Saturday Blogger Love #6

For this week's Saturday Blogger Love I want to highlight this YouTube video on how to make a gingham pattern in photoshop.  The music is perfectly cute, and it's an extra helpful photo editing trick.  Pugly Pixel made this little tutorial.  She has a fantastic website with great blogging, and photoshop tips and tutorials.  I don't have photoshop (yet), but I find I can adapt most of her tutorials to GIMP (which is free).  I usually figure if I can't adapted her photoshop tutorial to GIMP, it's not because it can't be done, but because I'm not completely GIMP or photoshop proficient.  

I've been having fun creating my patterns, and layering them together.  For my new Saturday Blogger Love banner I layered together a plaid pattern I made, and a polka dot pattern I made.  I lowered the opacity of the top layer to reveal the bottom layer until I was happy with the mix.  I want to replace all the terrible free patterns GIMP gives me,  with my own awesome creations!  I'm so happy I found Pugly Pixel's video on how to do this!

I also love her tutorial on making detail circles.  I still have some learning to do, but It really adds something to the whole photo.  

She also has some great freebies too, like these tape strips.  Which I used for last weeks Saturday Blogger Love pic.  Makes me want to read her blog back to front, and tool around in GIMP all day.  I'm not sure sitting in front of the lappy for extended hours is a great idea though.  :)  My bum and hubby would be happy for me to get up and move around.  On that note I'm off to do something fun, which could be thrifting/antiquing before I have to work this evening.  I have to take pictures of a communion confirmation for work.  I'm not Catholic so I'm always mixing those two ceremonies up.  Have a happy Saturday ya'll, happy DIYing, chris.  

Happy 3 Month Anniversary!!

My big plan for today was to buy new work pants, and learn how to use my wacom tablet.  I also did a photo an hour today, but I'm going to post those photos on tuesday.  

My mom is a technology hoarder, and when I recently told her I wanted to buy a pen tablet, she told me she currently owns two!  She lent me the smaller one a few weeks ago, but I was too nervous to try to install it.  I had an inkling that it wouldn't be as easy as just popping in the software discs and going through the installation process.  

Lo and behold, I was right.  I installed the tablet just fine, and was able to use it with Gimp, kind of.  I had read reviews before that the tablet doesn't work so well with Gimp.  I read that the pen is offset, and the stylus is slow to react.  I had pretty much those problems.  Plus, I had a hard time keeping it on pencil mode, and it was either hard to get it to start writing or stop writing.  Super frustrating.  

I couldn't get Photoshop Elements to open once it was installed.  I only let this take up about two hours, but then it was dinner, and I just wanted to get something posted for today.  

I did the pant shopping earlier in the day.  I've had a twenty-five dollar gift card to JcPenney since my birthday in December, so I thought that would be a good place to try.  However, I had no luck finding acceptable work pants there.  Same problem I always have, I'm only 5"5' and most pants are WAY too long for me.  I don't feel really short, except when I try on pants.  I find skinney pants are a great solution to my short problem, because even though the pants are long they just bunch up at my ankles.  With other styles of pants I end up stepping all over the hem.  I know I could sew them, but I'm not confident enough to do that myself.  Yet I can't bring myself to pay someone else to sew things for me.  

I tried a few other stores, but was still unsuccessful.  I ended up going back to JcPenney's, and I did find a pair of pants I liked but the zipper was busted, and it was the only pair in my size.  Bummer!  When I got home I decided to order two pairs.  Hopefully they work out!  Sorry I don't have any good DIY instructions or photos today.  Happy DIYing, chris!

P.S.  Happy Three Month Anniversary!!!! This is my 90th day posting to my blog!  I can't wait to see what the future holds, and I'm so happy with all the new readers that have recently started following my blog.  All your support means a lot, and helps me too keep posting everyday.  I'm always sad when I don't have a good project to share with ya'll (like today!).