Saturday, August 29, 2009

Freebie Happy Halloween


I used a free font called Dracula. This font is available at this link: http://www.fontriver.com/font/dracula/ or here: http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Dracula.htm

This is a .png file with a transparent background. You shouldn't see the white if you download and use this file.

Freebie Background - Skeleton Leaves

Sunday, August 23, 2009

My current picaboo book

This is a link to be able to view the book I'm currently working on. It is just a chronological scrapbook of my life in 2009. I still have some gaps to fill in, like my son's running. I will probably just keep adding pages until the end of the year, and then print myself a copy.

http://preview.picaboo.com/Webview/CoverPage.aspx?user=000000000004B7DF77&album=000000000004DB9119

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Grunge

A lot of scrapbooking backgrounds and embellishments have a lovely distressed look to them. This seems to be very popular with both traditional and digital scrapbookers. I certainly like them.

Here is an example of one particular background that I really like, and it is a good example of what I am talking about: http://backgrounds.picaboo.com/Backgrounds/BGViewEntry.aspx?entry_guid=96057cfe7f6e43009a871e4501a63a71&catid=0&subcatid=0

But there are tons of them. Well I've been trying to figure out how to do this. The stock textures you get with Paint Shop Pro, and I imagine most other applications, are too uniform to achieve a look like this.

Well in my quest to figure out how to create this distressed look I've come across a term: grunge. Grunge brushes, grunge textures, etc. I have only begun my quest to create the perfectly grunged background. I haven't figured it all out yet. But I did come across this tutorial for how to make grunge brushes. It says it is written for GIMP or Photoshop, but Paint Shop Pro has all the same tools. I think it can easily be adapted. Haven't tried yet.

http://www.shadow-logic.net/2008/08/13/grunge-brush-tutorial/

But I have a whole new eye for taking photographs now! I want to take photographs of dirty, icky, scratched, marred, beaten, weathered anythings so I can use them to make grunge tools in my quest for the perfect scrapbook background!

Oh, and check out www.grungetextures.com for some grungy photos already available!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Freebie 3: Happy Birthday Title





This image has a transparent background.

Copyright notice: You may use this image freely for your personal projects. Please do not represent the work as your own or distribute it. Refer people to this blog instead. For commercial or for-profit use, please contact me.