With my head slightly above water for a moment, I'm posting to say hello. :D I finally upgraded to 2.4.something and have used it a teeny bit, but haven't found any significant difference yet. It might make a difference though, that I use Linux for my operating system, as opposed to Windows, so it may look way different in Windows, I don't know.

Been mainly scrapping for therapy lately (LOL!) and haven't printed a thing (or finished a page!) in months, but I'm coming back little by little and you'll see me around regularly soon. And as my motto should be: you will learn (ie. tuts) as I learn. :D

And to answer the question posted in the comments, here is a page I found that explains the brightness-contrast tool. Haven't tried it yet, but I think I'm gonna keep the site bookmarked for future reference! :D

Happy Scrapping! ~Jen

I haven't fallen off the planet...

We're just discovering them... heeheehee. My 4 year old is so cute! My husband gets up earlier than me and lately even THEN the sky is a little dark. Well, the other morning, after I got up, my sweet little boy told me that Daddy had shown him a planet! It's just so cool to see him discover his world. Now he wants to go somewhere to see planets close up, you know, like we went to the air museum to see airplanes close up? LOL! What a hoot! On top of this great discovery, we started MOPS, AWANA and preschool in the last couple of weeks! Yikes! And a great class called Financial Peace University. Can you say "hectic?" Heehee! So, that said, I am STILL HERE... just a little quiet right now. That tut I promised you all has NOT been written yet... sorry. Hang in there with me. It will be worth the wait. And here's a big welcome to all the new people we have visiting! WELCOME!!!! :D Later, Jen

Be watching for a new tutorial!

I don't know what your favorite digi-scrapping website is. Frankly, I don't know what MY favorite digi-scrapping website is. But I know who sends out the coolest newsletter! It's ScrapGirls! They send out a newsletter about 3 times a week and it is LOADED with cool stuff! The CEO of the company writes a MUSE that is thought provoking, funny, serious, light-hearted or just plain entertaining. There is always lots of great inspiration in the form of layouts that customers have done. There's always a freebie. And there's TUTORIALS! Alas, none for the GIMP, but we all cope, don't we. ;) Oh, and did I mention? The newsletter is free, too! LOL!

Anyway, one thing I have tried to do is learn from the methods explained in the tutorials of other software (both SG tuts, and others'), and not the specific instructions themselves. This has proven fairly productive and has resulted in some of the GIMP tutorials here in my blog.

So, to make a long story even longer, I'm gearin' up to give you all a really cool tutorial. But in the mean time, sign up for the ScrapGirls newsletter--I highly recommend it!

A quick backtrack...

I took some time last night and this morning to review what I've blogged about, and what you all have commented about, to see what I might have missed and make sure I don't double post! LOL!

Well, I ran across this comment and wanted to draw attention to it for a minute. Sílvia said...

"Hi!

Well, I know about that "New window" view, though I think I've never used it. Might turn to be very helpful, will have to give it a try!

However, if you ALWAYS want the "other window" to show the full size image, the easiest thing to do is add the "Navigator" tab to the "right-panel" (the one that contains the Layers, History, Brushes.... tabs. I have customized it in a way which quite resembles Photoshop, and it works great for me!"

Well, I have not decided if I want to even USE the other window all the time, but I have learned a little bit more about the dialogue windows. Thanks Sílvia!

I think I'm gonna scrap zucchini

Okay, a BIG GRIN here. I LOVE the versatility of zucchini! And I grew some in my garden this year. Okay, I HAD a garden this year, and zucchini was one of the first veggies on my list to plant. So, in my attempt to keep this scrap-related, I'm going to scrap a page about my obsession with zucchini and all the ways I love to cook it! Here are some of my favorites:

zucchini bread
zucchini pancakes
BBQ zucchini slices
Mousakka with zucchini (instead of eggplant)
shredded z in salads
shredded or cubed z in caseroles of all kinds
shredded z in spaghetti sauce
cubed z in fried rice (I tried that last night!)

Wow. I think I might try z pickles this year, too. Zucchini makes me so happy! :D

So, what's your favorite food of the summer? Or for you Southern folks, what warms your tummy this time of year?

I'm still here...

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I'm still here. Not scrapping very much, mostly quick pages. Life has been kinda busy lately, and complicated. You don't wanna know, so I won't bother you with the details, but I AM alive and well, and will post some more useful information eventually. Thanks for visiting my blog, and I hope you find something useful while you're here. :) Happy Scrapping! ~Jen

Retraction...

Okay, that last post was NOT very well written, and I didn't try those instructions before I published them. Can you all just pretend I didn't write them??? And..... duh..... there was a layer in the file titled "delete this layer" which just happens to be all those titles. And if you really DO have titles imbedded in your template or template layer, use the color picker, not the "select by color" option and things will go much better. :D

Happy Scrapping! ~Jen

How obnoxious!

I finally discovered what an earlier reader was complaining about when she said she couldn't remove the words from the templates she used. Oy! now I see what she was talking about!

Well, here's how I am going to fix the problem. Start over.... whaaaaa!!!!!! And then I'm going to use the "select by color" tool, select the color of the layer I want to erase a word out of, change my eraser tool to that color, and erase the word! Yuk. Why do they have to create templates that way?!?!

Happy scrapping!

Using Your Mouse in GIMP

I got a new computer for myself after Christmas and now get to use a roller "middle button" on my mouse. It's an interesting little feature that I have been learning more and more about. Well, I've also learned more about using it in GIMP and I thought I'd share my discoveries. There are three ways that I've discovered to use my roller (with numerous others, I'm sure, that I either haven't discovered, or don't feel worth mentioning here):

1. Scroll up and down in my layout. I do this by rolling the roller button while inside my layout window. Useful when my image is scaled bigger than my window.
2. Scroll side to side in my layout. I do this by rolling the roller button while at the bottom of the image window, where the slider is to go left and right. Also useful when my image is scaled bigger than the window it is occupying.
3. Scale bigger and smaller scale in my layout. (This, my friends, is why you get this post today.) :) To do this, hold your pointer over the scale number at the bottom of your window. It might say 18% or 25% or something like that. Well, if you hold your pointer over that number, then use your roller button, it will scale your image larger or smaller, depending on whether you roll forward or backward! I KNEW you'd like that as much as *I* do! :D

Happy scrappin'! ~Jen

Summer Vacation!!

My 3 year old son's last day of preschool was last Thursday and summer vacation is HERE! I'm still trying to put together a little scrapbook for my 12 y/o niece for her graduation from elementary school LAST YEAR and have actually seen some success. I also ended up getting a Costco membership and am going to try getting some pages printed there. Seems like I hardly have printed any of my scrapbook pages--me who loves to sit down with a good book and just hold it in my hands and read it! The computer just isn't the same! I really have to print some pages and get them in my book asap! Okay, enough exclamation points. I'm rambling a bit. Gearing up for a vacation to see family, too, and have to make sure the camera is ready for the trip. I can't wait to take all those pics and scrap them! :D There will be 7 kids together all under the age of 7. It really sounds exhausting, but fun, too.

Do you have any older projects still on the burner? What are your photo ops going to be this summer? What will you scrap to remember this summer by? Toodles! ~Jen