Saturday...wait Sunday?

After a long but short ride home...yes I know my use of words is amazing *clears throat*. After a long but short ride home I came in and mauled Kris...literally. After that was done I realized that sleep was a necessary addition to my day. So I went to bed....and 7 hours later wow, look at me. Lol, slept through the whole day. I got myself all nice and situated in front of the tv. I got some grubbage from Kris and listened to fable play in the background. I then went back into my bed. 7 hours just isn't enough. With that being sad Kris was not having that and woke me up. We then got some drinks from Carabar came back home and then I slept some more. Now its Sunday...

Coke Bottle Holiday:


Bird Tree Poison:

Dun Dun Dunnnnnn !!!!

This is the completion to Chapter One of Edgar’s Bedroom from Wednesday. I know the suspense was nail bitingly awesome right?

Happy "Food Stuffs" Day

HAPPY TURKEY DAY! Or in my case ham day. I am a turkey fan but not as big as ham. Me and my sister have this sick little need for honey baked hams and macaroni and cheese. It isn’t a holiday without one of those items. My mom would bake a ham all night and her glaze was a special one made from Vernors and brown sugar…AMAZING. When I worked at Mc Cormicks their ham was glazed with liqour and brown sugar….MMMMMMM. So I hope everyone today has at least a good meal. If you are Kris you should for sure do something nice for yourself.

The Story Behind The Banner

My Father’s coming! My Father’s coming! With Thanksgiving quickly approaching my father is coming to pick me up for the holiday. I am one of those non-driving people. Its just something that I never enjoyed doing. I always loved being the passenger and watching the landscape go by. Seeing the world move across my eyes as if every view is like the first. So he has to come and pick me up and take me home. He keeps pushing for me to get a car but eh *shrugs* YUCK! With that in mind I thought I would post the story of “Edgar’s Bedroom” banner that I made so people could get why it was called “Edgar’s Bedroom”. So today is the first part of the story and the chapter is called “Manuel Hill”.

The Letter

I ran into a forum post on Etsy that told people they should "flatten" their images in photoshop to turn them into jpeg's and I became frustrated. I posted a new forum talking stating that you don't have to flatten an image to make it a jpeg. I was then stalked and harrased by another etsy user. There are certain times that things just aren't worth arguing about and for me this is one the one thing that urks me more than anything.
I spent a s*** ton of money to know this stuff and I have been doing this for a while. This was my letter in response to the etsy user:


How am I frustrating you?
I am pc user and have been a pc user for about 14 years now. I have always had photoshop on all my pc's and I am sorry about your old mac issue. I have also worked on Mac's for 6 years for work purposes. Mac's have normally run Adobe programs faster and better than pc's after version 7 and are the preferred tool of most graphic designers.
I have been using photoshop for 10 years and its not about whether I have the new version or not which is CS4(btw and not CS3 as you kept saying) the save for web function has been available since version 7.
If you have "Photoshop 6" or later Adobe even says "Memory usage is better on all Windows operating systems; the network should no longer become unavailable when Photoshop is running."
I'm just saying that there isn't really a need to flatten to a jpeg. Just save for web.
I am not trying to make you upset and I understand that Adobe gives out version six for free.
I just don't understand why you are verbally attacking me on the matter. I didn't stand on top of a hill and piss on to your house I was just saying "why flatten". Photoshop is a program that gives you 3 ways to do any one task.
Even if the person doesn't have Adobe there are a ton of other programs they could have but they shouldn't just go around "flattening" images. Thats how mistakes are made.

Writings of a Writer

As most of you know I have been playing Fable 2 non-stop and I am heavily addicted. In the game you can collect peoples journals and if you press "a" they start to talk to you. I played Fable 2 late into the night last night(1:30 amish) and found myself listening to the diaries and journals of the characters in the game. AND I must give props to the people who wrote these and the voice actors. I found myself feeling pity for the supposed lead villian (even though he is already dead now). He lost his family and built a huge spire to bring them back to life. The spire will only grant one wish its just that people are being enslaved to work there. He talks about everything and how he woke up from nightmares very compelling. My favorite diary of course is that of Revear. He is a sex addict and alcoholic and its just nice to here him chatter about being "too tired to inject" his guests. Lol, I love it. His shining moment is when you listen to him talk about how he killed a town because of his own fear of death and aging.
Its amazing that something can be so time consuming and yet rewarding in other areas. Best books on tape by far. In other news I just talked to the head director for the upcoming Rockettes show and let me just say I MUST SEE IT. I also have to start on my article for it right about nooooooowwwwwww.

The Champion:


Because of Love:

Coldest Winter

Kris has been playing Kanye West non-stop and I have been secretly listening to it when its played. Now I myself am not a big Kanye West fan but I some how own all of his cd's. I am actually really impressed with this cd due to the fact he has gone completely emo. Asian drums and him trying to sing mmmm yummy music. And with Kris being at home for thanks-giving I got time to play the whole album and I must say my favorite song on the cd is "Coldest Winter". All of the banners today are made from listening to that song. Fancy that!

