One of the things I love is surfing the design and resources sites on the web.  I have done quite a bit in the past few days, checking to see what is new.  One thing I found is Flick’rs new “photo page” design.  It is really an improvement over their old one.  In the past, if you wanted to download an image, you had to click on the image, then, the sizes, then, pick a size, then, download it, then, find your way back to the next image you want.  It took forever!  Well, today, I was at Flick’r to download the newest textures from “Lost and Taken”.  If you haven’t had the pleasure of Caleb Kimbrough’s  wonderful textures, you really must.  In addition to this website, where the downloads are all zipped up for you, Caleb also does texture freebies for several other websites, such as “BittBox’s Free Texture Tuesday.”  For these, you must click on the images to go to the source, which is Caleb’s images at Flick’r.  You can see all the nice textures this guy has done!  Wow!  

It was whilst downloading that I stumbled across the “photo page” feature.  Though it was nicer than before, one still had to do some maneuvering about to get to the correct-sized download.  Then, while hovering over one of the images, my cursor turned into a magnifying glass.  I right-clicked over the image to see what was up.  This message popped up:

If you click on the size you wish, it takes you straight to the download image!  When done, all you have to do is scroll on to your next image to download another!  So much easier and quicker than before! Be sure you let the page completely load before you right-click.  You’ll get the usual right-click menu otherwise.  I had to try a time or two, but, it was worth it.

I am almost positive this feature is pointed out in the ‘tour’ for this new “photo page” feature.  LOL  But, I only do those when I can’t figure something out.  You, too?  LOL  I just love finding anything that will make my time more my own.

So, I’m thinking if you are reading this, you are in to scrapbooking or some aspect of design and/or digital art.  My writing sure isn’t Pulitzer material.  LOL  So, if you are into the current trend of designs, you can’t help but notice all the vintage goodies that are the trend and are readily available all over scrapbookland and all the other design platforms, including web design.  With the extra-added bonus of “recycling” old images, anything Victorian is prize material.  Old stuff looks used and worn, so, grunge naturally goes along with it, which allowed more artistic freedom from ‘paint-by-numbers’ designs.  The world around us is not spit-spot, so, why should design be?  Another factor with old images is the copyright issues are expired.  Images from this period had what came down to a ’70 years after the death of the writer/artist’ copyright term, which, for many, has expired.  (See this PDF Document if you wish to know more about copyright laws.  Thanks to PublicDomainClip-Art for the link)  What this all amounts to is a more casual style of design, which is more comfortable to the masses.  This old, grungy style not only allows for, but, is great for hiding a multitude of sins, literally and in designing.  I think that there is just something so classically deviant as Victorian design, with all its decadent excess, under the guise of proper ladies and gents.  ‘Tis not hard to fantasize about spending leisurely afternoons, sipping tea in the conservatory, whilst flirting with one’s suitor, a handsome gent, with a twinkle in his eye.  LOL  Oh, listen to me.  You do it, too!  It’s like taking a mini-vacation, eh?

Anyway, my point in reminiscing about the good ol’ days is that I have some new links for you to resources, many of them vintage.  These, I have already added to my “Resources” page; link is at top of page:

VintagePrintable

Reusable Art

Additionally, I found the following and will add them soon:

A vintage/retro stock resource group

Please mind each artists TOU’s

This last one is a ‘sister’ site to Vintage Vectors.  So, you know they will have some great stuff and it lends itself to vintage quite often.  Check it out!

Since I mentioned ‘vectors’, ya’ll do know that you can open and use vector images in Photoshop, don’t you?  I didn’t for a long time.  I would be so disappointed that some of the goodies I found were EPS or Illustrator.10.  I wouldn’t download them.  Then, I accidentally tried to open an EPS document and got the pop-up window that comes up.  PS wants to rasterize the image before it can work with it.  Anyway, on a lark I clicked ‘okay’ and a second or two later, I had the image, pretty as you please, in my PS workspace.  That really opened up a lot more possibilities for me.

Please, take a look at the slideshow at the top of the page.  I will be back tomorrow with some news about the marvelous design team at Magickal Scraps.

‘Til next time,

smile,

damnit!

LOL

Hugs,

Su