Latter-day Village Square

We have a new friend in our Club! Bunster Bunny! The February Seasonal Collection in the Village Download Depot Club is all about Bunster! Illustrated by Dustin Pike, Bunster comes hopping right off the screen with his adorable cuddli-ness. Dustin has been creating these delightful whimsical clip-art characters for many years, and we are excited to introduce some new pals here at LDV.

I had a lot of fun designing some special projects and scrapbook papers and borders for this collection. The artwork is so cute and colorful, I found I couldn’t sleep at night just itching to hit my computer and photos-hop Bunster into action. I admit - I came up with the name Bunster. Along with his feminine counterpart - Bet.

Last Thursday I had some time on my hands while waiting for my husband to have some medical work done, which required me to be the driver. So I moseyed on over to Foothill Village near the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City. There is an educational toy store there - I love those places! It made me want to be a kid all over again. They had some fun little activity books, and I picked one up as inspiration for doing a Bunster Bunny Activity Book. That is one of the best things about this collection. Dustin sent me line art drawings that are perfect for coloring pages and activity books so the kids can do the coloring themselves!

This is a great collection for teachers, parents and grandparents - as well as anyone who enjoys whimsical art!

~Debra

The day after I learned that President Hinckley had died, I wrote to Scott Jarrard to request that he do a new coloring page for Thomas S. Monson.  Scott has illustrated our Prophets of the Restoration FHE/Activity Book with fabulous coloring pages for each prophet.  Scott had already thought of it!  He got busy researching for a story - and has drawn a beautiful coloring page to a classic Thomas S. Monson story - it has been added to our Prophets of the Restoration Activity Book, available for instant download in our store.

I also created a page for additional information about Thomas S. Monson for the book.  In looking for articles about and by him, again and again I noted that a strong theme of love, charity and service ran through his life and work.  I have linked to many online resources about President Monson, including his own website.

It will be a wonderful experience getting to know him better, as we always do, when there is a new prophet.

~Debra

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

Ask and ye shall receive. Timing is, however, important. This is the time of year, or we are just getting to the end of the time of year when the bulk of our seminary subscriptions renew. So, feeling generous, Tim asked if I wanted any new equipment. I thought on it, and saw an ad on my Photoshop User’s magazine for a Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet. I’d been thinking about tablets and had no idea what they cost or which ones were good etc. So I got on their website and read up on this nifty device. After reading third party reviews, I determined this was the industry standard for my needs as a digital artist. So I told Tim and he was happy to oblige me. Two weeks later, a-hem, my tablet arrived from Amazon.com.

The font I designed this month for VDD Club is my first tablet project! I got the 6×8 tablet. The tablet plugs into my computer and with the pen they provide, I can draw on the tablet and it shows up on my monitor. It is a lot easier than using a mouse to draw with. And you can get special effects not possible with a mouse - it is pressure sensitive, and so when I press harder, the brush stroke is wider or darker. I am just learning how to use it, and this font is my first project! It came with some free software. I usually use Adobe Photoshop, but Corel Painter Essentials has some neat effects that Photoshop doesn’t have, and that is what I used to do the DWHScript Font.

Corel Painter Essentials is a beginner version of the more robust professional Corel Painter X. It comes with a large selection of media types - or pen/brush categories, and then within each brush category are several variants. I chose Art Pen Brushes as my brush category and Grainy Edge Calligraphy as my brush variant. Then I started writing my letters on the tablet with the pen it comes with. It was so easy! And if I made a mistake, guess what . . . on that same pen, on the other end is . . . lo and behold . . . an eraser! It works just like a real pen eraser, only better because it leaves behind no marks at all. I still feel more comfy with Photoshop so I saved the file as a jpg and opened it in Photoshop to isolate each letter as a separate file. Then I imported each character into my Font Creator software - had to rotate some letters a bit, sized and spaced them just right and saved and installed my new font! Then I made a sample page and uploaded everything to the website for Club members to download.

Anyway, using my new toy was fun and easy and I’m just getting started.

I’ll let you know how it goes from here.  Oh yeah, about my tablet, lucky for me I have a deep drawer where my keyboard and mouse reside, and the tablet rests either in front of or behind the keyboard just fine, without taking up extra space on my desk.  Otherwise I’d have to put it somewhere else when I wasn’t using it.

Debra

I’ve had a blast designing and preparing the designs of our talented artists for new digital scrapbook collections in our Village Download Depot. I have something to admit - I have little experience making scrapbooks the way most people do. I have a very old fashioned scrapbook from high school, and long before the scrapbook craze began, I made scrapbooks for both my babies (now 27 and 23) and for their missions. But I haven’t bought scrapbook paper or embellishments etc to do it. I decorated them by hand or designed them on my computer myself.

Over the years I have noticed the scrapbook section of the local craft stores I frequent getting larger and larger - taking up more and more floor space. One store has devoted well over 50% of their store to scrapbooking products. It blows my mind.

But right here in the heart of the seedbed for this international passion for scrapbooking, where it all started - along the Wasatch Front - you can hardly find any LDS-themed scrapbook paper or embellishments/tools anymore. The general market is so immense, our little LDS-niche is hardly worth sneezing at - even for scrapbook companies I drive past along I-15, owned and operated by latter-day saints who once catered to their LDS customers.

