our memories from the past year of our special camping trips. Our children are young and we love to take our pop up camper to different places to camp. This is family time at its best and I know he will treasure this book from them. They also begged me to buy him a Wii game. So, we bought him the Deal or No Deal Wii game, that I think he will like. He loves game shows.
We are having my parents over on Saturday and I’m cooking gumbo with rice and fixing a salad to go with it, and Sunday we’ll go out of town on a short trip to visit my parents-in-law. This will be a fun weekend and I’m hoping all of the Dads will enjoy our company and their gifts.
Jun 19th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
I am so excited. I just designed a set of circus themed items for MyGrafico and they ended up being sold as exclusive designs to a very special client who wanted them for her own store exclusively. It was so fun designing these items and I am absolutely thrilled and thankful to the special lady who chose them for her own. They were circus carnival papers, graphics and premade invitations. Perfect for stationery vendors.
I can’t wait to get the new items that I’m working on in the store.
Jun 19th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
Visit my store at MyGrafico for great items on sale for Father’s Day. My store is 25% off. Head over and enjoy!
Jun 13th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
These papers are so much fun!
I absolutely LOVE dots of all kinds (and stripes). These papers blend stripes and dots, making some fun and festive bright papers. They can be used for so many items, as already shown on this blog (notecards, banners, party favors). I liked them so much, I even changed my blog background to use one of these digital papers as a blog background. Find them at Mygrafico.
Jun 12th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
Take a look at this neat little party favor made by Judy Sanqunetti and blogged about HERE. We love it!
Jun 12th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
Everyone needs a little elegance and whimsy, right? That’s what I thought.
For our inspiration, we used a paper pack from Dotted Daisy Designs and a brush set by Mel’s Brushes for sale here at MyGrafico. We made a couple of designs (seen below), but the possibilites are endless.
For fun, we made a sample blog header. We used Photoshop and opened a file in the size of 669 x 250.
We chose one of the papers from the paper pack shown above and used it to cover our header canvas. We added a rounded rectangle to the middle and chose a color that coordinated with the background. Then, we changed the opacity to 75% , so that you could see the fun polka dots beneath it. Next, we chose one of the .png files in the brush set (instead of using a brush) and positioned it on our canvas, showing only a portion of it, to enhance our header. We then added our text and here we have a brand new header.
Then, we moved on to make a fun note card design in Photoshop. We used the same dotted paper and dropped it onto our notecard canvas. Next, we used the rectangle tool and made a black rectangle to stretch across the notecard. Separately, we opened the round brush design you see on the card in photoshop from a png file. We added a black circle to this file and merged down the visible layers. From there, we dropped ito onto the notecard and then put initials on there as an additional text layer.
There are so many possibilities with the brushes and png files and the digital paper files in these two packs. I could have gone on and on and made diaper bag tags, business cards, designed websites, greeting cards and so much more. We hope this provides a little inspiration for your own projects.
Jun 9th, 2009 by Dotted Daisy
Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of a wonderful man and treasured friend. In this day and age, it is rare to find a man of true integrity, faith, honor, honesty and one who leaves a true legacy. My friend, Tom, lost his battle with cancer a year ago today (after a short battle) and leaves thousands of friends and loved ones behind.
I can truly say that I am a better person for knowing him. I learned so much from him in the three short years that I knew him and his family. They are very, very special people and carry on his legacy. My heart still aches, missing him and for the hurt of his family. I hope that one day, I can design something that will honor him, or in his honor, but the pain still feels to fresh. I kept a blog about it all last year. You can read about it HERE.
