gimp girl tutorial: rounded photo corners

Happy Thursday, lovely Marigoldlets! 

Here's a simple way to add vintage flair to your photos: round the corners.

Takes less than 30 seconds, once you get the gist.

Ready, go.

{new to gimp? it's like photoshop, only free. start here and here.}

First, open an image using Gimp.

Next, Select > Rounded Rectangle.

The Rounded Rectangle dialogue box will appear.

You can play with the radius percentage {how curvy your curve will be}. 

I set mine to 25%.

After hitting OK, you'll notice that part of your image {the larger part} is selected.

We want to get rid of those tiny triangles in the corners, so we'll invert the selection.

So, Select > Invert.

Edit > Clear and say goodbye to those triangles.

Now Select > None...

...now you're ready to add some deco tape and call it a day.

{you know the only reason I do this is to subject you to otherwise irrelevant but crazy cute pictures of my offspring... right?}

digital freebie: four chalkboard backgrounds

I love chalkboards.

They are huge right now, and they are an easy way to add vintage sass to whatever you're working on.

And guess what! I just learned how to make chalkboard-ish digital papers.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Have at it, my friends. 

4 low-res 1000x1000 chalkboards.

Terms of use are the usual: personal and small business use ok, not to be used in any icky material.

{I'm telling you, I shoulda been a lawyer.}

Is anyone interested in a tutorial for this? Lemme know.

Have fun chalking it up {hee hee},

and may your Halloween weekend be cavity-inducing.

design inspiration: michelle armas

I loved my old blog design, but felt like it was time for a change.

{said in wall-e voice} ta-daa!

Designing my own blog has been a goal for a long time, and I am really happy with how it turned out! Simple, clean, and colorful. The color inspiration came from Michelle Armas' delicious painting, Rosalia, which it appears is no longer available.

{Am I wrong? Somebody please tell me I'm wrong!}

I used the Gimp color picker tool to pick a large spectrum of colors from the painting, then used those colors for the text in the new header. This palette makes me drool a little...as much as I like my new blog design, I don't think I'm done with these colors yet!

Color picking in Gimp is easy-peasy and is a great way to translate color ideas into actual designs. It also means you don't have to blindly try to select the perfect colors for your project. You could use this method for Christmas cards, scrapbooking pages, blog/Etsy designs... the list goes on. 

Any color schemes you've been drooling over lately? My paint chip sample collection is accumulating + I'm always on the lookout for new ones...

gimp girl tutorial: adding deco tape to photos for your blog

{Pssst! I'm giving away this tasty stack of washi later this week!}

Are you ready to get your Gimp on?? I sure hope so.
'Cause today we're gonna learn how to apply digital deco tape to an image using the program Gimp. 

Gimp is a FREE program that's comparable to Photoshop (we don'need no steenking photoshop!), and you can download it here for PC or here for Mac.

I have yet to find a really great comprehensive source of Gimp tutorials, but so far I've been able to figure most stuff out with Google + a whole lot of trial and error. The more I experiment with the program and with its different tools, the more proficient I feel.
I think that the best way to learn is to DO, so let's dive in & get DOING!

In the course of this tutorial, you'll learn how to:

Use the rectangle select tool

Copy + paste

Work with layers

Scale images

Rotate images
Autocrop images

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Let's rock it.

To get going, open Gimp.

See the very tippy top of the screen, where it has the Apple menu and X11 and Applications and everything? Ignore that.
You'll only use the menu you see at the top of the blank gray box.

Next, we'll open the main image you want to work with.

Go to File > Open, 

find the photo you want to work with {in my case, the washi pic}, and open that bad boy up.

Here's what we have so far.

Now we'll whip out the washi. A karate chop with your non-mouse hand is encouraged but not required.

Go to File > Open,
find your fave deco tape file (I strongly recommend the freebies at Pugly Pixel; that's what I use 99% of the time), and open.

Time to select the piece of tape you want to use.

In the Toolbox at the left of the screen, double-click on the rectangle select tool.
Move to your deco tape window and click + hold + drag the mouse over the piece of tape you like best.

Now we'll copy and paste that piece of tape into your main image.

In the deco tape window, go to Edit > Copy.
In the main image (in my case, the deco tape photo), go to Edit > Paste as > New Layer.
Yay!

Notice a few things:
The deco tape is huge as compared to the photo. We'll resize that in a sec.
See the Layers window in the upper left hand corner? We've got 2 layers right now: the tape and the photo.
Each layer can be edited and manipulated separately. If I mess around with one layer, it won't affect the other layer(s).
More on that another time.

Time to resize the tape.
You can close the deco tape file now if you wanna.
Look at the Layers window and make sure the tape layer is selected.
{If you want to resize the photo instead, knock yourself out; just select the layer with the photo in it.}

In the Toolbox, double-click on the scale image tool.
As you hold down the control key, click + hold + drag the mouse until the tape is the size you want it.
Holding down the control key preserves the length/width ratio of the image.
As you do this, a Scale window will pop up (mine is at the bottom of the screen).
Hit return OR click Scale in the Scale window.
See? You've got options.

Almost there!
Let's rotate the tape.
I mean, of course you can leave it as it is. Or you can get sexy with it. Your call.

In the Toolbox, double-click on the rotate image tool.

Click + hold + drag the mouse until the tape looks nice to you.

As you do this, a Rotate window will pop up (mine is at the bottom of the screen).

Hit return OR click Rotate in the Rotate window.

Now we'll fit the canvas to our layers. 

See how my deco tape looks like it's been cut off at the top?

No bueno. To fix it, go to Image > Fit Canvas to Layers. 

Poof! It fits.

Now we'll prepare the image for posting on the web. This is easy.

To flatten the image (i.e. convert it from an image with layers to just an image, no layers), go to Image > Flatten Image.
Now autocrop the image to get rid of any unnecessary margins.

Go to Image > Autocrop Image.

Ahh, pretty.

This is optional, but I like to do it -- let's scale the entire image to an optimum size for your blog.

Go to Image > Scale Image.

Enter your desired pixel width, press the tab key, and hit Scale.

For this step, it's handy to know how wide your main blog column is {the place where your posts go}. Mine is fairly wide at 850px.
Depending on the effect I'm going for, I scale my images to between 600-800px wide.

DONE!

Lastly, save your image. If you don't add a file type to the end of the file name, Gimp will save the file as an .xcf file, which means that when you open it again later, it will open up as a Gimp file with all your layers preserved and everything. 

If you want your image to be a .jpg file so that you can upload it to your blog, just type .jpg at the end of the file name.

I usually save 2 copies of my images -- one as a .xcf and one as a .jpg.

After you hit Save, some more dialogue boxes will pop up. 

First one: hit Export.

Second one: slide the ticker to 100 and hit Save.

YOU DID IT!!

Now go slap some deco tape on all your fave photos.

Let me know if you end up using this -- I would really really love to see what you come up with!

I know it looks like a long tutorial, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to deco-tape your pics in 3 minutes flat. For serious.

We've got lots more to learn, so get practicing {cracks the whip}.
Let me know if you think of something you'd like to learn! I don't know everything (ha), but I'm always looking for ideas.

*kissy kissy!!*