Well, we all have birthdays and holidays and vacations and other memorable occasions we want to scrap like the general population - but what about those uniquely LDS aspects of our lives that we also want to make a permanent and beautiful record of?

That’s where LDV steps in. We have a growing array of LDS-themed scrapbook products, along with the traditional general/seasonal themes, and we can offer it because our products are digital! We leave the printing, if you even decide to print - to you! That allows us to design to our hearts’ content without worrying if we can sell 10,000 of any design. Printing and manufacturing prices go down with volume - so most companies have to pick and choose what products they will feature with that high-volume requirement.

Problem - not everyone knows how to use digital images to make beautiful scrapbooks! I do my designing with Adobe Photoshop - oh what cool things I can do with that robust program! But average Josephine scrapbook enthusiast isn’t going to pay the high ticket price for that high-end professional software, nor have the time to learn how to use it.

Well - I decided to test some affordable digital scrapbook software out. I wanted to see if it was easy to use, could do cool stuff, and if I could import images from our Village Download Depot collections into a scrapbook page using it. I read reviews about various products - and it was very hard to tell if they allow you to import images from outside their programs - so there was nothing to do but buy a package that sounded good and try it. I picked Nova Development’s Art Explosion Scrapbook Factory Deluxe Version 3.0. It got the highest ratings in the reviews I read and only cost $29.95 direct from the manufacturer (you might find it cheaper elsewhere).

It arrived in a timely fashion and installed easily onto my computer. They have good documentation to step you through the process. It comes with tons of templates and clipart for unlimited designs, and has easy to use tools that do really nice things you would need scrapbook software to do. But the true test for me was, of course, could I use my own Village Download Depot images and Fonts to create scrapbook pages with it?

WAHOO! YES! It worked - and was so easy! With any project open in the editing window, click on the INSERT menu option and choose GRAPHIC then FROM FILE. You then find the image you want to insert from your DownloadDepot folders and viola! It is inserted and can be edited as needed! Now, granted, I am used to Photoshop - so the ease of use of this software seemed dreamy to me - but I really believe anyone could use this to create lovely digital scrapbook pages, import our great LDS scrapbook elements into it - edit them freely so they are just the right size, shape, direction etc - and print out beautiful pages, or simply save them in a form anyone can view them and email them to your family and friends.

As much as most people spend on their scrapbook supplies, this software is a small price to pay for a great tool.

Since most people have home printers that only print on 8.5×11″ - Scrapbook Factory templates are for that size paper - but they also allow you to select 12×12 layouts - and if you have a wide format printer, you can print those yourself, or send the files to a copy center that does wide format printing, or use an online service that will print your 12×12 pages and ship them to you. I am researching printers, scrapbook papers for inkjet printers and scrapbook printing services and will write about those more in a future post.

Debra

Courtney White has designed a wonderful photographic art collection for General Conference that is currently the downloadable collection in the Village Download Depot Club! One of the funnest parts of the collection are the BINGO cards she designed! You will be able to use this collection again and again, at home or in the classroom.

I have been thrilled with Courtney’s work for LDV - and so have our visitors - her instant download collections are our very most popular products! I have come to expect great things from Courtney. But what I didn’t know was that she is not the only talented artist in her home! Courtney enlisted the help of her talented husband, Del, to design symbols she could use on a children’s pictoral BINGO game. She told me about it, and I waited to see how it would turn out.

I was once again thrilled! Del is definitely a gifted artist as well. I am sure you will find that these BINGO boards will become a great family tradition twice each year as you gather your family together to watch/listen to General Conference. So take a little extra time and effort to print them out on heavy cardstock and laminate them. I don’t have a laminating machine, so I just buy crystal clear self adhering laminating sheets at the office supply store to protect printed things I want to last. But you can also go to your local copy center where they often do inexpensive laminating.

SEE THE ENTIRE COLLECTION

Debra

You have to see it - all scouting leaders will love this Boy Scout Cub Scout clipart / scrapbook collection by Nicole Whitehead - now featured in the Village Download Depot Club. Perhaps my favorite aspect of this collection is the character set - you know the red number patches sewn on uniforms for troop identification - Nicole has created a set of number patches AND alphabet patches for this collection that you can use for any scout title and achieve instant recognition that it is a Boy Scout or Cub Scout event/project. The entire collection is just superb. Come see it! The patches character set is included in the collection, AND an additional character set by Nicole - Twig Font - is one of our wonderful July fonts.

We started putting one Village Download Depot Club collection up at a time in June - so people could get one collection when they do a free one week trial - and we switched from the Girl’s Camp Collection to the Family Reunion Collection on Friday.

Do you have a reunion planned or have you got photos from a recent reunion to scrap? This is a great lds clipart collection for either purpose! This is a collection I designed myself. I had some really pretty fabric that I thought would make a nice quilt like project, and I decided to use it for the collection. This was a fun project and I learned some new techniques while doing it. I hope you will find many uses for these designs. Club members should download this now - and if you are not a Club Member - you can join today! The font for this collection is a character set with the letters made out of the fabric - very fun!