Warmth:


Winter Rush Happy Holidays:

The Awkward Grump

Yesterday my bathroom toilet flooded and caused me a good deal of grief. I mopped it up twice and put what I used to soak up some of the water in a bin and left the bathroom. Every night I wake up at around 3-4am and go to the bathroom. I step into a huge puddle and I am none too happy. I look and the bin is blocking the door and I can't close it and I don't know if it is the bin or not thats leaking. So if I move it a ton of water might flood onto the floor. I look up and Kris is in bed and I don't want to turn on the blaring lights and wake anyone up. So I mop it up in the dark. I wake up at 7 to pee again and find that there is more water on the floor. So now I am none to happy. I mopped it all up and went back to bed and couldn't sit still. I can't thinking about the toliet and the puddles so I got back up at 8 and moved the bin into the shower and then mopped up the rest of the water. I got back in bed and by then I was no longer tired. I was extremely grumpy. A night of no cuddles and wet floors makes me grumpy...who'd a thunk it.

Cherry Midnight:



Windsong:



Oh yeah and I beat Fable 2 but since my x-box isn't plugged to the interwebs who knows what else I am missing :(

Oh Tis Saturday!

Well hello hello! At 2 am in the morning Kris got in the bed and started talking and basically what I heard is "Your water is cold". So in my mid sleep thoughts I said "I'm not drinking any water." What Kris really meant was the fact that I had no hot water.
The pipes all day had been screaming and popping and apparently it hurt itself and pop a gasket. So therefore I had no hot water. I woke up this morning and there was a trickle of water coming out of my faucet. I walked outside in just a jacket and some sweat pants and took out the trash. I hit the cold air and my face screamed. I quickly went back inside and checked the mail...spam..spam and on my way out the mail man was coming in to deliver todays mail. I bucked up and went out to the rental office and told her I had no hot water. "Oh they fixed that this morning". I then walked back in the freezing cold and turned on my water and in a time span of 15 mins it was magically working. Yes of course magic....


Julian's Bedroom:


Freezepop:

Mmmmmm, tasties

I haven't posted in a while due to my constant need to play Fable 2. Its not even a want anymore which is what makes it dangerous. Yet here I stand with some treats for those we read my blog!


Emma Lace:


Coconut:

Later Ramblings for Dinner

Today has been an exciting day. With Thanksgiving on its way I have had to start building my website, seeing as how I made an indirect promise without saying yes mind you to have it finished. Whats even more exciting is my articles for the paper I write for are going into print tomorrow and even have been posted on the web for early reading!!!!!!
Now if thats not more than excitement for you I got to take my girl down to Surly Girl Saloon for the first time and also Union Cafe. Its exciting for me because I have talked about it for months and it finally came into play. Love that girl.
I would post designs today but I am kind of stuck in an odd place. I don't know whether to post designs of my website or new banners...
If I decide on one in the next few hours who knows. You might have to check back to see ;)

The Weekend

PHEW! Where did it go. I remember Thursday and thats about it. I have no idea how I even posted on Friday. I spent most of the weekend spending money on me and when it was all said and done I had a xbox-360 and rock band 2.....also fable 2 :)
So my weekend was summed up with me not moving from my tv and I forgot about real life and work for two days which was good.
I have a few new articles that will hopefully be printed wednesday and I am feeling pretty good.
I have to go grocery shopping but eh *shrugs* might was well return to the online world for a bit. Also these are some of the custom banners I have made :)

Feeling It

So I am really starting to feel this idea of fall. That warm tingly I need 22 apple pies or I take the monkey type of feeling. I did some design work earlier this morning and I really felt it came out but in that respect I didn't know if it was design or art. I did the generic happy holidays banner as always and did a new one named "Horizon" and I really like it. Has sort of a warm sun over the cool mountains type of thing.


Horizon:



Generic Happy Holidays:

Darker

I find that waiting on one of my articles to be published is a pain in the a**. I guess its more the idea of if you wont post one article then post the other one. I wouldn't be hurt by that method at all. Its just aggravating when my story gets pushed back so some guy can jack off to the idea of the new bond movie sucking. It wasn't even a real article *rolls eyes*. In that respect I am feeling a bit emo today and probably wont be designing anything because they seem to come out pretty dark. In that respect here are my darker series. My favorite one out of this is definetly x-ray which means I might post it to etsy. The other two will just go in the box of things not posted. Either way the only one I think that doesn't look good is "Blood Clot Envy" yet for some reason I am still posting it. Anywhoot, enjoy :)


After The Divorce:




Blood Clot Envy:




Xray:

