Anyone who says they can’t wait until their children are grown, to you I say, “Ha-ha-ha!”  What parent hasn’t considered the rewards of raising a child to adulthood?  That is the golden moment, the prize, the ends that justify the means, the ‘grand illusion’!  LOL  If you think that ‘adulthood’ means your job is done and you can sail smoothly on to retirement, welcome to reality.  The only difference with grown children is that they have ‘grown-up’ issues.  Bless all the little children, but bless the parents of the big ones.  LOL  I have been wrapped up in some family-related things that have really blown this girl away.  But, as my support system says, this, too, shall pass.  Hurry up, already!  LOL

My cyber-home, my online place of refuge, “Magickal Scraps” has been hacked – viciously!  About a week ago, the owner, Snowy, advised us that the store had been hacked and that she was working on it.  Wow!  The poor girl has been through the ringer!  After finally being able to get into the store, another fiasco was waiting there for her.  Apparently,  there is some worm, or something, that has infected her IP number, or something of hers.  She is working with her host and all to try and remedy the situation.  She’s been keeping us all posted, bless her heart.  I’m glad, too.  I have been so lost!  

As a safety measure, we aren’t even using the forum.  The daily downloads, “Feathered Friends”, featured in the slide show at the top of the page, are being given out by a couple of our wonderful ladies on their blogs,

Go see them and collect your parts to this great kit!  Hopefully, real soon, we will be back up and running and we’ll see you there!  One way or another, we will survive!  Don’t forget I am a participant in May’s DD.  Just to keep you interested, I have a little ‘freebie’ for you.

 (Click on image to go MediaFire for download)

I used the cone and scoop for this layout of my Granddaughter, Jaela.

So, I will look for you in May!  LOL

In my continuous search of the web for cool stuff, I found a few things that might interest some.  If you are anything like me, you have a gazillion brushes.  I love brushes!  They are easy to work with, extremely versatile and they come in every imaginable shape, size and subject.  In the past, if I needed a certain type of brush, I would Google it.  There are some sites that feature brushes and I check them from time to time.  I usually find what I need after a bit of searching.  Now, I have found a search engine for brushes, FindBrushes.com.  You type in what kind of brush you want and it takes you to a page with the brushes they have.  The best part, though, is the instant download.  Under each preview is the download button and it pops right up.  No traveling here and there.  You just seek, find and save.  LOL  Give it a whirl.  I found it very easy to use.

While on the topic of brushes, I located, yet, another cool site for them, Digital Art by DiaMara.  The brushes are phenomenal!  They are more like artwork, themselves.  There are also some textures, patterns and a few styles.  Do check out the artwork there, as well.  Nice!

Last week I was looking for a newsprint pattern to use when making backgrounds or just to incorporate into my design.  With the exception of the rare front page headline grabber, there just aren’t any.  I realized that images of newspaper text won’t do because any of the text would have to be copyright-free.  I actually found a cool-looking front page from an Israeli newspaper that would have worked fine.  Then, I got to thinking.  What if the headlines, being in Israeli and their translation unknown to me, described some horrific incident.  That would not work.  Then, I happened across something with ‘lorem ipsum’ text and had a brainstorm.  Well, light shower, at least.  LOL  Lorem Ipsum is dummy text that is used when there is a need to show that there is text in a spot, but, it is totally generic.  It is used a lot to show the text parts of a web design layout, among other things.  I’m sure you’ve seen it.

So, I Googled ‘lorem ipsum’ and, lo and behold, there is a site you can go to to create your very own lorem ipsum text!  I never knew that this text is actually 500 years old!  Some enterprising printer took a group of text and scrambled it around to use for a sampler.  It has survived this long! Lipsum.com is a site with a generator.  You enter the number of paragraphs and words and it generates a page of lorem ipsum text.  First, I played with the paragraph and word count to where it began to resemble a newspaper page, with the columns.  Then, all I had to do was highlight, copy, take it to Photoshop and create a page.  I even used a font that resembled what I thought newsprint looked like.  A little tweeking, some color enhancement followed.  What I wound up with is the raw ‘sheet’ of newsprint text to use in designs.  Here is one sample of what I got:

If you click on the image and right click to save it, you can have it if you like.  This sheet was designed at 3600dpi, then, I reduced it to 1200dpi for web.  A blending mode, like “multiply” will get rid of the white background.  Duplicating it will deepen the text.  It is mostly to just give the impression of text, where words aren’t important.  Or, go visit Lorem Ipsum site and create a pattern all your own.  You might want to add a few images or advertisements.  Just keep them in column format for a realistic image.  And, the best part – no credit or attribution needed!  Yay!  We have so much to keep up with already, don’t we?  This is purely for my resources.
 
In closing, I want to share a little something with you.  My grandson, Kaleb, is doing real well.  He’s eating like a sport and gaining weight.  My son and the family all just went on vacation during the children’s spring break.  He got to go meet his other grandma, Danielle’s mom.  Upon returning, though, there was a ton of stuff the poor girl had to get done.  A week long vacation with 5 kids?  C’mon!  Even the best of us would be up to one’s ears.  There was shopping and laundry and errands in preparation for Danielle returning to work outside the home. Well, I’m sure you get the picture.

Needless to say, Granny came to the rescue.  LOL  I got to take Kaleb for a good part of the day.  He is three and a half months old and a pure joy!  He is at that point where he sits and watches you, very amused and content.  He grins so readily! Such a happy little guy!  Danielle is a terrific mom!  My son should count his blessings every day.

So, with Nicky, my other grandson, helping, we had a fun time.  Here’s a photo of the little guy.  As I was saying how happy he is, he didn’t like the sunglasses Nicky put on him.  LOL

I have several projects in the works.  I’ve been creating some art, some images from emotion.  It has helped me through the latest stuff that is happening.  Whatever works, right?  So, until the next time, I bid you adieu.

Namaste,

Su