It’s not new, but I only discovered recently that Basic Grey went digital. If I was a paper scrapper I’m pretty sure that almost all my papers would be Basic Grey. So I was pretty excited to see that they are now selling digital kits as well.
So far they have seven collections available, the latest being the “Vagabond” collection. I find the way they sell their stuff very interesting. You can buy a starter kit of the collection, which is basically all you need to do a few pages without repeating yourself. You you can buy the set of patterned papers and a set of a variety of elements separately or you buy one paper at a time and element packs consisting of only textures, flourishes, journaling spots, trimmings etc. Nice idea, that way nobody is forced to pay for an alpha they don’t want or buy a full kit if they are only after one specific paper. The price for a starter kit is 8$. If you have always been a fan of Basic Grey and regretted that you couldn’t use their products, the times have changed.
Oh, and as a nice additional idea Basic Grey are also selling blog banners, blog backgrounds and wallpapers now. If you want to re-do your blog Basic Grey style, now this is as easy as can be.
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“Another Place“ is a piece of art with 100 sculptures by artist Antony Gormley, which is situated at Crosby Beach, England, at the moment. It looks as if it might stay there for good. An absolutely lovely place. I’ve had those photos on my HD for a couple of years and wanted to do something with them, but never knew what. Now I turned them into a phone theme, which is available at mobile9.com.
For more previews and the free download, please go here at mobile9.com.
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I was busy again. I made this green and black necklace for a colleague. I’m still only trying out stuff.
And while Corin was busy playing with wooden beads I made this cute little bracelet that matches the necklace from the other day.
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We went to another beading class where I made this necklace. It fits my hippie style perfectly.
On a German swap site I swapped a bunch of beads, it was just a large batch and I wasn’t sure what would be in it, except I knew there were a handful of large pink ones. After going through them all (I felt like Aschenbrödel who’s sorting out, what was it, peas?). One of the beads in there is this one:
Isn’t this the cutest little bead ever? Totally love it.
Posted in Beading, Crafts | 1 Comment »
Lately my ACDSee has annoyed me quite a bit. It froze constantly, I had to restart it, froze again. Then, all of a sudden it stopped working altogether because of some error or other that I didn’t care to investigate. So I had a look around for another picture organizer to replace ACDSee, preferably cheap.
I’ve tried a lot of them before I bought ACDsee, so I knew that Picasa, Adobe photo album etc. are not for me. Eventually I found a program that had received very good reviews, called XN View. From what I can tell it can do lots of things that ACDSee can do and it is fast, too.
- It works with tons of file formats and displays .psd files much quicker than ACDSee.
- You can have a list of favourites folders to get to stuff quickly.
- You can determine in what program to open any file and assign a keyboard shortcut for it.
- You can assign categories to an image
- You can color code images
- You can rate pictures
- Batch processing
- Photo editing
- You can create contact sheets
- Create slide shows
- Send your pictures by email
- Convert images to various formats easily
So far I haven’t found anything that I did with ACDSee that XN View didn’t do, and sometimes even faster than ACDSee. XN View is available in German, English and French and – best of all – it’s free.
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I’m just practising at the moment, trying out color combos, various beads and see what I like. So, this is what I came up with…
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Since this product is available in Germany – I assume Rico Design does not distribute this in other countries as well – I’m going to continue in German now, Hopefully for the benefit of potential buyers who, like me, thought that by buying a product of the popular Rico brand, they are getting a quality item to work with. This is not so.
Da ich annehme und hoffe, dass Rico diese “jewellery kits” nur in deutschsprachigen Ländern vertreibt, mache ich jetzt mal auf deutsch weiter….
Das design auf der Packung des kits “Sicily” sprach mich an, da ich die Farbkombination grün/braun sehr schön finde. Beim Auspacken wurde ich dann allerdings sehr schnell enttäuscht.
Die Perlen sind von schlechter Qualität, das fiel sogar mir als Anfänger auf. Bei manchen fehlten die Löcher, manche waren angeknackst etc. Das Herz, das mir auf dem Foto eher bräunlich vorkam, stellte sich in Wahrheit als das folgende heraus:
Ein Herz mit blauen und roten Einschlüssen wollte ich nicht. Die “Anleitung” ist dermassen dürftig, dass ein Anfänger damit nicht gut zurechtkommt. Das “Lederband” (laut Packungsrückseite – Anleitung) stellte sich als tatsächliches Veloursband heraus (laut Packungsrückseite – Materialliste). Für das Band fehlte ein passender Verschluss. Ich habe mir dann mit einem beweglichen Knoten geholfen.
Das Armband habe ich gar nicht mehr angerührt, sondern verwende jetzt die übrigen Perlen, soweit brauchbar, bei anderen Projekten.
Das kit ist nicht besonders teuer, was aber nicht heissen darf, dass bei
- Qualität
- Anleitung
- Material an sich und
- Verpackungsgenauigkeit
gespart werden darf. Ich kaufe schliesslich kein Produkt, das “der Abbildung ähnlich” ist, sondern das der Abbildung entspricht. Ich bin von dem kit sehr enttäuscht und überlege es mir sicher zweimal, bevor ich wieder etwas von Rico Design kaufen werde.
