Category Archives: Digital Whisper

New Freebie Collab, Art and Spring Break

by
(Note:  LOL  I sure got this post up in time!  It isn’t supposed to be up until NEXT Monday!  It isn’t even April, yet!  I don’t know what I was thinking!!  I wasn’t, I guess.  Well, it’s up.  Enjoy it.  I’ll put up something else from the kit next week.  Consider this an early-freebie.  LOL  Sorry, Edna!)

A good Monday, everyone!  I’m not racing the clock this week!  LOL  In fact, I’m putting this post up on Sunday evening, just to be sure I am not late. 

Well, tomorrow is the first day of that incident that happens every year around this time, striking fear in the hearts of parents everywhere – spring break!  LOL  Yeah, the little ones will be around a lot more.  They can still go to day care, though Nicky is outgrowing it for all-day occasions.  He’s almost nine(9).  He goes to after-school care at the same day care as his sister, the one he has attended since birth.  A couple of hours of it aren’t too bad, he says, but, all day, like when public school is closed, is just too much!  LOL  Also, when the children are out of school, they like to get together with their friends and/or cousins.  They really don’t get much chance to do so during school time.  So, tomorrow, two of their cousins are coming for a visit, so, the g-kids will stay home and I’ll have a house full.  The rest of the week is still ‘up in the air’, until we know what activities are offered at the day care center this week.  They try to keep a busy schedule of activities during spring break to make it fun for the children.  They go to the pool or the movies and it breaks up the day for them.  I usually keep them home on the days where they have no activities planned and send them when they do.  This makes for a nice week for both, the children and myself!
Speaking of pools, my daughter got another pool for this summer.  Last year’s was about shot, but, we got a lot of use out of it.  This one is HUGE!
 There ‘s room enough for all the children in this one!  LOL  And, if they are careful, they can even dive, as long as it’s a shallow dive.  Saturday we had family and friends over for a cook-out and the children had a blast in the pool!  When my daughter gets home in the evenings with the children, they love to go for a swim.  This gives mommy a chance to relax for a few minutes, have a cuppa and start dinner.  Swimming also wears the little ones out really good!  They sleep like, well, babies.  LOL
I’ve got another art piece to show you.  The challenge at Digital Whisper called for us to follow a tut for a final image of a ghost in a dark, mysterious place.  Trying to find appropriate images to work with took me off the tutorial and, well, this is what I got.  I want to see if you ‘get it’.  LOL  The topic is “ghost”.
(Credits Available)
 Miss Edna and I are kicking off another monthly freebie kit for you today.  Collaborating together since October 2010, we give away a freebie in three parts each month.  Our freebies come out in six(6) parts, with each of us giving away two(2) parts each of the three weeks.  This week, we give you two(2) ‘quick pages’ for the new kit, “It’s Raining, Duckie Dear!”  It’s spring!  The sweet spring showers are turning everything green, making the flowers bloom.  The spring birth of a new generation of fauna and flora is so rewarding after a dark, cold winter.  Dancing in the first rain of spring is a fun little ritual that a lot of folks I know do.  It’s sort of a “thanks, mother nature, we made it,/ bless the newbies” thing.  Next week, then, the week after that, we’ll give away a total of four(4) more parts each, only, the rest of the freebie is kit parts.  We give you papers and elements and such for you to create your own layouts.  Sound good?  Great! 
Here is a preview for my QP’s.  Click on the image to go to MediaFire to download them as Parts 1 & 2.  Below that is Miss Edna’s QP preview.  Click on it to go to her blog for her two parts.
Miss Edna’s Place Preview:
(Click on preview to go to her blog.)
I’ll see you next Monday, if not sooner.  Have a great Monday!
SMILE!
Hugs,
Su

SU CheshireCat

Freebie Pts 5 & 6 and My Art

by
Good Monday to you all!  I made it!  I miss my little dog, but, I will be okay.  The house was so quiet over the weekend.  I kept thinking I heard her toenails clacking across the floor behind me.  Once, I thought I heard her scratching at the door and, out of habit, got up to go open it.  Then, I realized it couldn’t be her.  I was afraid to look.  What would I do if she had been there?!  Did you ever read “Pet Sematary”, by Stephen King?  I just need to get used to the house’s sounds without her in it.
 