Banner Nightmares

Last night I had some vodka butter sauce steak penne pasta. I loved the flavors and how it tasted. It went well with my evening of "House" and "Fringe" and I even had my juicy juice to chase it down. Earlier in the evening I had run into someone else who did banners and I completely fell in love but then in that respect I felt very little. I then realized what made their banners better than my was photo and graphic integration.
So when I went to bed I thought about this alot. I woke up in a state of paranoia. Where was Kris? Why does Kris keep showing me banners? I saw my computer light on and went back to sleep. Why is there an angry Canadian after me....where are the banners? What did I do with the banners? I need banners!!! I woke up again, this time I had thrown everything off of the bed and my fist was wrapped in covers. I turned on my fan to cool me off and passed out. This time is was worse all of the colors and everything from all of the banners I had made were attacking me and I had sold some but couldn't get to the computer and everything was going haywire.
I woke up this time and tried to stay awake. Kris was still on the computer and I walked up to find Kris chatting. So I walked away and got a bottle of water and chugged. When Kris came to bed I went back to sleep thank-ful that my paranoid nightmares had calmed down.


the end of skies:



Another Holiday:

Sqaure Peg in too big of a sqaure hole

I like the title but that has nothing to do with this blog :)
Anyway yesterday was pretty excited for me. My internet provider thought it would be cool to just cut everything...EVERYTHING. My tv screen was dark with a static glow, my phone had no dial tone, and worst of all I had no internet...
I died a little bit on the inside. They then told me that I would have to wait till today to even get someone to cut my stuff back on........sad sad sad Clemart indeed.


Bamboo Sea:



Car Concept:

Burning Down the House

I live in a basement apartment and sometimes it gets dried out. I have every pipe in the building running through my apartment...which means whenever someone turns on the heat I get it. So I basically have 55 apartments worth of heat in my apartment.
I like to do what my mom did when we were growing up, which is fill a pot with hot water and set it to a low setting and put smell goods in it(oils). Its asks as a cool and fragrant humidifier allowing me to keep from drying out and still have an awesome smelling apartment.
I woke up this morning at 2am, 5am, and 7am not even noticing that the pot was still on. I finally got up 10 am and it was like SWEET SUGAR DADDIES. Lol, good thing for me Kris spent the night and had turned off the now scorched no longer smelling good pot. But I didn't dry out all night :)
In other news:

Sometimes I get a little over creative and then find I have nothing to do with it. So I figure I will try to offer a new wallpaper every month. They may not have anything to do with the season or holidays for the month but they will be kick a**. So if you click on the link it should take you to a page on my photobucket account. Click on the image and save as and set it to your desktop. You know you want to :)

Layer Sizing Tutorial

Hey everyone...or like 4 people. *clears throat*
Anyway I was asked how do people water mark things or where do they get the symbols from. So after providing the symbol still some things were shakey. So for everyone in advance here is a tutorial on it. :)

Now I have provided you guys with the copyright symbol so you can test it on your own or work with me on the tutorial.





Step One:
-Lets open up photoshop and get both files open. When we have that done lets get them side by side.





Step Two:
- Now find your cursor and place it over the copyright symbol.



Step Three:
-Click and drag the copyright symbol over to the other open window.


Step Four:
-When the cursor and the copyright symbol are successfully in the other image, simply let go.



Step Five:
-Close out the copyright symbol. We no longer need that but instead lets take a look at your layers panel. You now have a new layer(which happens to be the copyright symbol). Make sure it is selected for this next step.



Step Six:
-With the layer selected go to edit at the top of your tool bar and a list should pop up.


Step Seven:
-On this list go to and select "Free Transform" or if you prefer hotkeys "ctrl+t"


Step Eight:
-What happens is a bounding box is created outside of your layer. You need this bounding box in order to change, warp, skew, and whatever you may have it.


Step Nine:
-In this step we begin to resize the bounding box.
-There are two ways to do this.
-In the top toolbar is a percentage symbol with a bunch of numbers. If you are more of a number person that type in the percentage in both percentage box windows. If you only type it in one your image will become all wicky wacky. In advance though if you use this method you might lose your layer when it changes size and have to go find it somewhere on your photoshop.
-The second way which is my preferred way is to simply drag till you see the corner of the bounding box and grab its square and drag it down to size while holding "shift" this keeps everything in scale and you have more control over what happens.


Step Ten:
-When it is dragged down to a size that you actually like just let go of your mouse.


Step Eleven:
-With it dragged down to size hit either "enter" on your keypad or touch something from the toolbar.
-If you hit enter then it automatically sets it to that size
-if you touch something off of your toolbar it will ask you if you want to leave it the way you have it.


Step Twelve:
-Drag the symbol anywhere you want on your image and leave it there


Final:
Save out your image and this is what you have. A watermarked image :)



I guess one day I should make a watermark making tutorial...

If you have finished this tutorial and done it successfully then take a "Clemart Badge" and add it to your blog or wherever else it may be that you post. Let everyone know that you learned something :).