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I recently started to take an interest into making jewelry with beads. I once got two necklaces that a friend crocheted for me and thought I might like to try that out. However, it turned out to be way too delicate for me, so I gave it up again without even trying. I had a look around and found this book by Sarah Withers “The encyclopedia of Beading techniques” which turned my attention to wire jewelry.
My next step was to buy a little craft kit with all the materials to make your own necklace, which turned out to be a bad move (more about this in another post). So a friend and I decided to go to an evening class to learn how to do it properly. We went to the Perlenmarkt where Bianca showed us some techniques and everybody could choose the kind of necklace they wanted to create.
This is what I came up with:
I had a bit of time left, so I decided to make a second necklace which didn’t take a lot of time. I’m not altogether happy with the fasteners, but for the first couple of necklaces I suppose I don’t want to be too particular.
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My interests have changed in the last few months. Well, not really changed, but they have extended to other areas than only scrapbooking. So I decided to extend the topics of the blog as well, give it a new name and change it looks.
I know, “teleidoscope” is not really a name that sticks or is suitable as a catching name, but if you have ever looked through one you will know how fascinating teleidoscopes are. I love them and I want this blog to be a sort of mirror of what I do in my leisure time. So I found it fit.
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There is this Facebook quiz that tells you the color of your personality and gives you some general ideas about your character. The usual, really, but I liked the color idea so much that I decided to turn the quiz result into a page for my AAM album.
Thanks to Idee Labs I had many images in the right color. It was such fun to do this page, break up the small pictures and make them go all over the place.
Credits: Background paper: Audrey Neal, Spring Sing. Frippery: TADA, stars & spots. Circle: Jen Wilson, Linen closet. Images from Idee Labs. Font: Times new Roman, Georgie, DJB Rikkiscript
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A new theme for SE called “Machinery” is available on mobile9.com. For additional previews and your free download go here.
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Seems I’m slowly coming back to life.
I’ve got two new templates up in my shop at PDP and all my products are on sale at the moment with 20% off without minimum purchase.
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A new theme for Sony Ericsson is now available on mobile9.com. For an additional preview and the free download go here.
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In this book “Mit Kindern wohnen” I saw how someone wrote the first few lines of “Where the wild things are” in a spiral on their wall. “Where the wild things are” is my favourite children’s book and I would so like to copy that, but I’m all thumbs, so I figured I could do it digitally and add a bit to it. A white poster with only writing on it might not look so great after all. So I came up with this:
I simply used the custom spiral shape in Photoshop, wrote the text on a path and added the image underneath with a gradient mask. Easy!
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I was shocked to hear that TADA is closing down. The shop will close in early February, so now is the last chance to stock up on Tracy Ann’s supplies. Almost everything is 50% off. Alternatively you can buy the whole shop for 69,95$ until Wednesday or 89,95$ from then on. An excellent deal!
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Totally forgot day 12.
Just playing around with an ashtray.
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On the way to work.
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Outside a coffeeshop
Out for a walk in the snow
Snow covered terrace
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A friend of ours brought Christmas cookies from China with him. They taste very unusual, nothing like the Christmas cookies I know. Still good though, just very different.
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This is my favourite cafe where I had breakfast this morning.
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This is the high street in the quarter where I live. I snapped this real quick with my cell phone when I was on the way to one of the shops.
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My car is a hippie one, with flower stickers on the outside, flower garlands on the dashboard, a peace sticker on the rear window. Today a friend showed me this steering wheel cover. It is perfect for my car, just the little finishing touch.
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I couldn’t make up my mind what picture to use, so I chose both.
The park behind my workplace.
Burger King
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Day 3 is all about muffins. I made a whole lot of “Bear Muffins” with marzipan and almonds for Sean’s birthday party at kindergarten tomorrow. With only one muffin tray that took a while…
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This is our main train station this morning. Pretty neat Christmas decoration.
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Nina posted her first two photos of her project 365 on her blog today. That inspired me to join that project as well. Fun way to keep track of the year in images.
This is Conny Wenk’s daughter Juliana. Isn’t she absolutely gorgeous? We got this double sided christmas/new year card from Conny, the loveliest card ever. I don’t think I’ll be discarding this one together with the rest.
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I finished a new theme for Sony Ericsson phones called “Dotted Line” (don’t ask how it got that name, I don’t know myself). You can see more previews and download it for free at mobile9.com.
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The new Christmas edition of quickpages for the iPhone and iTouch is available in the iTunes shop now.
Show your favorite treasured moments off with style. Once photographs are put into the templates they can be shown one at a time or as part of a slideshow. Make a wallpaper of the combined image and set it on your iPod or iPhone. Email the finished image to friends and family.
Get more information on John’s website John E. Donovan Mobile Solutions or go to iTunes.
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It’s not new, but I only discovered recently that Basic Grey went digital. If I was a paper scrapper I’m pretty sure that almost all my papers would be Basic Grey. So I was pretty excited to see that they are now selling digital kits as well. 
