No Idle Hands Here

You know those times when you don't really have enough minutes to finish a project properly but there are too many minutes to just sit around doing nothing either? In those times, I get strange graphic design ideas, and this was one of them:

I decided that, for some reason, I needed to update my Facebook cover photo with a custom one. I had had a clever (but stolen) image there for awhile which featured two beloved comic icons of 80s pop culture:

But it was time to change, and I had 40 minutes, so I looked up writing quotes and found this gem of quote from Stephen King's On Writing, a book that is part biography and part writer's guide--an excellent resource. (Though I must always give the caveat that it does contain a sprinkling of King's token profanity.)

The background is the scanned image of a page from one of my tutoring sessions. The red spatter is stock photography. The font is Urban Jungle.

Here There Be Fairies

The other day, a dear friend of mine posted this enchanting image of her daughter (above) running through the woods. The moment I saw it, I knew some Photoshop magic needed to be worked into it as a surprise for my friend and her daughter.

The image below is the result of my impulses. It is a collage of sorts, pieced together with images from the internet, and enhanced with some special lighting effects to give it a little sparkle.

I posted this on my friend's Facebook wall this morning. She loved it. :o)

Project 365: 18/365 - Book Cover

Looooove making book covers. Finalized this one for the latest young writers group's novella, The Case of Dr. What.

Project 365: 15/365 - Lo-Fi vs. Hi-Fi

These were the "instructions" (with a few clarifications added in my handwriting) that I received last Tuesday morning for a card that needed to be printed and available for Sunday morning. Quite a quick turnaround.

But you see, this is why they keep me around. I love a challenge like this. Here's the final, printed result of the Sharpie scribblings. I'm rather happy with how it turned out.

Hidden in the Eye

I love stock photography, especially really good, high quality stuff. Our church gets a lot of our stock images from DesignPics--it's a Christian-owned company, so doing random searches on their site does not bring up inappropriate images. Bonus! Today, I used this little boy's image for another worship service slide, and I noticed that he had something in his eye.

It's always fascinating to me when the photographer gets caught in the model's eyes. Seeing that glimpse opens a tiny window into what the model saw the day the picture was taken.

Free Church Wi-Fi

One of our pastors recently made this request: Can we make a Sunday morning announcement slide that has the following message on it: Connect your wireless device using the "[network name]” wireless access point. The logon is: “[password]”

I love how I can always assume that "we" actually means "you." XD We must learn how to be perceptive in this job.

Anyway, I had way too much fun with this and delivered a snarky and non-snarky version of the requested slide.

Non-snarky:

Snarky:

Sparkles & Royalty

We're getting ready to order this card for the church to list the message topics for an upcoming year-long series. I'm rather happy with the result of it! The title of the series as "33 Riches of Divine Grace", so I went with the sparkly gold and royal blue theme.

The blue background layer is a free design that I found online. The white is a filled layer with a pattern effect applied in order to give it a crackly, textured look.

The coin and banner were formed in Photoshop. The sparkles around the title were hand drawn using a star-shaped paintbrush (at varying sizes) as well as a glow layer effect.

The title text is a combination of Copperplate Gothic Light and Harrington, which made for an elegant, yet fun design for the letters. I love how the "G" in Grace and the "E" in Riches are touching. Sometimes you couldn't plan as well the things that happen by accident.

Blog Header: Martial Arts Passion

I created this tonight in about an hour for one of my young friends on CleanPlace. She posted a request on Facebook for a graphic header for her Martial Arts blog. I had fun finding out how to make smoke and fire effects in Photoshop. (By the way, she liked it!)

Heavenly Bodies in the Cosmos

Thanks to my friend Puella, I spent a good deal of time on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website today. I created a desktop background image like this a long time ago, but the file was lost. Been meaning to create a new one for awhile now. I LOVE images of Heavenly bodies in the cosmos.