HAPPY AUGUST + FRIDAY FREEBIE!

Welcome to August already! Can you believe how fast summers always seem to fly by?! It seems that my grandchildren just got out of school, but they are registering now to return. I will have two in the first grade, a boy and a girl; and my eldest will be in the fourth grade. My, my, growing up so fast! We've managed to cram in lots of activity over the summer, and I know when they hit their beds at night, they sleep well! Haha!

Right now our temperatures here in the coastal south are extremely high along with unbearable humidity, the normal for July and August. We've just begun to get some rains in the last week that are enough to drench the ground. It's been dry all year until now, and like a lot of places, we have our share of wild fires popping up all around us. The rain is welcome!

Our highways are still overflowing with tourists and will be until after Labor Day. They, too, are a welcome sight; but it makes just getting to the grocery store and back an all-day affair. It's bumper to bumper out there, and the lines are long everywhere. You can forget getting ice cream from the store to home between the long delays and the heat. Rather we opt to pick up melons and fruits of any kind that we can cut and cool quickly. I must say I've had the good fortune to pick some great melons this season. Yumo!

A highlight of the coming weekend in our area will be the annual Carolina Classic Arts & Crafts Show held in one of our convention centers. It's a huge juried show, so all the items are top-notch. It's a pleasure to simply sight-see the whole thing and enjoy the specialty foods along the journey. It's a 3-day event, and this year they are issuing a free return ticket with admission so one can shop all three days. Good idea given the state of the economy.

I have for you today a fun FREEBIE which you may find useful over and over again. I was browsing Tiffany Tillman's blog and happened across a video link which I decided to go watch. The tutorial taught how to make a dotted circle or text circle in PSE. Wow, Tiffany is an excellent instructor with a beautiful crisp clear voice! I've been playing around in my program since the middle of 2008 or so, had fleetingly wondered about this technique, but had just not stopped long enough to get "into" the idea and pursue the method. Afterall, there is so much to learn, use and do that one could potentially stay busy in that program forever! Haha! Anyway, I was inspired after the tutorial to play, and I made some word art stickers type thingys. I decided to give you the basic black png versions as they will serve more as a template. You can resize them, recolor them, clip papers to them, add shadows, add backgrounds, and well, you get the idea. Go crazy creative! I made 36 today and will divide them into three sets of 12 for you to pick up here. I'm including a blank one so you can add you own text to it in your very most favorite font! These are all 300 dpi. Here's a look at the preview . . .

DOWNLOAD HERE

If you like this type of element, leave me some love to inspire me into more creativity.

I tried to clean up the out-of-date links on my side bar, and I added my DD's grooming site.  She's been super busy with vacationers bringing in dogs to board while they are here at the beach.  Seems more folks prefer to bring their pets on vacation and board them close to their hotels than to leave them behind at home.  They come to visit their pets and take them out for outings, then return them for overnight when they have to be in hotels that don't allow the pets. 

Hope all is well where you are and that you're managing to stay cool.  I'll be back soon with more digital fun for you, so do stop back by.  Meantime, Happy Scrapping!

TOOTLES!