New site decor

It's a Saturday, and I just spent the whole afternoon "pimping" my blog. I was getting bored with the previous theme and sadly, I am one of those bloggers who constantly change their blog themes, never seeming to be satisfied with how it currently looks.

But this is the first time I designed my own banner though, so I might be sticking to my current "doodled" theme. I wanted to stamp my personality all over it, give it more character and make it more me. I don't know if my current design speaks good of me (haha) but I like how it looks.

I like clean, simple designs. I didn't want to clutter the page with too much color, and too much stuff on the sidebar and header, so I looked for a blogger theme that was as minimalistic as possible. I found this design from eblog templates but the designer is Node Thirty Three (scroll to the bottom of this page for the credits and links). I just changed the header and I gotta tell you, it was a pain trying to tweak the html of the theme! I am so challenged in that area and I was just playing it by the ear and after several misses, I finally FINALLY got it right. Whew!

In light of how painstaking a process it was, I am sticking with this theme and my banners for now. Let's just say it won't be anytime soon before I get the itch to change it again.

So anyway, will post more updates, more doodles and more stuff tomorrow. For now, it's off to bed for me.

My first freebie!

For those who are into design stuff (such as scrapbooking), then I have some freebie for you today:

(Click on image of preview above to download)

It's the flowers I used in my Sweet Twing layout I posted here yesterday. These are scanned from my doodles. I have quite a lot of them in my sketchbook now, only it took me some time to learn how to make the digital version look as good as it does on paper.

You see, when scanning drawings/doodles/paintings/etc, you have to deal with jaggies and stray pixels when you extract them from the white background of the paper.

Now that I think I've gotten the hang of it and learned how to properly turn my scans into flawless vectors (I hope!), I felt confident enough to offer them here as my first blog freebie.

The flowers are in .png format and you can CTL+J (copy+paste) them in CS3 several times and then flip some of them either horizontally or vertically or alternately change their sizes and then bunch them together on your layout. Or you can cut them apart and stamp them all over your page.

However you use them in your projects, I would love to see how you've used my first blog freebie. Send me a link or an email and point me to the site where I can see them (if you've posted them online). Don't forget me in your credits, too! And point other freebie hunters to my blog here, not to the download link ok? I just want people to pass by my blog first... :-)

Also, read my TOU (Terms of Use) included in the zip file. You can use these for any projects that are for your own personal use only. Don't worry, I will be offering freebies here for commercial use soon enough. But personal use items are for your own 'consumption' only, ok?

If you download, then please take the time to leave me a comment, either here or over at 4shared. Comment is free! And it only takes a sec or two. Intiendez?

Go download it now! :-) Enjooooooooy.....

More scraps...

Was able to scrap two more pages tonight (for my gallery over at digishoptalk.com. I'm still feeling my way through this new hobby which is quickly becoming addicting haha.

Scrapbooking is usually a hobby for married women slash mothers. Women who got tons of photos of their kid(s) and husband(s) that they can scrap.

So what's a single girl like me doing dabbling in digi-scrap? Don't ask me! But for a design-oriented, doodle-crazy girl like me, my civil status ain't enough reason to hold me back from scrapping pages like these:



So yeah, I guess I'm gonna scrap my photos (haha). And of course, there's the folks, and the friends, and my big, big family (I got quite a lot of cousins, and nephews and nieces). And don't forget the dogs and cats, too!

Credits for these layouts are on the images. Click on the photos to see larger views. The flowers on the two pages and the frame on the yellow page my doodles, which I scanned and vectorized in CS3. Later on, I'll try to post her a brief description of my process, for anyone who's interested.


In the meantime, tata!

My first scrap!

My first ever digital scrapbook page:


I'm pretty new to digital scrapbooking, but all the stuff I have seen posted in digiscrap sites all over the net are pretty amazing that I just had to give it a try. So this one here is my first shot at it. The flowers and the butterfly are hand drawn (scanned from my sketchbook and tweaked in CS3). The background paper was textured by overlays from different photos, a trick I learned from various digiscrap tutorials posted online.

I'm still learning, so this layout screams "NEWBIEEE!!!" I'm still getting a handle on how to achieve realistic shadows, the sort that makes the elements and photos look like they were pasted on the paper, and not floating above it.

There were a lot of freebies I downloaded from blogs and websites of generous digital scrappers (there's a LOT of them out there, my favorites: digifree.blogspot.com and ikeagoddess.blogspot.com) but I ended up making my own for my first layout. (I feel kinda guilty using stuff created by other people when I know I can make them myself).

I do plan to give away freebies here as well, from time to time, as a way of giving back to the generosity of the digital scrapbooking community (those scrap-for-charity gestures are really touching), and also because God said we should share what He has abundantly blessed us with.

So as a start, if you would like to get that butterfly and flowers I used in my first scrapbook page, then drop me an email over at my gmail account with this addie: 7sparrows (I deliberately wrote it this way to block off the nasty spam'rs and bot's.) Or you can just leave your email addie at the comments area in this post.

