The Sprague Lab

A bunch of random thoughts tonight, getting ready for PSF tomorrow! Yeah! :D I had a good, productive work day, and a great late afternoon/evening with the fam. Can’t ask for more than that. I had a bit of a breakthrough today, and I’m getting closer to being able to announce the start of the class I’ll be offering at jessicasprague.com. Wee!

Other random thoughts. 

It Kit Studio Premiere 

Here are the two layouts I created for the BRAND NEW June/July kit from IT KIT Studio. Kelly Lautenbach has done a GREAT job of putting together this kit in all my favorite scrappy colors: green, blue, pink, brown. Delish.

Here’s the first one:

 
Click for Larger

Believe it or not, the only digital part of this entire layout was editing the photos and printing the journaling strips. Whoa. That’s about as lo-tech as you get, right there. :) It was GREAT fun busting out my circle cutter, my scissors for cutting all the cute flowers out, rub-ons and ribbons and general adhesivey goodness. :)

Here’s the 2nd one:

Click for LargerI adore this photo of Rowen and my FIL. Can you believe this was taken at Christmastime? Crazy. The patterns in this kit are so awesome. This huge floral one was great. Another lo-tech layout, although I did do the curving text in Photoshop before printing onto white cardstock.

The new kit is up at It Kit Studio.

(And it looks like it’s actually sold out… but there’s a waitlist! :))

Funny 

We had Chinese takeout for dinner.  

I opened my fortune cookie and read it:

First of all, I think that taking a picture of my fortune makes me a camera nerd. But mine had not one, but TWO smiley faces on it! And two periods, too, which has to mean something. And it’s pretty gratifying to know that I’m heading in the right direction. Nothing like a feel-good fortune to cap off the day, right?

So Rowen opens her fortune cookie.

She she says, reading off of the fortune cookie paper (and this is a quote because I ran over to the laptop and typed it - priceless):

“Hi Rowen. I love you. And I love Daddy, and Mama. And I love to watch shows. And I love to eat chicken nuggets (her word for sweet and sour chicken), and I love to eat this cookie, right here.”

*CRUNCH*

Ah, I thought my heart would explode. That could have been from the aforementioned sweet and sour chicken. But I think it was partly that I’m consistenly amazed and delighted and charmed by my little girl.

Pink Toenails

She also asked me to paint her toenails tonight. I don’t usually paint mine, so I have no idea where she got the idea that people do this. Like I don’t have an idea where she gets MOST of the stuff she totally busts out with. See above.

New Hotness

I promised a pic of the new laptop.

It’s a beautiful thing. :) I can’t wait to carry this little 6-pounder on trips, instead of my old and busted lappy we’ve had for .. man.. 4 years. And since computer years are like dog years, but doubled, that is one old laptop. 

The only thing left now is getting all the software and fonts, Firefox tabs and quick links, all set up just so. 

Last of the Q+A’s 

I also wanted to address a few more questions that came in:

From Dierdre: What kits, papers, brushes, fonts do you find yourself returning to over and over?

 Ah. This is a really, really good question. :D

This is, in fact, the topic of a whole other post, ok? I have my personal favorite stores, my favorite kits because I find them versatile and almost fail-safe in texture, color, etc. More on which ones they are later. :D

From Amy: If your new laptop doesn’t need much memory, do you store your photos, digi elements, etc. on external hard drives instead?

Well, I said that it didn’t need much hard drive space (memory is a whole other issue - the more of that, the better), and that’s right. We have a wireless network, and have just added computer #6 to it (my new laptop). Two of those machines are file servers, then there’s Jared’s main computer, my main computer, the OLD laptop, and the NEW laptop. Whew. But we discovered way early in our network marriage that we really needed a central place for all of our files and work. This makes it MUCH easier when it comes time to upgrade machines, since we never store anything locally, and it also makes backups much easier, since we know the folders we are always saving stuff to. And let’s not forget about being able to find things after you save them somewhere. :D

Something very similar can be accomplished with a single external hard drive, though. Or a EHD with CD-ROM backups of your important data, photos, digi supplies, and so on. Or a EHD with a backup service like Carbonite, which will let you store all your stuff in an offsite location should anything happen to your home.

Jane asked: I can’t find any instructions for #18. Are they posted somewhere other than your blog?

Photoshop Friday #18 (2007) was last week’s PSF - the video instructions are posted over at the CK Web site. Check out this post for more info. As I do more of the “sharing” of resources with CK Online, we’ll have to come up with a system (maybe it’s just the PSF index?) of cataloging what is where, so it’s easy to find. I don’t necessarily want to re-post tutorials that will be over there, but I want them to be easy to find. Any suggestions here?

A couple of people have asked this: Why not just use PSE Organizer to organize digi supplies?

In my own scrapbook work I don’t use PSE. I mean, I use it all the time to create tutorials, but I haven’t relied on the PSE organizer for the management of supplies and photos, since I spend so much time in PSCS2. I found the ACDSee Photo Manager very easy to use, super fast, and intuitive. I also, as was mentioned, love the idea of being able to separate photos from supplies. I never imported my photos into ACDSee, and only use it for managing digi supplies.

I’ll announce the RAK winners in the PSF email that will go out tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I’ll be hosting Photoshop Friday Live tomorrow night, at DesignerDigitals. It’ll be a quick technique tomorrow, but one I use all the time. I’m looking forward to sharing it!

-J