In honor of the holiday, I’ll direct you here.
Please have fun. Please be safe!
To Remember
Web Wednesday: June 28, 2017
- As a person who has good intentions but often ends up with odd results on DIY home improvement projects, this made me laugh.
- On my adulting list last week was meeting with a loan officer about the best time to refinance our mortgage, and while the web is full of information, I really liked this calculator which stepped you through the messy math needed to make a decision.
- I can already hear them at night. It’s getting to be Cicada Season (don’t click if you don’t like pictures of bugs).
None of these links are affiliate; they are just items that caught my eye in the last week.
Tiny Tip: Make Matching Art Accessories
I’m not really a decorator. In fact, I’d have to describe my decorating “style” as eccentric. No, that’s not a typo for eclectic. I mean eccentric.
Case in point – I have this super cute shower curtain that I purchased at Ikea (sorry – no link, it’s no longer being offered).
They had matching towels, but no matching bathroom wall artwork was available.
So I made my own.
I took a good, clear closeup photo of two of the fish on the curtain. And then I cleaned them up in Adobe Photoshop and auto traced the result in Adobe Illustrator. I changed the colors to be more vibrant, added a border and border background color and printed it as an oversize color print.
I have the luxury of working where I have access to an oversize color printer, but Staples/Kinkos/etc. will print these in the $1.99 to $9.99 range depending on size and paper stock.
I dropped it into a inexpensive frame (from Ikea, of course) and now my bathroom wall artwork fits the category of “one of a kind masterpiece.”
Pro-tip – always create your artwork to be a standard size so you don’t have to have it custom framed. Standard size frames are readily available and can be inexpensive if you shop at the right store (or have a good coupon).
One other great thing about this trick – when I change my mind about the shower curtain (or it gets really dirty – does anyone actually wash shower curtains?) I can make new matching artwork.
I’m only suggesting this for personal use, of course. I’m not a lawyer, but I’d guess that if you tried to sell an item created this way, you’d likely be violating every copyright law there is.
Web Wednesday: June 21, 2017
- This was a great documentary about how origami and science work hand in hand. Unfortunately, you have to be a paid PBS subscriber to view it. So if you aren’t, how about this site with a lot of smaller projects to start with?
- I love ringtones, and astronomy. So the NASA web page full of MP3 and MR4 downloads? Yay!
- You know when you get on the plane and you scope out all the your fellow passengers wondering who the troublemakers are going to be? Can you imagine if this happened on your flight?
None of these links are affiliate; they are just items that caught my eye in the last week.
Tiny Tip: Design cards with the envelope in mind
If you are creating cards or invitations, it’s helpful to know the sizes of standard envelopes so that once you have finished all that hard work, it’s possible to actually mail them.
You could, of course, create your own envelope, but if you are doing invitations or a mass of thank you cards after an event, you’ll probably want to stick to the sizes easiest to find at the stores.
One other quick card size tip – you’ll also want to consider the size of the sheet of paper you are printing them on. One of my favorite sizes is the A2 insert size – at 4.25 x 5.5, you can get four out of a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper (or two if they fold over).