It's been crazy, but I'm back... I hope!

I'd like to say sorry to my friends and family who have been checking here now and then... I have been silent for a long time, due to being tied up with work, part-time design jobs, and family issues. It's true what they say that when it rains, it definitely pours!

I have been trying to keep my head above the water with the work stuff (been losing sleep!). Though I can't share everything here right now, I promise I will be spilling it out in my next posts in the following days. One problem with me is, I have a one-track mind- when I have a project, or when I'm occupied with something, I doggedly pursue that till the end and can't be bothered by anything else. I'm not so good with multi-tasking! When I'm busy with one thing, everything else tends to fade into oblivion, even those that needs my most immediate attention. This is a flaw, I know. A bad habit that's so hard to break.

Needless to say, there will be changes in this blog soon. I have recently gotten back to my artistic roots (which have for soooo long taken a backseat in favor of my writing) and I have found an avenue that can be quite beneficial to me, financially speaking (ahem!). Y'all know about it soon enough.

For now, I'm going to have to keep this one short. Just wanted to let you know guys that I'm still blogging here. Although for a while there, I feared that I might have to set up another blog account as I forgot my username to this blog! That's definitely a neon sign that says I've been gone from the blogging world long enough :-)

Updates

When I started this blog, I aimed to post entries here at least three times a week, but this week I have been sort of swamped with work and health issues.

For one, the erratic weather has been hard on my sinuses, and I wake up sneezing a lot in the mornings with itchy, watery eyes the rest of the day and pounding headache at night.

It's the tail end of summer right now in the Philippines and the throbbing heat seems to be in a tug-of-war with the rainy season. This push-pull between the dry and rainy seasons, resulting to sudden changes in temperature and humidity, is simply maddening.

I also finished this week an already long overdue design work for a colleague in the media. I admit that I have been procrastinating on this one, aside from reasons of technical issues. My desktop PC's motherboard got fried (again) earlier this year. However, soon as I had the m'board replaced, my printer followed suit. But after I got that fixed, that's when procrastination set in. Somehow, it just got buried under more recent things-to-do's. So finally I got to put closure on this one.

Here is the final design:



Of course, I "scratched" out the name and contact details to protect his privacy.

My client wanted his card to look simple and professional, so I avoided putting a lot of colors and graphics in it. Besides, you don't really want to crowd your business card with too much text and visuals. Keep it understated.

Your card should reflect only the important details that you want your potential customers or networks to know, which basically, are: your name, where you work, what you do and how to reach you. Other than that, if they really want to know more then they can contact you, which is the whole point in handing out business cards in the first place, right?

Tip: If you would like to whip up your own business card but don't want to start from scratch, then you can visit this site which offers links to various websites that offer biz card templates for free.

Just be sure that you are downloading the right file compatible to your program and OS (whether Pagemaker or Quark and Mac or Windows).

Some of the downloads come with a PDF how-to file that you can check out before working on the templates.

Test post on new blog design

Just a test post on this new blog design. I must have changed this blog's design more than 20 times today. Yes, I'm that fickle-minded. I blame my Mom for this irritating trait. It's in the genes, you see. 

I think the design sported by my blog now called Aspire is THE one. I really hope so. I'm getting tired of always changing my blog's look. Reminds me of those days when I can't decide on what to wear, when nothing just seems to look right. 

I like designs that are clean and organized. Minimal. Posts and elements are partitioned off and I want one that will highlight my posts. I don't like crowded designs, with sidebars that compete with what I have to say. 

Don't get me wrong, I like widgets. But only when they're at a minimum. I absolutely adhere to the belief that less is more. 

With that said, I have a strong feeling I will be using this design for a long time. 

More posts to come, peeps. Stay smart and be safe!

PS- Happy Birthday to my cousin Gray! May you be blessed with more of the best things that life has to offer. Love yah!

Camille and Gail

Goofing around with my godchild Gail and her older sis Camille:                                                                                                                                 

The photos were taken using a (really) low-end point-and-shoot cam and tweaked in CS3 and Paint Shop Pro XI to make it look "professional." I think I've nailed down on how to add character to my otherwise ordinary shots. It's just the watermark that I have to work on. 

Gail didn't like having her photo taken, so I goofed around, trying to get a "stolen" shot of her. These two love to play games on cellphones, and it didn't take them more than a minute to figure out how to play Alexa on my S500i, a game that took me about 45 minutes to learn (haha). 

Kids nowadays are so different, aren't they? They pick up on tech stuff quickly. I have another godchild who is about 5 years old but he knows his way around a laptop already. This is a child who yet has to learn how to read, but can already understand the basic complexities involved in turning on a laptop and making it do what he wants to do- get online to play Yahoo games. 

Kids!

