(no subject)
Damn I'm tired. Still no reason, got more sleep last night too ... I'm gonna be a bundle of laughs tonight I can tell ;) Nothing a beer or two won't cure, I guess :)
Post this morning included letters saying that the life insurance we cancelled is cancelled, so that's all good.
Mostly yesterday I played with The Gimp ... read a bit more of the book
marble lent me, so messed around with overlays & multiplying the colour and stuff like that. J pointed me at a blog entry about making usable desktop wallpapers, which gave me some ideas about making icon texture sets, though I'm still not entirely sure why people use them (even though I grabbed some that Rilli was offering coz they look nice, and will try and think of something to do with them). I tend to make backgrounds/add text etc for icons on the fly, rather than use a pre-made texture or a brush for the text/border/whatnot. But then, other people win icon contests, so maybe there's a reason for this ;) I did use one of the textures I made for an icon that I might enter in the 
travel_icontest competition (said icon also uses stuff that I learnt from the book, too), but I'd've made it up for the icon itself if I'd not done a dozen in advance.
Started thinking about templates for Christmas cards too - need to cost it out and see if it's financially worthwhile (not gonna spend the time on it if it's also more expensive, I'd only end up resenting it I think). But it's easy to do outline text (put your text on, hit the 'make path from text' button, delete the text, then stroke path with a pixel width brush and hey presto! outline), so then I'd just need 50 or 60 on white card, and colour them in & add decor. It does look awfully small on A5 (folded in half), so maybe I need to think about A4 - I used to do cards on A5 non-folded (many many years ago), but they don't stand up very well. I should poke around for large decorative fonts - I know what I want it to look like, though I can't articulate it very well, the feel is half-uncial (I think, ack, I've forgotten my calligraphy names) and big fat capital letters. The two I have that have some of the right feel for me are Carolingia Bigfoot and Cry Uncial, though neither is quite what I have inside my head. Need to cost this first, before I get too carried away ;)
Post this morning included letters saying that the life insurance we cancelled is cancelled, so that's all good.
Mostly yesterday I played with The Gimp ... read a bit more of the book
marble lent me, so messed around with overlays & multiplying the colour and stuff like that. J pointed me at a blog entry about making usable desktop wallpapers, which gave me some ideas about making icon texture sets, though I'm still not entirely sure why people use them (even though I grabbed some that Rilli was offering coz they look nice, and will try and think of something to do with them). I tend to make backgrounds/add text etc for icons on the fly, rather than use a pre-made texture or a brush for the text/border/whatnot. But then, other people win icon contests, so maybe there's a reason for this ;) I did use one of the textures I made for an icon that I might enter in the travel_icontest competition (said icon also uses stuff that I learnt from the book, too), but I'd've made it up for the icon itself if I'd not done a dozen in advance.Started thinking about templates for Christmas cards too - need to cost it out and see if it's financially worthwhile (not gonna spend the time on it if it's also more expensive, I'd only end up resenting it I think). But it's easy to do outline text (put your text on, hit the 'make path from text' button, delete the text, then stroke path with a pixel width brush and hey presto! outline), so then I'd just need 50 or 60 on white card, and colour them in & add decor. It does look awfully small on A5 (folded in half), so maybe I need to think about A4 - I used to do cards on A5 non-folded (many many years ago), but they don't stand up very well. I should poke around for large decorative fonts - I know what I want it to look like, though I can't articulate it very well, the feel is half-uncial (I think, ack, I've forgotten my calligraphy names) and big fat capital letters. The two I have that have some of the right feel for me are Carolingia Bigfoot and Cry Uncial, though neither is quite what I have inside my head. Need to cost this first, before I get too carried away ;)
aggravated