I’ve noticed that when something gets me in a funk, I get into my art and stuff.  I guess I try to tune everything else out and it works pretty good.  Last week I worked on a piece for a Digital Whisper’s challenge.  We’re doing ‘photo-manipulations’ and trying to perfect them.  ‘Treehouse’ was the theme and we were given the trees and house.  I used one of the trees, but, I did something else for the house.  I spent quite a considerable amount of time on it, because it got me away from everything.  Here is that piece:
(Click to enlarge)
Each element of the work is a separate image, the cityscape, the tree, rocks, woods, vines, etc.  I put them all together and blended them to make it appear as one image.  It’s fun and I learned some new stuff.  There are a few things I want to work on, but, overall, I’m happy with it and it was wonderfully therapeutic!
On the subject of Digital Whisper, we put out a book!  Kimmie collected from us a piece of our art and a little story about us and compiled them all in a nice book.  “Digital Whispers of Artistic Souls” is our baby!  All of the art is pieces that each of us favored.  I used my piece, “By the Lake”, which I have in my DeviantArt gallery.
I hope to be able to purchase one of the books soon.  I’ve never had my art in print before!
And, now, what you have been waiting for, the last two parts for “My Fair Lady”.  Each of my previews is linked to a part.  Be sure you click on both.  Then, click on Miss Edna’s preview to go to her blog for her two parts.  Miss Edna and I are going on vacation next week – together.  But, we will be back in March for another goody kit.
Part 5
 
 Part 6:
Click image to go to Miss Edna’s Place:
Until next time!
Smile pretty!
Hugs,

 Su

SU CheshireCat

Freebie Collab With Miss Edna & Photos

by
Gosh!  Halloween is only a few weeks away!  Everyone is so in to the spirit of the big day, even if we do nothing but stay home.  People seem to really go all out for Halloween.  A look around the web, or your own town, is all it takes and you know it is that time.  My goodness!  I have been doing a lot of designing and art and in all of my art pieces I have put in some element of Halloween, a ghost, a skeleton, so forth.  Hanging by our front door we have a ‘skeleton bones wind chime’.  It’s sound activated which causes him to ‘rattle”. 
When my daughter put it up, my granddaughter would stand on the porch and yell at it to make it “rattle”.  It gets down!  LOL  But, then, we noticed something.  There is a crew working on repaving a street near our house and they have their vehicles and equipment parked across the street from our house.
  They work 24/7, I think!  I know they work at night – there’s less traffic.  But, every time they start up a truck or steam-roller or whatever, Mr. Bones goes bonkers!  He rattles all the time!  LOL  Even though there are all those trucks and things, they are pretty quiet.  And, they filled in a really big hole at the end of my driveway for us!  It had gotten so big, we stopped using the drive.  I looked out front one morning when I heard them out there and there was a steam-roller in my driveway!  Great fun!  LOL

I want to share a couple of things with you all.  The first is the most recent challenge entry for Digital Whisper that I did.  A dear lady, and an incredible artist, herself, by the name of Barbara Moustafa, hosted this one and she asked that we have a look at the art of Maggie Taylor.  Wow!  If you haven’t seen or heard of Maggie’s art, go see her website.  You’ll be hooked, like I was.  It turns out, too, that Maggie lives here in my home town!  Small world, eh?  LOL


Maggie Taylor’s Website


There is also a really interesting .PDF article on Maggie, here:

Maggie on Adobe

Here is my piece that I did for the challenge:
(Click on the image to enlarge for a closer view.)

