Good Morning!  I trust your weekend was relaxing and that you are ready for the week.  It’s here!  It’s a Monday morning, both g-kids are home with me and another one is on the way.  The little one, my son’s son, is coming so his mommy can go to an appointment.  I’m slugging back my first cuppa and trying to get ready for the day.  You know how it is.  You’re ready ’cause you gotta be!  In hind sight, one may wonder why we put ourselves through such difficult times – three little kids, first thing on a Monday morn.  Well, it is rather like the song,  “The Dance”.  I might have missed some pain, but, then, I would have missed the ‘dance’.  Life is a dance.  We dance our little hearts out all our lives.  Sometimes, we try to avoid ‘bad weather’ and we hide in our shells.  Other times, we’re right out there, dancing in the rain, making the most out of a rainy day.  That is me.  It took me quite a few years as this is a learned attribute.  When you get older, you relish any dancing and try to withstand any inclement weather the best we can.  You roll with it.  That is when life becomes the best, to me.  I can choose to react to every situation with the same panicky anticipation, or, I can choose to pick my battles.  Life sure gets a lot easier when you do.

Alrighty, then!   Onward, I have some links to share with you.  How do ya’ll like vintage clip-art?  I found a website that has a ton of clip-art and it’s free.  Let me tell you.  The website is from the University of South Florida.  It is a part of Florida’s Educational Technology for educators.  From their site they, “provide digital content, professional development, and technical services supporting the appropriate integration of technology into K-12 and preservice education.”

The terms are that you may use up to 50 images at a time for educational purposes.

The screen shot above shows the 4 main categories, Clip Pix, Clip Art, Presentations and Maps.  The first two are self-explanatory.  So is Maps.  Presentations is neat!  They are designed for PowerPoint, but, there is an awesome collection of paper figures.  Here is an example:

What’s even nicer is they come in several sizes.  They’re ‘.TIFF’ files, which are supported by many programs.  I know you will be interested in the variety, as I was. In addition to the people clip art, there are frames, some Alphas and some PowerPoint templates.  There is bound to be something you can use.  Go give them a visit.

For a quick run through of some old standards worth paying a visit, let’s start with Atomic Cupcake.  Their new freebie is a ‘barely stamped’ action.

The Coffee Shop, has posted some new frames and storyboards.  Rita shows you how to get the most out of the frames, which come complete with a vintage texture.

Next, if you are into digitally mastered images, like DAZ and Poser, I have a link for you for very nicely done ‘stock’.  DeviantArt is an entity in and of itself, but, one stock provider I found, Cheyenne75 has an awesome collection.  The menu is down the left-hand side.  Be prepared for ‘creatures’, in that she has all kinds of aliens and unusual ‘monster-ish’ goodies.  I like this site with Halloween coming.  After all, where else are you going to find a ‘magic beanstalk’ or a ‘zombie dog’?

Another site, Made to Be Unique, is similar.  There, you can find all kinds of images, digitally produced, to help with designs.

If you’ve never considered this kind of stock, these folks have done a good job and their goodies are worth checking out.

The last one is a designer who keeps a DeviantArt website and a blog.  JustieJ and Just Creations are there for designers.  ‘Justie’ creates templates and Photoshop resources to make designing easier.  Both websites of hers have about the same stuff, though, it looks like many of the actual downloads are on the blog, Just Creations.  On the DeviantArt pages there are a lot of ‘cut-outs’, .png files for you to use.  Like this:

In addition to her wonderful designs, she also has an blog devoted to tutorials, Just Creations Tutorials.  There is quite a selection.   She teaches the details of light and shadows, plus, a lot of coloring or recoloring of elements.  One tutorial shows how to make a paper preview for one’s designs.  There is also a free pre-made template for it if you just don’t have the time.  Like this:

And, that is it for the links today.  But, I’m not done with you, yet!  Today is the second set of parts from my collaboration with Miss Edna’s Place, “Tropical Sunset”.  Last week you received the QP’s. Pts 1 and 2.  This week and next week, we’ll be giving away the scrapbooking papers and elements.  We each give two(2) parts each week, so, you should have four(4) parts today.  Though my previews indicate the elements separately from the papers, each part is a combination of both.  The first preview will take you to Pt. 3, and the second one is to Pt. 4.  Then, after that, you’ll see Miss Edna’s preview.  Click on it and you’ll get to her blog for her downloads.

 Part 3

Part 4

Miss Edna’s Place Preview

(click on preview to navigate to her blog)

Isn’t that awesome?!

(Note:  All of my past links are still active.)

I want to share a little something else, real quick.  I found the neat ‘ant’imation, below, at Crafted by Gina blog.  Gina does beautiful scrapbooking designs and has taken part in several blog trains.  A lot of the links are still active for the older posts, so, check those out.  All this is is a .GIF image.  You treat it like you would any image.  If you want to use it down in the siggy on your own blog, here’s how: