Project 365: Picture 61

My niece, the Easter bunny and the egg hunter. I love this picture.

Taken 27 March 2010

Project 365: Picture 60

Easter egg hunts are the best.

Taken 27 March 2010

Invitation: Red Rock Fun

We were supposed to do this yesterday, but plans changed. Yes I was rather bummed. But I had already made the invitation, so I decided to post it anyway. I had a lot of fun making it.

[Apparently my picture broke...and it isn't on this computer. Re-posting to come later.]

Invitation: Kathryn's Baby Shower

I haven't figured out how to make my computer's screen match every other screen, so this looks really light. When printed on white cardstock, however, it looks fantastic.

Stumble: Interior Color Personality Quiz

To quote the quiz website:

What have you seen that you love? Do you have a favorite designer or store inspiration? What is your most/least favorite color? What kind of mood are you trying to create? These are all questions that you will ask yourself before you get started with your decorating project.

Take this color quiz and find out what colors fit you!

When I just barely got my employer to upgrade to CS4...

Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 Global Online Launch Event
April 12, 2010
Learn more on Adobe's website

The Perfect Tripod

My sister Lesley and I got tripods for Christmas. However, they turned out to be absolutely huge so we returned them for something else. After receiving the wrong product and exchanging for the correct one, we both own a Sunpak 3300 PRO Tripod complete with 3-way pant tilt head and quick release. It extends to 64.4" and supports 11 lbs. And I love it. If you're looking for a tripod, this one is a pretty good price, complete with a carrying case, and you just can't beat that deal.

Invitation: Emily's Wedding Invite

Emily's invitations kind of turned into a project because she was working on them and needed some help to get the design the way she wanted, and I had a bit more experience with Illustrator than she did. She had the invitation printed as letterpress with the other two cards printed on a laser printer. The combination of the three looked fantastic with her color scheme of light red and blue.

Death to Democracy

I'm pretty sure America is dead. Democracy is dead. When politicians put their agendas above the will of the American people--and say that it's really what the people want--democracy is dead. We live in a masked dictatorship. Thanks, Obama.

People voted because they were afraid of retribution from the Democratic party and are afraid of not being reelected in November. I'm pretty sure most of those people won't be in office come November. And Pelosi is really one of the slimiest politicians ever to live. No wonder California is in trouble.

Thanks to all the people who believe that Obama's rhetoric is more powerful than action.

Fun Fact Friday: You're Living in a Spider Web

For work I've started writing a blog entry every Friday called Fun Fact Friday. I've decided to carry it over to this blog, since most of the topics deal with social media and the like. Some of the examples might have to be altered since my audiences are different, but the topics are still the same. But if you don't want to learn a fun fact on Fridays, just skip all the entries that have a heading with the aforementioned title. :)

No doubt at some point in your life you’ve seen a spider’s web. If you haven’t, please take a moment to view a few Google images I found of spider webs: spider web 1 and spider web 2. Okay so now you probably have the idea of what a web looks like now.

Consider that the web is created one strand at a time, and all the strands are linked together. The same idea applies to the Internet—it’s not a coincidence that it is referred to as the world wide web. When you include a link on your blog or web page or email, you are creating a virtual link on the world wide web. As more strands are linked together, the web gets larger and larger and can make a bigger impact—and be easier to find on the Internet.

If you're in the business world, or just want to extend the reach of your hobby-writing blog, How do you do it? Well, links on the web help generate what is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is a technique that helps you find the web pages you are looking for.

Think of yourself as the center of a spider web. How do you make your web larger? It’s by creating strands that link together, right? Although it's possible to do this by yourself, it's a lot easier when you're working with other people. (How do you think Apple got so popular on the Internet? Could it possibly be because a few million people are writing and blogging about their products and articles about them? Exactly.)

Creating your web usually involves other people to help you out, and you them. For example, when you copy text from a website and put it on your own, include the link to the original source. (Please also remember that taking content from a website without citing the source is considered plagiarism, and nobody likes plagiarism in any context.) For instance, if I link to your blog, you can find me, and maybe you'll link back to me as well. And then other people will find both of us, and the link goes on. And life is good. And suddenly you have more readers and you wonder why? That's the power of linking on the Internet.

Don't link everything out there, but do link to websites/images/videos/blogs that you care about. And see what happens. Look at your stats in about a month from now and see if your site has grown. I bet you you'll see some positive results.

Stumble: Create Your Own Wallpaper

Have you ever wanted to unleash your inner creative and create some wallpaper for your beloved computer screen? Now's your chance with X3 Studios. You can browse the gallery of images made by other people too. Try it out!

Project 365: Picture 59

Our census form showed up in the mail this week, and we got it finished last night in record time. About 10 minutes. Easiest form ever.

Taken 16 March 2010

Project 365: Picture 58

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Taken 17 March 2010

Fortune Cookie Thought

Grant yourself a wish this year, only you can do it.

I have issues with this fortune. First, it is written as a comma splice. Second, the meaning is unclear. For instance, what is the antecedent of "it"? And what does the fortune mean, anyway? Grant yourself a wish that only you can achieve? Grant yourself a wish because you're the only one who is capable of making wishes for you?

Project 365: Picture 57

Happy birthday to Stef. Can't believe she's 20. (And that my brother just turned 22. Yikes.)

Taken 10 March 2010 (birthday was 8 March; yes, the celebration is slightly delayed)

Project 365: Picture 56

Looking back down the walk to Cowell Ranch Beach. So scenic and picturesque. How cool is it that there is a beach at the end of this path?

Taken 6 March 2010

Project 365: Picture 55

Another shot from Cowell Ranch Beach, but facing the ocean. The sunlight was amazing, again, and hey, I got this picture with my point-and-shoot camera. Not bad.

Taken 6 March 2010

Project 365: Picture 54

Beautiful beach and sky, Cowell Ranch Beach at Half Moon Bay, CA.

Taken 6 March 2010

Stumble: Dynamic Dummy Image Generator

Sometimes you don't know what size of an image you want and you just need to put in a box in your layout. Enter Dynamic Dummy Image Generator. Self-explained and useful for design geeks.

Invitation: Birthday Party for Kallie 2

The Clifford Party ended up changing last minute to a Cupcake Party, so I redid the invite for posterity's sake. (We'll save the Clifford one for next year!)

I'm not the world's greatest graphic designer, but everything I know is a combination of Alma's basic Illustrator class + practice on my own time. I think designing is fun, but they always look better in my brain...

Project 365: Picture 53

The long walk up the staircase from Cowell Ranch Beach in Half Moon Bay, California. Lots of steps for my little niece. (And my mom managed to put her left foot directly in front of her right leg, which is why that looks weird.)

Taken 6 March 2010

Project 365: Picture 52

The sunlight at the Bonneville Salt Flats was amazing last Friday.

Taken 5 March 2010

Project 365: Picture 51

Bonneville Salt Flats in early spring. Not enough to keep my brother out of the water.

Taken 5 March 2010

Book Conservation: Week 2

Tonight we learned how to mend tears in paper. It was totally freaky and I was scared out of my mind to try it. But it's really cool because using tissue (not the nasal kind, but the mending kind) actually works! I had to fix this giant rip in the paper. It was my first attempt; I think it turned out pretty good. If I hate it, rubbing alcohol will take it right off. (This is why conservators don't use PVA because PVA is not reversible.)

And then I tried the Japanese paper. We got two kinds; a really thin kind and a slightly thicker kind. See?

The adhesive that seems to work best is wheat paste, which you have to mix up from powder and ends up looking like jello before you dilute it with water. How much dilution? Well, that depends on the thickness of the paper you're mending and the paper you're using to fix the torn paper, and you also have to consider the color of the paper (most Japanese paper tends to be unbleached with a natural color). But the good news is, if you don't like how it turns out, just add water and the Japanese paper comes right off.

Observe photos below: tear before mending, tear during drying, tear after drying (and before trimming the edge).

I'm still deciding if I like this look and if I should use thicker wheat paste, thicker Japanese paper, etc.

We watched this really old movie about how Japanese paper is made. It can take months to finish the process, depending on how much paper is made. Do you want to know why Japanese paper costs so much? Well, it's made from a plant that has to be steamed, have its bark peeled off, soaked in water overnight, mixed with soda ash, boiled, left overnight again, washed out to remove chemicals, left in water exposed to sunlight, cleansed again, observed for bark particles in water, observed for bark particles out of water, beaten to loose fibers, soaked in water to break up fibers again, flattened into paper, pressed, pressed again, dried, and hand cut into sizes. There you go.

And yes. I am the only person in the class who is taking pictures to document this workshop. Do I care? No.

Book Conservation: Week 1

Last week I started a book conservation workshop at the University of Utah Book Arts Program. It runs for five weeks. Last week I was given two books to fix during the course of the workshop, and when I got them, I realized I was scared to death. Luckily I don't have to give them back so if I screw up, nobody will really know. This is nothing like trying to repair hymnbooks.

I took some before pictures so I can compare the books when they are finished. Both spines are not in good shape. The text block on the brown one is completely removed from its cover, which is also in horrible shape. Both of these came from the U of U special collections library and our teacher got them for free for student practice. The green book is from the early 1920s; the brown book is older than that but I can't tell because the cover page is gone. I tried to research who Milo is (the guy who owned the book) and his mother & dad (they have one of those "this book belongs to" tags), but who knows. If anyone has any ideas for family history research besides FamilySearch.org, this could be a fun little mystery to solve.

Last week we learned how to remove tape from paper rips. You know, taking the tape off when some good-hearted soul thought they were fixing the book by taping the rip back together. I get to use these funky tweezer things and a special heat iron and/or alcohol...alcohol takes tape residue right off. Unfortunately it can also take off the text from the paper, but apparently there's a way to put it back on. We'll learn how to actually fix rips in paper AND fix the pulled-off-the-tape text in class tonight.

Dear World: Computer Questions

If you can solve this problem I will pay you in admiration and respect...

But does anyone have any idea why, on a Mac computer, my PDFs are downloading as .pdf.exe files? I'm using Adobe Creative Suite 4 (on a Mac with completely updated software) to create these files.

Also, when two PDFs are placed next to each other and have the exact same code, why does one open in the browser but the other downloads straight to my computer?

Stumble: Divine

Here's a great alternative to Dreamweaver (unfortunately for Windows only). If you have Photoshop and Wordpress, and you want to create your own templates for Wordpress, download Divine to covert it for you. Divine is absolutely free too! Well, it might cost more in the future, so download it now and try it out.

Financial Empowerment for Women

Let's face it: we all know that women make less money than men do. I just discovered this website called DailyWorth that helps empower women with their money and help them make better financial decisions. I just signed up and I'm excited to see how I can improve my finances.

Sign up here: http://www.dailyworth.com/

Invitation: Birthday Party Invitation for Kallie

Party on Saturday for my niece! Her birthday was yesterday but the party has just started. She is having a Clifford birthday party! She loves Clifford. And I loved making this invite.

Define Professionalism

If you got an email with a subject line that says The BEST MARKETING EVERRRRRRRRRRRR, would you take them seriously?

I didn't. Sorry!