Then, there is this one, from another challenge at DW, the ‘Digital Challenge’.  The image of the stairs was our starting image.  All credits are below post.

(Click on image to enlarge for closer view)

See what I mean about the ghost?  LOL

A few weeks back, I said I was going to post a pic of my grandson, Kaleb.  He’s almost walking!  Any minute now!  LOL  He’s that close!  Here he is at Jaela-Boo’s(granddaughter) birthday party:  Can you tell he was having a moment?  LOL

This image is deceiving;  he usually has a great big smile on his face!  LOL

My last post I made was with a new freebie collaboration with Miss Edna from Miss Edna’s Place.  We’re up to it again!  This time we made kits designed with a friend of Edna’s, named Miss Edie, in mind.  They turned out very nice!  Both of our parts are just full of all kinds of “friendship” elements and papers, frames and what-not.  We’re going to be giving it away, as a freebie, for the next three weeks.  The parts will be posted every Monday.  When you collect this part, go to Miss Edna’s Place and pick up her first part.  We were up late chatting, but, I see she has posted hers, already.  Bless her heart, she has had a full cup lately.  I’ll let you read about it from her blog, though.  I’m kind of late myself!  LOL

So, here, then, is the first part of mine.  :
(Click on the image to go to MediaFire for download)
And, here is a preview of Miss Edna’s part:
(Click on the image to go to Miss Edna’s Place) 
I HATE Blogger!  It never does the same thing twice!!  I posted my preview, above, and linked it to MediaFire.  When I posted Edna’s preview, I couldn’t link it!  I think I got it, finally, by going to the HTML, but, I’ll have to check it.  I’m going over to Blogger when I get this up and have a few words with them!  I’ve got better things to do than screw with this crap!!

Whew!

Alrighty, then!

I’m going to stop here so I can get this posted, but, I will finish with some links and add them in another post.  Check back tomorrow if you want to read about some of the great spots on the web that I have found.

Until then, do have a nice afternoon, everyone.

As usual, keep on

SMILING!

Hugs,

Su

Art Pieces Resources:

Maggie Taylor piece –

Background – anaRasha

Figures – Far Far Hill

Staircase piece –

Staircase – Jascha Hoste of Netherlands.

Roses – Bloodware by Jaguarwoman

Blood Drips – Glossy Blood Splatter by D. Tang

Spirit Image – “Ghastly Ghost” by Creative Intentionz

Handgun – hobbytron.com

SU CheshireCat

Freebie, Links & Color Art

by
Good eve, folks!  Has anyone else noticed the emotional levels over the past week?  Or, is that just me?  There have been several funerals, here, including my children’s aunt.  Then, there was 9-11.  That was sad, still is.  Karma seemed to be heavy with emotion to me.  There was a lot of negativity surrounding my little family and I.  I am literally worn out now.  Exhausted!
This evening, in an effort to release the heavy burdens, I turned to my trusty PS CS3 and worked on a nature-themed color challenge entry for Digital Whisper.  We found an image of autumn and created a palette from it with DeGraeve.com color palette generator.  The image I selected had some purple in it, but, it was not coming out with the color generator.  Then, I remembered Kuler.Adobe.com.
 
With Kuler, there are little dots that are movable over your image.  So, if the generator doesn’t come up with a color in the image you like, just move one of the dots over that color and it will select it.  I had to do this to get a shade of purple in my palette.  But, it worked fine.  Here are the image I selected, my color palette, and the resulting layout that I did.
Digital Whisper is set to private, but, if anyone would like an invite, just send an e-mail to suruha2306 at yahoo.com and I will happily send an invite to you.  Easy-peasy!  LOL
Can ya’ll believe fall is upon us?  This may sound bizarre to most folks, but, all my life, when fall is approaching, the sounds outdoors seem much more far-reaching.  Like, there is a ‘truck route’ that goes through town not far from my house.  When fall is coming, usually, early in the morning, you can hear the sound of the semi-trucks grinding through their gears out on the highway.  That is what tells me fall is almost here.  LOL
 
