CU OK Shiny Strings

Today’s freebie is a set of shiny string pieces. Next up are some Christmas thumbprint characters (Hopefully tomorrow night, we’ll see!)

Download the CU OK Shiny String Set HERE

or HERE

CU OK Holiday Bows

Today’s freebie is a set of ribbons and bows with a Holiday flair.

Download the CU OK Holiday Bows HERE

or HERE

CU OK Torn Photo Corners

I had suggestions from an anonymous reader to offer some torn items and I thought that some torn photo corners would be useful and fun. There are 12 individual .png corners in this set for you to recolor and mix and match on your layouts.

Download the CU OK Torn Photo Corners HERE

or HERE

CU OK Moose Template

Today’s freebie was suggested by @MrsMandaK (the designer behind Nibbles Skribbles) on Twitter. It’s a little Moose layered template in .psd and individual .pngs files. For the preview I put the lights on his antlers from my Christmas Doodles freebie. He is kinda similar to the Reindeer Template I offered last year. Thanks everyone for the great suggestions on some ideas for new freebies, keep them coming!

Download the CU OK Moose Template HERE

or HERE

CU OK Folded and Creased Textured Overlays

Today’s freebie is a set of 4 overlays made from textured cardstock that I folded, creased, sanded, and abused. I then scanned and extracted them. They are saved as png files to preserve the transparency around the rough edges. I mentioned on Twitter that I’ve seemed to have lost my mojo. I’m having a hard time coming up with ideas for new freebies. I am very open to suggestions!!  Thanks!

 

Download the CU OK Creased and Folded Overlay set HERE

or HERE

One Week With my HTC Hero Android Phone!

I’m going a different direction for this post because I wanted to share my thoughts on my newest toy. I’m “one of those people” who can’t live without my cell phone. Not that I really make or receive that many phone calls but I do text, tweet, and surf the web from my phone.  I became eligible for a phone upgrade this month and have been with Sprint for years. I have had a Samsung Instinct for the past year and I have been very happy with it. However I was not very happy with the limited number of apps available for it.  I researched for a month before narrowing it down to the Palm Pre and the HTC Hero. In the end I went with the Hero which is an Android based phone developed by Google. I mean who’s better than Google? Ok, maybe the guys who put the fruit on their phones but that was not an option with Sprint. You can read about the features of the Hero online but I thought I would list my favorite apps that I’ve downloaded in the past week.

The apps are downloaded from the Android Market right on your phone. You can search the market for the apps you want and read reviews about them before downloading. You set up your account to withdraw funds using Google Checkout for the paid apps, but there are TONS of free apps available. There is an online version of the Android Market that you can browse apps on your PC but there is no way to search it by name, etc.

Alternately, you can browse apps and search the Android Market from your PC via the AndroLib site. The coolest thing about this site is that each app has a QR code associated with it. You can use a barcode scanning app (my favorite is ixMAT Scanner (Free)) and scan the code with your Android phone. The code links up to the app on the Android Market and will connect you to that app in the Market so you can download it on your phone. You can also use the scanner app to scan regular UPC codes. If the code is found you can follow a link which will take you to Google search for that product.

Email: When you first set up your phone you are required to associate a gmail account with it. I have two Gmail accounts, two AOL accounts, a Comcast account, and a Yahoo account. I was frustrated that I could not “push” my other email accounts on the Hero. There is a nifty program called Seven (not in the market – download from site - free) that is in Beta right now that will allow you to set up all your email accounts and it will notify you when you receive a new email on any of the accounts. It’s still a little buggy but for right now is the only way to push my web based email accounts and I have found it invaluable. Don’t quote me but I’m pretty sure that Seven is the same program that came with my Instinct. It looks the same anyway.

Web Brower: With my old phone I could not set a different default web browser so each link I clicked would open up the Instinct’s (very crappy) browser. I much preferred Opera Mini on my Instinct and used it almost exclusively but could not set it as the default browser. Opera Mini is also available for Android and I’ve got it on my Home page but there are several other free browsers available.  I actually prefer the Dolphin Browser (FREE). What is very cool about this browser is you can set up “gestures”. This means that you can just “draw” a symbol with your fingertip and the browser will execute whatever command is associated with that gesture. Want to bookmark a page? Just draw an M on the screen and it is saved to your bookmarks! Dolphin also has tabbed browsing and the ability to sync Google Bookmarks and RSS Feeds from your Google account. I’ve been very impressed with Dolphin so far and have made it my default web browser.

Twitter: The Hero comes packaged with Peep, which is not a bad little Twitter app. I downloaded Twitroid (Free but a Pro version is also available to purchase) and have not had much chance to play with all of the features yet. Most of my tweets so far have been sent via SMS, which leads me to my next favorite app..

SMS: My favorite SMS app is Handcent SMS.  Wow, this is cool! There are so many features to this app but the one I love is the speak SMS function. Press the little microphone and you can speak into the phone to compose your text message. Now I don’t condone texting while driving. (It’s VERY Dangerous and illegal in many states!)  But I’ve found this pretty handy while I’m curling my hair or doing makeup at home and only have one hand available.

Task Manager: There are a bunch of great free and paid Task Managers in the market used to kill background programs and free up memory. I paid .99 for Advanced Task Manager and have found it quite useful. You can choose from your active programs a list you want to “exclude” from killing. Then open up the app and shake your phone to kill all the programs not on the exclude list.

File Manager (free) – Astro file manager allows you to see/move/delete files on your SD card.  You can also backup your free apps on the SD card, which is handy if you need to reset your phone.

Backup: I use Skydeck Phone Backup (Free). It syncs all of your contacts and saves your call history and SMS messages online so you can access them from any pc. You can also add/edit your contacts from the site on your PC which is much easier than using the phone’s tiny keyboard.

Radio: Pandora(Free). Pandora Rocks! I had it on my Instinct and am thrilled it works on Android also. The awesome app Shazam (free) is also available for Android, which will tell you what song is playing on the radio or TV and provide a link to purchase and download the song on your phone!

Ringtones: Ringdroid (free) is the coolest little app of all so far! You can edit any song you have stored on your SD card and create a ringtone from it. Just drag the sliders to select the portion of the song you want to be a ringtone and it will save as a ringtone and allow you to assign it to a contact or make it the default ringtone.

Speaking of personalization, there are a number of wallpaper library apps you can download that are searchable and have thousands of different wallpapers. I created my own for my Hero in Photoshop but have downloaded AndroLib Wallpapers and Backgrounds (both free) and have used several of the photos to assign to individual contacts for those I don’t have pictures of.

Miscellaneous apps: Other apps that I have downloaded or purchased but haven’t had the time to really play with yet:

Camera Zoom FX (about $2.00) – customize your photos and take pics with your camera using special effects. After  you pay for the program there are a lot of different free add-on packs of frames, effects, etc. you can download from the market.

Cardio Trainer (free) – if I ever decide to start running again I will definitely get some use from this app. It tracks your distance, calories, history, etc. and you can view your workouts on your pc.

Widgets – I have found a number of useful widgets that I’ve placed on my home screen:

Pure Calendar (About $2.00) syncs with your google calendar and displays your schedule. Several different formats/sizes of calendars to choose from. My Pure Calendar widget replaces my google calendar widget and I’ve reserved a whole screen for it.

Battery Widget (free) – Place this little widget on your home screen and it displays in percentage exactly how much battery you have left. If you press the widget you will get a pop-up that lets you toggle off/on wifi, bluetooth, and GPS or will take you to the display settings screen which saves time because you don’t have to search through your settings to do this.

Well I’ve rambled too long but I haven’t mentioned the most useful (to me) app that comes packaged with the Hero – Google Voice Search. Start it up and speak into the phone.  The browser will start up with a list of google results from your search. You can then get directions with google maps, call the business you are looking for, purchase a product online, etc. The one thing I miss that I had with my Instinct is LiveSearch though. Similar to Google Voice Search, Live Search would give you an option to give you turn by turn directions with Telenav. Telenav is included with the Hero but it is not accesible from Google Voice Search (you must start it separately – an extra step but not a huge pain).

Anyway, if there are some apps that I have missed (I’m still overwhelmed by the huge number of apps in the market), please feel free to comment with your favorites. So far I’ve been thrilled with my new purchase and love my Android!

CU OK Christmas Doodle Font, .csh and PNGS

Today’s freebie is a set of 26 Christmas doodles that are in True Type font, Photoshop .csh and png form.  The font is A-Z (caps).

Download the Christmas Doodles Font, .csh and PNGS HERE

or HERE

CU OK Ribbon Flower Pieces and Bits

For today’s freebie I photographed a bunch of ribbons and some buttons that you can layer to make some ribbon flowers. Here’s some examples:

And Here’s the preview and download link (Yep, I misspelled Pieces – I do that every time!) Good thing I don’t get paid to spell.

Download the Flower Pieces and Bits HERE

or HERE

CU OK Misc. Girly Ribbons

Today’s freebie are some ribbon flowers and a couple of grey scale ruffles.  The ruffles are 3600 pix wide.  All shadows for preview purpose only.

Download the CU OK Girly Ribbons HERE

or HERE

CU OK Real Ric Rac

Today’s feebie is a set of three different sized ric rac ribbons that I photographed and extracted. How they are on the preview is how they will look on a 3600 x 3600 page. All are grey pngs ready for you to recolor! I did have a question I think on 4shared from someone who did not know how to recolor. Hummie has a great written tutorial on her site in Course 1 (6G).

 Download the CU OK Ric Rac set HERE

or HERE

CU OK Scrunched Ribbons

For today’s freebie I found a spool of wired edge ribbon in my stash and scrunched several pieces up and photographed/extracted them. There are three that look like rosettes! Cool eh? All grey pngs ready for you to recolor!

Download the CU OK Scrunched Ribbons Here

or HERE

CU OK Date Wheel Brushes and .pngs

Today’s freebie is a set of date wheel brushes that you layer for your own unique look on your layouts. The wheel is BIG (about 2500 x 2500) but you can resize smaller.

Download the CU OK Date Wheel HERE

or HERE

CU OK Journal Doodles

Today’s freebie is a set of journal doodles that I drew and scanned into Photoshop and Illustrator.  They are in Photoshop .csh and individual pngs. 

Download the CU Doodle Journals .csh and pngs HERE

or HERE

CU OK Wood Tab Alpha

The other day I had the extreme luxury of going to Hobby Lobby all by myself and browse the goodies for a whole hour! Although I only design digital stuff, I find lots of inspiration shopping for the real “touchable” things at the craft stores. I ran across a set of these wooden letters in one of the aisles real cheap and plucked down the $1.99 so I could photograph and extract them for a digital alpha.  There’s A-Z and that’s it I’m afraid.  I would have liked to have numbers too but there weren’t any in the bag.

Download the CU OK Wood Tab Alpha HERE

or HERE

30 Second Tutorial and CU OK Ribbon Wraps!

I had an anonymous comment on the Charms post asking how to change the strings on the charms and if I could post a tutorial.  I’ve said it a million times but I’m just not a very good tutorial writer.  I try to leave the teaching to those who are so much better at it! So many times it is easier to do than to show someone how to do it.  Make sense? I’m certain there are a million tutorials that show the same thing but you won’t find one much quicker than this one! I say quick but this thing took about an hour to record and edit. That’s another reason I get frustrated with tutorials, they are very time consuming.  I have so much respect for Hummie and Spencer who consistently provide such fabulous tutorials for us! And I recorded this video in PSE7, which I rarely use but I think that more readers use PSE than the full-blown Photoshop. Again, it’s not pretty but it’s a quickie and there are no layer masks involved so make sure you are working with duplicates!

You can go to YouTube if you want to watch it in HQ. I also photographed and extracted some ribbon wraps that you can use to practice with! 5 ribbons that will go to the edge of your layouts and are ready for you to recolor. Enjoy!

Download the CU OK Ribbon Wraps HERE

or HERE

CU OK Military Snowman Layered Template

Today’s freebie was suggested (requested) by Nathalie over at KittenScraps.  She has a husband and a son who are serving their country and her husband is currently on tour, due back in December.  She asked for a snowman template that looked similar to an adorable Christmas ornament for a kit that she wanted to do.  I was happy to do it and I think he turned out pretty cute.  Nathalie has created a fabulous kit called Support Our Troops that will be free in her blog for the next few days! So when you are done downloading the template, be sure to head over to KittenScraps for her kit!

Download the CU OK Military Snowman Layered Template HERE

or HERE

CU OK Metal Charms

Yay! It’s the weekend! I worked all night and am meeting a friend for lunch so I decided to just stay up and nap later rather than sleep for 2 hours and get up.  I ran across these cute charms the other day and am planning on making bracelets for my girls with them.  Before I do that though I thought I would make a digital version of the charms for the blog!  I photographed and extracted them this morning instead of napping! There are 7 metal .png charms in the .zip.  For preview purposes I strung them on my Rubber Bands and Twine #1 and Twine #2 (Still available!).  Of course they would be adorable with a ribbon or nails, brads too!

Download the CU OK Metal Charm Set HERE

or HERE

CU OK Doodle Snowflakes

To be honest, I know there are a million snowflakes out there and I almost didn’t put these up for download.  I’m not real thrilled with how they turned out but there are a couple of cool flakes there.  Included in the .zip are 8 doodled flakes that I drew in Illustrator in .png files (6” ea) and in a .csh for Photoshop/PSE.

Download the CU OK Doodled Snowflake Set HERE

or HERE

CU OK Doodle Borders II

I am so happy that you all like the owl so much!  I have really missed making the templates because they really are fun to do.  I will have to think of some new ones to make very soon!  Today’s freebie is another set of Doodled Borders that are about 3600 x 3600 to place on the edge of your layouts or papers.  Set 1 is still available HERE

Download the CU OK Doodled Borders II HERE

or HERE

CU OK Kindergarten Owl Layered Template

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that my youngest started kindergarten this fall.  She is having a blast and comes home every day with a wonderful art project she made in school.  I’ve been eyeing these adorable construction paper owls that have been on the wall in the hallway of her school and couldn’t wait until she brought hers home so I could make a little template of it. She was excited when I told her I was going to “scrapbook” the owl because she is always looking for interesting textures, ribbons, etc. to “scrapbook.”  I think he turned out pretty cute but I’m partial to the original one that my kindergartener made! The owl I made last year is still available HERE.  In the .zip is a layered .psd and individual .png files.

Download the CU OK Kindergarten Owl Layered Template HERE

or HERE

CU OK PopTab Fasteners

Today’s freebie is inspired by an article in the Nov/Dec issue of Scrapbooks Etc. where they used everyday items to embellish paper scrap layouts.  I thought it was a very cool idea and photographed some pop tabs with a couple of bows and a nail that you can use as fasteners on your layouts.  The bows and tabs are on their own layer so you can recolor the bow without recoloring the tab. Cool eh? Included in the .zip are two layered .psd files and individual .pngs for those who cannot use the .psds. Also, there is a plain tab .png without a bow.  It would be very neat to put a “brad” on top of the nail wouldn’t it?  I hope you like them!

 

Download the CU OK PopTab Fasteners and Bows HERE

or HERE