3D Initial Wire Photo Holder

Hi Dandi Crafters. Today I want to share with you this oh so cute little initial wire photo holder I made. It came out darling. I used my electric cutting machine and Make The Cut Software to cut out the pieces of the initials however you could cut it out with a pair of sharp scissors. I used cereal boxes  so my initial to be more earth friendly however you could use medium weight chip board. The B initial dimensions are 5½ inches wide by 6½ tall and 1¾ inches thick with the wire added the wire photo holder is 9½ inch tall.
If you would like more information on assembling the 3D letters. You can see my Santa Letters post. Where I explain the assembly :o)

A Blogging Public Service Announcement: Watermark Those Pictures!

Hi Dandi Crafters. Today I am going to do something I don't do much of in life and very rarely if ever have on my blog give unsolicited advice. If you are not watermarking your pictures you NEED TO! Watermark is just a fancy way of saying write your name and info on your pictures. This morning I logged into my Photobucket Account to upload my design teams pictures so I could write my post about their lovely designs. Well this morning I was greeted with an updated Terms Of Use to accept. Well it is WAY early so I just skimmed through it but one thing that popped out at me was this little line,
"....You are also giving other Users the right to copy, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and create derivative works from it via the Site or third party websites or applications (for example, via services allowing Users to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content, and via social media websites)....."
Did you see that? Now I have used Photobucket for several years. I know that photobucket keeps up with industries standards and while they have updated their terms they are in line with their industry peers. In other words all image hosting sites are going to read about the same.

Because I am an experienced user I understand that they are really just setting themselves up to be let off the hook if some "legal" action should arise between a couple of their users. Photobucket can't give rights that they don't have the authority to give. They can't say, "others can use your work even if it is posted on their site. They don't have the authority to do that here in the US or anywhere in world that I am aware of. But what they are really saying is if someone takes your pictures for whatever reason,"Don't blame us. We told you."

All this might have rolled over me but I recently had an email conversation with a friend/ design team mate of mine where she said,"You know, I am learning a lot of good things from you.... and appreciate it...like the fact that all work, what I do for you and my own personal work needs to be watermarked. Having some issues with someone copying my work and claiming as their own right now and the download file had my tou included with it. So I will be watermarking everything from now on that I work on."

Sadly I hear this ALL the time. So many people come to me and tell me that I am right. They had their pictures taken. When this happens to you. It will make you sad :0( Notice I said when not if.It is only a matter of time if you post pictures on the web until someone takes them.
I am a bit CRAZY about Watermarks being use on my Design Team's Work. I tell them often, no really so often, "Do not submit a project without a watermark." Sometimes a picture will slip by me without a watermark, but not often.

I cut my Internet baby teeth on eBay. I found eBay shortly after I hit the Internet. I sold on eBay regularly and continuously for years. eBay will give you a serious Internet education if you hang out on it and really get to know it. This is where I learned so many of my Internet sandbox lessons. A basic one was do not post pictures without your watermark. If you do "EXPECT" someone to take it. Someone will! Honestly, I don't care what you think your skill set is. Someone is on the web looking at your skills, your pictures and wishing they could do that. A small percent of those people are going to,"Fake It, Until they Make It", meaning they will take your work and claim it as their own. Some will take it because they like it and really aren't trying to be malicious. But it doesn't make it any better.

I don't know how many times on eBay I used to look around, on the web still today, and I would see one of my designs in some random auctions. I would know that they just swiped it because it was not in the same context as the one I designed/sold.

Now you might be sitting there thinking. Well no matter I don't design or make or create anything. This isn't anything that I have to worry about. Oh wait what about that ultimate creation you made, the one that looks like his daddy, the one that has your Mom's sweet smile? Yea that one.
When I was on eBay I participated in the custom children's boutique community. Many sellers made a spendy penny on making and or having their little ones model children's clothing. We are not talking Toddler and Tiaras crowd, just cute little kids being kids and their mom knew how to use their camera. Quite a few of the outfits were made on demand. You ordered it and then the seller would make it in your child's size. Well one foreign seller thought that these were too good to pass up. They put up listings on a foreign auction site and website and took all the custom children's boutique community pictures the ones with their KIDS and posted them in their auctions and on their website. This effected hundreds of sellers on eBay. It was crazy and it took some work to get every one's kids pictures taken down. This happened to different degrees a few times YIKES!

My point is it is just a picture to you. You just want to share it. I know I get that. I am here to say that once you put that photo on the Internet it WILL take on a life of it's own.
Having a website on I am able to track where my website clicks come in from. Well a few years ago. I was tracking my hits. You see my blog, it is cute and adorable and my website although decorated differently it is the same cute and adorable. I sell digital stamps, graphics, and baby onesies. Nothing what so ever to do with "adult" content. I have a clause that say you have to be a family friendly site to buy my stuff. Well I saw that I had 3 hits, from this really long url with really no decriptive name in the link. I clicked it. I like to see what people are saying about my stuff on forums and such. OH my WORD I couldn't get off that site fast enough. I never saw what graphics were mine or where they were discussing DtsArt because I was FLOORED. It went to this adult content site that was WAY WAY WAY out of the main stream adult content sites. That happened years ago and I still remember it vividly! YUCK!!

Another time I made this Welcome Graphic for my paint shop pro group that I used to lead. It was cute. Well people were not only where helping themselves to the graphic. They were taking my bandwidth. In other words they were not just posting the picture on their discussion board they were using my image hosting, the one I PAY for to post that picture. Every time anyone open any of the threads that contained my Welcome Graphic it called up my image host to do it. Not only did they like my picture they liked stealing my bandwith.

The whole point of this post is to let you know you need watermark your photos with the very least your name and maybe where in the world you can be found on the internet, that could be your blog your website. Something. If someone is out to steal your picture a watermark isn't going to stop them but having your picture watermarked may just make them decide to move on to the next guy, an easier unwatermarked target. 

You can add a watermark using any standard image editor, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop,  and many online image host have someway to add text to your photos.   Although I have never used it you can add a watermark using the free website Picasa or of course you can use photobucket it is free too! The text tool can be found on there by clicking edit> decorate> then the T for text.

My New Laptop Skin & Tutorial: How to Round Corners in Make The Cut

Hi Dandi Crafters. Check out my new laptop skin. I took my laptop from fab to drab in no time. My computer is a black Acer laptop. If you are familiar with Acer Laptops then you know that the Acer name is stuck right in the middle of laptop cover. It just isn't very cute.

So I decided to dress it up a bit. I took white vinyl and covered the whole outside. I LOVE looking at a blank white canvas. My thoughts just swim in the dream of possibilities. This is what I came up with.

While I was sharing my new laptop skin on the discussion boards someone asked me how I got the rounded corners. She said she could never get hers just right. I will be honest I don't even think about how to round corners. The corners needed to be rounded so the skin would fit my laptop so I rounded them. Most of the time when I start creating I don't think of the initial basic steps. I just do them. They are just something that I have to do, have to endure, to get to the fun creative stuff. Right now this is funny to me because I am trying to learn to use illustrator better. When I am following a long in tutorials, I find myself saying wait you didn't explain how to get to that step. You assume I know more than I do. It is discouraging, because sometimes you do a tutorial just to learn the basic thing that they gloss over in the tutorial. I am sure that they gloss over it for the same reason I do. That part is just routine to them. They do it automatically and aren't even thinking about that part. It is rather like saying to someone, "Oh this is so good, here take a bite." It never occurs to you to explain how to take a bite. You just want to share the exciting, good stuff with them. Yes I know that in reality everyone knows how to bite but it does express my point perfectly. LOL
So I thought I would do a little tutorial for you on how to round corners. This is how you do it in Make The Cut. However if you ever need standard rounded corners in any program you are working in these basics will work. I know that there are LOTS of programs that will round corners for you. I have some of those programs and I let the program round the corners for me whenever possible. Make the Cut has a couple of rounded corner shapes in the shape area. However if you need rounded corners to be an exact size those shapes may not help you.
This is the basics of how to get an exact rounded corner.
These basics will work in any program. You just need to know in the program that you are using, how to draw out your basic shapes, align, cut and how to join/merge. That is it. All your basic image editors have all of these features. You just need to know where to find them in the program you are using.
1.You draw out your rectangle or square.
2.Draw out your circle in the size that you want your rounded corner to be. Rounded corners most of the time are pretty standard. You have 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and 1 inch. You can certainly make your rounded corners to be any size you want. You can make them 0.3567 if you like. If you are trying to have rounded corners that you are trying to match, rounded corners tend to be pretty standard in manufacturing. Say you want a 1/2 inch. That was what my corners on my laptop cover are rounded at. You just make a 1/2 inch circle. LOL you want a 1/2 inch circle not half of a circle. LOL ;-)
3. Make sure you copy and or duplicate your 1/2 inch circle so you have a total of 4 circles, one for each corner.
4. Move the circles to each corner of your rectangle
5. You will want to align the circles to your rectangle so they match perfectly. Align:
a. first circle to the top left of your rectangle
b. second circle to the top right of your rectangle
c. third circle to the bottom left of your rectangle
d. fourth circle to the bottom right of your rectangle.
6. Now that the circles are aligned you will notice that there is a corner tab part of the rectangle sticking out behind every circle in the corner. You want to cut off the tab in each corner.
7. You need to notice that there is a place in each corner where the circle and rectangle line up perfectly on either side of the circle. This is PRECISELY where you want to cut. Cutting the rectangle too high or too low will give you a bump or two in your rounded corners. YUCK!! who wants THAT!!
8. Now that you have cut the corner tags off you should see that you are just steps away from having uniformed and exact measured corners. Now all that is left is to join/ merge the circles with the rectangle.
9. There your done. You have prefect rounded corners on your rectangle or square.
Hope this helped you some!

Video: How to Print Out a Digital Stamp so you can color it

Hi Dandi Crafters! Here is my first video share. The video shows how to print out a digital stamp using paint shop pro so you can color it in with copics or colored pencils. I like to turn my digital stamp into a mask before I print it out. This video shows you how to make a mask out of an image and save it for later. Please feel free to post any questions you may have. You can get the digital stamp used in this video from this post. Scroll to the bottom of the post for the download link. Hope you enjoy it.

How To Make a Grab Blog Button For Your Blog

I have had some request asking me how to make a blog button so here it is. I have started the basic button in case you are just comfortable with just adding your blog name to the button. If you want to use one of the buttons posted as a base just mouse over it and right click and save. If you use a button from above you can skip to step 5 or 6. Let's Get Started.

1. You will need some kind of image editing program. It doesn't matter which program. Open it up.

2. Open a new file canvas size 125x 125 pixels with a resolution of 72.

3. Pick a color for your background and flood fill the canvas with the color of your choice.

4. Add a New Layer

5. If you have clip art you would like to use place in on your button now. Not too big as you will need to be able to write your blog name on it.

6. Write your blog name in the color of your choice using the text too.

7 When you are happy with how it looks save your blog button as a gif or a jpg

8. Now upload your blog button to an image host. You can search free image host in your favorite search engine. I personally use Photobucket.

9. Once you have the blog button uploaded to your photo host you will need to get the image url. Your photo host will generate this for you.

10. Now you will need to put your image url and blog address in the code provided and put the code on your blog. If you need instructions on how to add the code to your blog, they are here.

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<div align="center"> <a href="http://YOURBLORNAME.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src="YourBlogButtonImageUrlHere" border="0"/></a> </div> <div align="center"> <form><textarea rows="15" cols="12"><a href="http://YOURBLORNAME.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src="YourBlogButtonImageUrlHere" border="0"/></a></textarea></form> </div>
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If you can't figure out how to make a blog button and you want one. You can purchase a blog grab, you can see examples of size and animated blog buttons here too!
Purchase Blog Button Here