I won two contests!  You know the old saying, “
You can’t win if you don’t enter.”  It was this that encourages me to enter contests that I run across online.  What do I have to lose?  Sometimes, the contests are for monetary wins, or a benefit valued at some expense.  More often than not, though, the ones I find are for services, such as free subscriptions to websites with resources.  Such was the case, recently, when Graphicmania ran their contest where the winner would receive a three-month’s subscription to Vectorius.  Three winners were chosen randomly, including moi!  Since vectors can be used in Photoshop, this is fantabulous!  Vectorius has around 1800 vectors on file.  Can you imagine?!  LOL

The second was from GraphicMania, too, but, that prize was $30.00 in an account at DepositPhotos.com

When the websites offer the chance to win, in most cases, all you have to do is to leave a comment at the bottom of the contest post.  In this one, I believe, they asked what we would like to see Vectorius offer it’s customers.  Naturally, I said vintage.  I can’t believe that vectors can look vintage, but, they can.  Here is a sampling of what I downloaded this morning:
  
Vectors, if you don’t know, are usually created with Illustrator.  A vector, by definition, is a geometric object that has both a magnitude (or length) and direction.  With vectors, you can enlarge them or shrink them down to a dot and they won’t lose resolution.  In this respect, vectors top rasters for using in designs.  A raster is made with pixels, as you have seen, or can see, by zooming in to an object.  If you’ve ever tried to really enlarge a raster, you lose much of the quality.  Not so with vectors.
While on the topic of vintage, I have another gem for you.  You have to go check out Neare Store.  You might know her stuff by Far, Far Hill blog.   This chick makes the most awesome kits for free downloading.  Her terms are super, and I quote:
You may use Purchased and Freebies Digital Illustrations in any form of Your Business, but use it for Good Work!
Much of her freebie downloads are scans of old books or magazines.  She offers quite a few ‘pin-ups’ packages.  They’re delightful, not in bad taste at all.  But, she does beautiful work, too.  The most expensive thing in her store is $1.50.  Though, I believe there are more freebies than products in her store.  You have to navigate around a bit.  Click on her blogs and the freebie listing in her top bar or index, depending on which link you go in using.  With this Neare Store link, you get to the freebie page, which is multiple pages.  The, with this Far, Far Hill link, you get to another group of blog freebies, also multiple pages.  She offers something new almost every day!  The goodies from each site are mostly the same stuff, but, I haven’t figured it all out yet.  LOL   In any case, it is well worth your trouble.  Give a little visit her way.  You will be glad you did!  Oh, and do check out her banner on the Far, Far Hill page.  It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!  That is worth the visit, if nothing else!  LOL
Ever since I found The Gutenberg Project’s online books, I’ve found quite a few images that are wonderful for scrapping, ATC’s, whatever.  It’s a little bit of work, pouring through page after page, image after image, saving, and, then, cleaning up the images.  But, it’s worth it to me.  The Project uploads ‘out-of-copyright’ books for reading, copying or downloading.  Which means the books and images can be used royalty-free, for what ever one so desires, commercial or private.

One of the newest uploads is a book called, “Bookbinding, and the Care of Books”, by Douglas Cockerell.  In the files, I found some images of some old books.  I thought that with Halloween coming, they might make cool elements for scrapping.  So, I cleaned them up, gave an example for you, if you like and have placed them in Box.net for you to download.  Here is what you get.  Click on the image to go to Box.net for a collage sheet to download.  Or, click on this link to get the .png files from Box.net.  Thank you!



There’s a funky little surprise on the ‘example’ book that I did.  Please, feel free to use any or all.  I made them for you!  LOL  Hopefully, you can find a use for these, too.

That will do it for this post.  I hope all is well with each and every one of you.

‘Til next time,

SMILE

Hugs,

Su 

SU CheshireCat

Freebie & MS DD Day 5

by
 I hope that your weekend is going well.  Mine is full of some intense thought.  I have been evaluating, if you will, where I’m at with my art.  I’ve learned a lot of the basic stuff with Photoshop.  I know my way around and understand the terms used, as well as the names of the tools and, for the most part, their uses.  I remembering reading somewhere early on in my learning, that you could learn something new in PS every day until you die and not know it all.  I’m not in any hurry!
After learning the basics, I have begun adding details more.  I used to make one of each color papers, bows, tags, etc, with most of the results looking mass-produced.  As time went on, I stopped doing one-of-every-color, but, still repeated some of my elements and papers with just a few color differences.  Now, usually, I don’t think about how many colors of anything there is, they are all different to me in another way.
I wrote about this somewhere before, briefly.  One of the things that bothers me the most about digi-scrappin’ is that there really isn’t much appreciation for artistic ability.  I’m not saying scrappers aren’t artistic or appreciative of design.  Every single one of them is a talented artist.  Rather, the whole concept of scrapbooking is to save and relish one’s photos and momentos.  Folks looking through a photo album are looking to see who is in the photos, not the fancy design on the background.  I certainly don’t want to distract someone from the beautiful photos with some embellishment that is too off-the-chain!  Know what I mean?
I guess that is why Digital Whisper has been so fulfilling for me.  I have all the artistic freedom I need!  Ning doesn’t allow nudity, anymore, but, that isn’t my thing, anyway.  LOL  What I love is the company I am in.  The folks over there are not just super talented, they are very supportive.  They have encouraged me to experiment outside the box.  I love that.  Whether I end up doing something with my art, or not, the experiences have been the reward.  There is something about the environment that brings peace to me.  The whole place is bringing out some awesome inspiration!  Where all of this will lead, who knows.  I often think I might eventually sell stuff.  Putting a price on something I make or can do ruins it for me.  It just changes the significance of the piece or the work. 
 
It has been a good day.  The family left to go watch the Gators beat up Miami, Ohio, and, I stayed home where it was sooo peaceful!  I took a nap, then, I worked on another challenge from Digital Whisper.  This one was from the Color Palette Group.  The challenge, Color Challenge #4 – Advertising, was fun!  We found a product in our home, then we created a color palette from the label.   I found ‘Sonoma-Williams Balsamic Vinegar’.  The blue is actually the color of the bottle.  LOL  In the image, though, I thought it went well with the other colors.
 
 
From the palette we were to make a layout.  
 
 
As usual, I got carried away and wound up making a mini-kit from the layout.  All of the elements are made with my new actions from Rose.li.  LOL  The lady’s actions are the best!  And, they are very reasonable, as well.  She is consistent with her quality, which never leaves ya guessing.  I like that!  If you’ve never checked out her actions, visit her store, Digital Art, and see what I mean.  Click on the image to go to 4Shared to download.

It isn’t necessary for me to make these little extras that I make with the challenges.  I have Photoshop open, the files are handy and I’m usually ‘on a roll’.  I get alot out of doing them.  I get experience and practice on a program that is awesome!  And, I get to experiment while I’m making things.  I get artistic for my ‘art piece’ or ‘challenge image’, then, use those effects on the goodies I make.  I don’t sell this stuff; it is for experience and enjoyment.  I hope someone can find a good use for it.  Help yourselves.
 
Last, but, certainly, not the least, I think things are smoothed out at Magickal Scraps forum.  There was a problem with the file from Day 5, it seems, so, we re-uploaded it.  It works fine now.  There shouldn’t be any more problems with the downloads, that I know of.  LOL  In the event you haven’t downloaded Day 5, yet,  click on it’s preview below to go to MediaFire to download:


‘Til next time,
Smile, ya’ll!
Hugs,
Su

SU CheshireCat