Look what zara-licious did with my Something’s Fishy kit! So cute! She was nice enough to make you all a QP from it too!!

CLICK HERE to DL the QP

If you like it, pop on over to her blog HERE and let her know!! THANKS for using my kit, and THANKS for the great freebie!!

Happy Scrapping!

Jenn

Taking you back to the 80’s - remember Cindy Lauper’s version of that song? Well, I’m always on the lookout for color combos that would make interesting kits - and there are a zillion color schemers out there - but did you know some sites will let you download an .aco (swatch) file? I’m starting to use my swatch palette a lot more - it’s way faster than sampling from a color swatch image.

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Jenn and I love Firefox. Don’t know what Firefox is? It’s just the BEST internet browser our there! The reasons it’s better than Internet Explorer are many, but mainly it works better, we get way less spyware and bad stuff like pop-ups, and it renders web pages better.

Here to Guiness Record Part: on June 17, this Tuesday, Firefox 3 is being released and they want to set the record for most software downloads in 24 hour. We’re going to part of a record - why don’t you too!

Complete details at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/.

Keep Scrappin!
Stan - the DaddyKitty

I’m working on a slide show for our friends who are celebrating their 20th anniversary tomorrow night - here is the end slide.  I actually used three different fonts to put the word art together - and it can be a REAL pain to choose fonts.  I’m the kind of person who needs to SEE the type in the font before I can choose, so I have a quick, easy way to do that!

1. Type your text in any font you have handy.

2. Change to the move tool (hit V) and click on the type layer you want to choose a font for.

3. Change back to the type tool (hit T) and go up to the tool options bar - click on the name of the font - it will highlight blue.

4. Use your arrow up or down keys to move through the list of fonts.  When you change the font in the tool options bar, you will see the font on your layout change too!  That way you can see JUST how it will look on your layout, and know what you’re getting!

And just for a little gift - CLICK HERE for the word art!

Happy Scrapping!

Jenn

Stan White the DaddyKitty here with a quick tip showing the use of layer blending modes. A Layer What mode?

Yes, a Layer Blending Mode. Read the rest of this entry »

My youngest, Becky, has been bugging me to bake these lemon cookies from a recipe we found in the newspaper last week, so this morning we got BUSY! (recipe below) But I ALSO had an AH-HA photo moment!!

I wanted to take a photo of Bec with her cookies, but it took a couple of tries:

first, I took the photo without a flash - kinda dark, I COULD lighten it in Photoshop, but let’s try with the flash…

WHOA! That blew her out completely - WAY too strong a flash!

Now what I would have LIKED to do is use a fill flash - where the flash goes off but not at full strength - but alas, this camera does not have a fill flash setting. Hmmmm - What if I put my finger over the flash to attenuate it…

OOH - that’s RED! Hmmm… what ELSE do I have that I could cover the flash with to make it not so bright - oh wait! There’s a stack of paper in the printer right here….

THERE WE GO! I just held a piece of paper from my printer up to the flash, and it diffused and deflected the flash! COOL!

So the lesson from this is, you don’t need to know all the fancy settings on your camera to get great results! There’s a great post on Photojojo about how to make a flash diffuser out of a film can - CLICK HERE to see it.

Now go make your OWN cookies - they are YUMMY!

Lemon Cooler Cookies

from USA Today Magazine, May 16, 2008

Ingredients:

1 cup bleached all purpose flour

¾ cups confectionary sugar, divided

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1 stick salted butter, softened

¼ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

Adjust oven rack to lowe-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix flour, ¼ cup confectioners sugar, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Add butter and vanilla; beat until ingredients form into a dough. Drop cookie dough by generous teaspoons onto a parchment or Silpat lined cookie sheet. Bake until cookie bottoms are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Place remaining ½ cup confectioner’s sugar in a quart sized zipper-lock bag. Working a dozen at a time, drop the cookies into the sugar and shake to coat.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight tin for up to 1 week.

MAKES ABOUT 2 dozen Per cookie: 67 calories, 1g protein, 8g carbohydrates, 4g fat (2g saturated), 10mg cholesterol, 0g fiber, 27 mg sodium. (WW points= 2 per cookie)

AND - don’t forget to scrap your baking session!

Happy Scrapping!

One of the most confusing things I think is explaining to students how you need to use the UNSHARP MASK filter to SHARPEN an image!  Today I came across a tutorial that explains it so well - better than I could hope to!  Watch this image to see how you can improve a photo…

just amazing!  The PHOTOJOJO blog has this tut today - CLICK HERE to read it.  If you don’t subscribe to this blog, and you use photoshop… you’re missing out!

Now go look for all those photos you thought weren’t sharp enough to use and get busy!

Happy Scrapping!

I wanted to share with you this great layout my friend Beckygtx made! She did this with a kit that I made for crop gifts, and it was given out over several different events, so I though you might like to have the whole thing! I know I’ve been kind of quiet the last few weeks, since I gave up my store at SOTB, but I’m leaving my kits at Digitalscrapn, and have all KINDS of big stuff in the works… so stay tuned!

Enjoy Something’s Fishy!

Happy Scrapping!

Just read this great article about gas prices and wanted to pass it along. (See it here). I know that Jenn and I are feeling the pinch at the pump but mostly we feel it buying food. Luckily we can take all the money Jenn used to spend on papers and spend it on gas and food! Help me out - I’m curious about what you’re paying. Leave a comment with:

+ Cost of a gallon of milk
+ Cost of a dozen eggs
+ Where you are (City, State, Country)

I’ll summarize the data in a later post. And thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

Stan - The DaddyKitty

Bet you didn’t know this but Jenn, the ScrapKitty herself, was one of the key alpha testers of Adobe Photoshop. The team at Adobe was so grateful they actually included her in the credits:

Here’s a close up: (and no, it’s not Photoshopped):

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