Claudia — Page 1546

Blogging Tips: Making a Banner in Picnik

February 25, 2012 at 12:46 pm by Claudia

Picnik is no more, but making banners in PicMonkey works much the same way. Ribbet is virtually the same as Picnik.

I had a request from Jennifer for a tutorial on making a banner using Picnik. Since Google has decided to close our beloved Picnik in April, many bloggers are creating banners using the collage tool and stockpiling them for the future. Good idea!

I will base this tutorial on the way in which I’ve created mine. If you, dear readers, have additional tips, please share them with us in the comments section. Sorry for the somewhat blurry photos – they are screenshots and this is as sharp as I could make them.

The first thing to do is to go to Picnik, upload and edit the photos you want to use in your banner. In my case, I chose 4 photos that were vertical, rather than horizontal (or landscape) size, because that’s the shape I wanted in my collage. You can use whatever size you want. Crop your photos and do whatever color editing you want at this point because once you upload them into the collage, you won’t be able to edit them individually any more. I edit the photos, save them on my desktop and leave the last edited photo on Picnik as I go to Library.

Click on the Library tab and then click on Start (on the left.) You’ll see these options. Click on Make a Collage.

This screen will appear. On the left you will see various shapes and configurations for your collage/banner. Choose your option. I chose the series of 4 photos at the bottom of the second column.

And this is what came up on the screen. In the lower left hand corner of the screen is the Picnik Basket. You can see that the last photo I edited before moving on to Collage is there. Drag it to one of the 4 openings. When you do this, you can use your mouse to zero in on the area of the photo you want in the frame.

Then upload your next photo by clicking on Upload a Photo.

At this point, I’ve added 2 photos to my collage. I did this in a hurry, so I didn’t do as much playing around with each photo in its frame as I would do normally.

Okay. All four photos have been added. Now I want to play with the color of the border. I don’t want a black border, so I’m going to go over to the left and play around in this area:

By clicking on the color box, another box will appear with all sorts of color options. I chose white. By playing with the slide on Spacing and Proportions, I can control just how wide the border is and the eventual size of the banner. I want something rectangular that won’t take up too much space at the top of my blog. I don’t want my banner as tall as the photos are in the above screenshot, so I will play with all of this until I come up with:

When you’ve come up with something that you like, go to the upper right hand corner and click Done. You will be taken back to the Edit. At this point you can click save and leave Picnik, or do as I did and add a frame to your collage.

Explore all the options. I used the Drop Shadowframe. If you click on Drop Shadow, you can control the color and depth of the shadow in the box that comes up at the left.

There’s my first Drop Shadow. I, however, like two Drop Shadow frames, so I’m going to click Drop Shadow one more time.

Now I have two. I like to have some white space to use when adding text. If you want to add text, my advice is to save the collage as is to your computer first. That way you have the original in case you want to go back and change the text at some point. So, save the collage to your desktop. It will most likely save it as PicnikCollage.jpeg. Note the dimensions below. If these are too big for your banner space, go back into Edit mode and resize your banner.

Then go back into Picnik, upload your collage and add text.

I’m playing with the font. (What else is new? I’m font-crazy.)

And here’s what I came up with. Now I’ll save it again. This time I’ll save it as PicnikCollage1.jpeg. Adding another character will save it as a new collage. Therefore, your original collage will remain intact on your desktop.

Some of you might want to add your text via another photo editor – Photoshop, Photoscape or something else. If that’s the case, you can ignore this last step and upload your collage/banner to the other editor and add your text there.

I went to Pixlr and added text – they have a lot more font options available:

I hope this is useful for you. Now is the time, if there ever was one, to make a lot of banners for the future.

I still can’t believe Picnik is closing. I’m in mourning.

Topsy-Turvy

February 24, 2012 at 9:25 am by Claudia

We took a little walk on the Rail Trail on Wednesday. This one was longer – about 3 miles. It was a sunny, spring-like day. Very quickly, we shed our coats, happily basking in the warmth of the sun. We marveled that all this was happening on a day in February. In the northeast.

The sky was gorgeous. If you look in the upper-right hand corner of the photo, there is an opening in the clouds. I keep seeing the shape of a bird. What do you see?

Our mountain ridge is in the background. I call it ‘ours.’ I suppose everyone around here does. This is the same ridge that we can see from our house. Whenever we take these walks, we are reminded once again that we live in a beautiful part of the country.

So on we walked, talking about the warm weather, thinking that, most assuredly, spring is around the corner. Yes, it can only be a week or so away.

I woke up this morning to this:

What????

I went to bed last night with not a flake in sight. A few short hours later, there is heavy, wet snow everywhere. Look how our chicken wire corral fence is sagging under the wet snow. There’s not a whole lot of it and I suspect it will melt rather quickly.

What a strange winter this has been. Everything is topsy-turvy. (Another old fashioned word that I love.)

I wrote the other day about being in my fifties and feeling young and vital.

I’ve suddenly begun getting emails from the Scooter Store.

Back off, Scooter Store. I’m not ready for you yet.

The willow tree is coming down on Tuesday. Can’t think about it. I will be somewhere else that day, trying to forget what is happening to my favorite tree. I’m sorry, willow. I love you. But your beauty comes with a price. You are too destructive. We have to let you go.

I’ll have some shop updates over the weekend, so be sure to check in!

Have a wonderful Friday.

Thrifty Living 2012 – Daycations

February 23, 2012 at 9:24 am by Claudia

This week’s edition of Thrifty Living 2012 concerns an alternative to expensive vacations – daycations. Hey, we all love the thought of taking a week or two and jetting off to some wonderful destination. It’s a terrific idea. However, those vacations can cost a lot of money.

I’ve mentioned before that Don and I don’t take vacations. They are too expensive for us right now. We sometimes get the opportunity to visit a new place as part of a job and we grab the chance to do a little sightseeing. But those jaunts are work related and usually only one of us is doing the traveling.

Daycations, however are a wonderful alternative to the expensive vacation. We can leave our house in the morning and be back in our little cottage by nightfall. New York is an obvious destination for us as we live about 75 miles north of Manhattan. There’s so much to see and do there. We can drive in or take the train or the bus and we are instantly transported to a thriving metropolitan area with museums, plays, shopping and endless things to do.

Or how about taking a train ride to some new-to-you destination? You can sit back, read a book and let someone else do the driving. I did this frequently when I lived in Boston. I didn’t have a car. But I’d hop on the train and travel to Philadelphia or New York. Sometimes I’d rent a car and drive to Maine or New Hampshire or out to Cape Cod. There’s nothing like a day away to put life in perspective.

Don and I will sometimes drive to the Berkshires for the day. This gorgeous area of Massachusetts is full of wonderful sightseeing opportunities and it’s only a few hours away. Last fall, we took a daycation to Boston. I got to show Don a bit of the city I used to live in and love and we went to a Red Sox game that night.

When we lived in California, we could drive to the beach, the mountains or the desert in the course of a day. We had lots of opportunities to explore that beautiful state.

Daycations are a viable alternative to expensive vacations. And if you have pets and don’t want to leave them for too long, a day away is just the ticket. In our case, one of our dogs is ill and frail. A daycation is a way for us to travel….but not too far.

If the thought of saving up enough money for the annual vacation is overwhelming you, consider a series of day-long trips. You save the cost of a hotel. You save the cost of plane fare. I bet there are plenty of wonderful places to discover within a couple of hours drive.

Please visit the rest of the Frugal Five, Brenda, Elaine, Jen and Diane for their tips on daycations.

Blogging Tips: Making a Banner in Picnik

Topsy-Turvy

Thrifty Living 2012 – Daycations

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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