A Honeylicious Wallpaper

Taking a break from my biz card designing to post here my new wallpaper: 

 

That's Honey, a half-Dane and half-Boxer in her pink Easter Bunny outfit. Such an adorable mutt isn't she? Chris and his sister picked her up from a pound and when Chris took her out for a walk, he said she kept biting her leash and growling, in a playful way. She likes to do that. She looks aggressive in the photo but she's really a darling. 

My friends know how much I love dogs. Which is why I would never dare step into a dog pound or a pet store. It would break my heart to walk away from it without bringing all of them with me!

Biz card in progress

I started making my business card last night but I'm all out of inspiration. I want it to look nice in a whimsical way, kinda like my blog's theme (by suckmylolly.com). 

I always turn to flickr for design inspirations but I'm having problem opening their site right now. I found this one featuring really creative, think-outside-the-box designs. Most of the cards there are made to look as close to the product that it's selling as possible. I especially like the one about a farm. It's got a small fluff of wool actually pasted on the body of the sheep drawn on the card. Really cute! In there are also two business cards from dentists, one with teeth impressions on it and the other a teeth floss (not so cute haha). And a rubber business card! Can you imagine? You have to stretch it in order to read the details. It certainly makes an impression but I don't have to keep stretching it in order to see the phone number. 

So many creative minds out there that are stretching design concepts to its limits. On second thought, is there a limit to design? Design - in whatever medium it is applied to - has no boundaries, I think. It's only up to your imagination.

Ok I'm off to hunt for more inspiration.

New blog design

... again! Like I said in this post, I'm bound to change this blog's design frequently ;-).

I am a bit fickle-minded in that way. I love my previous blog design which was courtesy of Gisele Jaquenod, but there are times I just feel like a change of "working" environment. The current theme is from suckmylolly.com (check her out, she's also got tons of gorgeous blogger themes).

My taste in blog templates leans towards whimsical, girlie flavors like Gisele's birdie series. In fact, I downloaded all of her birdie themes, so I would be likely rotating my themes around her templates soon enough.

Right now, I'm making my business cards, the design of which I'm planning to work around my current blog design. Soft grays and tiffany blues with a pop of hot pink. Will post the samples once I finish them (I tend to make around 3 designs which I spend days mulling over, choosing which to stick with).

One thing's annoying me though. When I was changing my blog's template, everytime I hit "view blog" I still see the previous blog design. Is it Blogger? Or is it my browser? I'm using Firefox, but I also got Safari installed (which I did not download by the way, it came along with an iTunes update). Could it be having 3 browsers- the third being IE- installed in my computer is somehow messing up my monitor or something? Sounds kinda far-fetched, but it could be possible. I read from a Flickr forum about how different browsers show the same uploaded photo in different colors.

Oh I hope it all works out in the morning. In my experience, weird as it may sound, but most digital hiccups I encounter get smoothed out in the morning. We'll see.

Update (the morning after): Everything's A-Ok. Checked my site first thing today, and it looks just as it should. There's something quite not right in my header, though. What do you think? Hmmm. I'll be tweaking it again today :-) 

Eden Valerie

About two weekends ago, I had a "photo shoot" with the cute-as-a-button Eden Valerie Sestoso, who will be christened this coming Sunday (April 6). The photos are for her baptismal invitation cards (all 50 of them). Eden is the second daughter of local reporter Edmund Sestoso and his wife Lourdes.

I chose to take the shots at the Freedom Park since the colors there would make a great backdrop for the photos. And I wasn't disappointed- the greens and the blues really gave an energetic pop to the shots. But of course I had to digitally tweak the photos at Photoshop and Paintshop to pull in the highlights and give the pics a boost (Thank you Lord for Photoshop Actions! :-)

Eden was a bit camera shy and kept running away from me but soon as she got comfortable with me (and the camera that I kept pushing in her face) she was soon her normal, cutesy self. However, it was a bit hard convincing her to smile for the cam!

I whipped up two designs for her:



































I picked pink, blue and green as the color palette for the two designs, as the colors are whimsical and fun. Edmund chose the vertical (landscape) layout and upon seeing the other design, he decided to turn it into a tarpaulin (banner) which would be hung at the baptismal's reception venue. I just love designing for kids' and babies' parties. It's fun (although sometimes a wee frustrating but in a fun way) to take their photos, plus it's so easy to decide on a color palette for them.

The designs in progress:

















I used Corel Paintshop to pull in the greens and the highlights and then Photoshop to give the photos an over-all boost. (sorry for the crappy photo, I took it with my phonecam which only has a 2-megapixel resolution. I know, I know, I should have taken a screenshot instead.)This is the part I hate! Cutting them to size, and in this case, all 50 cards. I'm trying to develop an easier "system" of cutting the cards, but so far, I'm cutting them one by one. And notice my "jurassic" paper cutter? It may be almost antique, but it's sturdy and reliable.
Tadaa! The end-result is certainly worth the tiresome cutting. Draining, yes., but I love doing this stuff.

Be well people!