I love the dollar store. It is so addictive to walk down the aisles and think - only a $1?!! WOW - I’ll take one of these and one of those - yadda yadda yadda. I saw some brightly colored kiddy clay the other day on one of my vigils at our local dollar store - and since I am the nursery leader, AND an artist, I dropped it in my cart, along with 35 OTHER inexpensive gotta-haves.
So late one night over the Thanksgiving holiday, I couldn’t sleep - VERY typical - and I came downstairs and my son was still awake. I saw that clay there and peeled open the package and started making little clay Christmas figures. He’s an artist too, so I said, - hey - why don’t you make one? So we rolled and squeezed to our hearts content, forming little clay buddies. I don’t have much luck with my digital camera, need to take a class, so instead, when I got one done, I’d lay it on my scanner. The first one, I made the mistake of closing the lid. SQUISH! After that I laid a Kleenex (or cheap knock-off facial tissue from Walmart) over my little pal, and a piece of white paper and did my scanning. Still they got a little squished, but, thanks to AMAZING Adobe Photoshop, my favorite friend, I unsquished the squished places, filled in the cracks, and then adjusted all the colors so our yellow and blue snowman came out white with black trim and an orange carrot nose.
OK - so now I’ve given away my secret - my clay figures ARE computer enhanced, I admit it.
I also wanted to JUMP FOR JOY - because with this Christmas Clay Collection, I’ve finally figured out how to make text follow a path around an object in Photoshop. I knew there HAD to be a way, but could never find the steps to make it happen. DUH - I felt motivated enough to actually use HELP - that curious menu item I almost wholly ignore in about every program I’ve ever owned. You know how most fathers REFUSE to stop and ask directions while traveling in an unfamiliar area - well, in as much as I so admired my dad, I guess I must have adopted that classic male characteristic - at least when it comes to software - anyway - the instructions were right there in Photoshop Help - easy peasy - and what fun I had creating a path around the snowman and writing the cute words to a cute song - I will definitely be using this new found tool again and again!
This collection is exclusive to the Club this month only - I won’t be adding it to the store later on. There are 25 items, which make it perfect for an advent calendar, and there are several nifty scrapbook papers included too.
I wonder what else I might find in the HELP section . . . hmmmm
Debra
