As I have mentioned before, I’m in love with PicMonkey for watermarking and adding various designs to my photos.

I also love this free web tool for making photo collages.

Below is a quick tutorial on just how easy it is to put together your very own collage.

I am using the photos I took several days ago at the Kilauea Bakery for the tutorial.

STEP #1: Go to PicMonkey.com and click on Create a Collage.

STEP #2: The Layout choices will appear on the left.  You can choose the shape for your photos.  I chose Square Deal.

STEP #3: You can choose four squares, two squares, nine squares, big and little squares etc…There are many combinations to choose from in this section.  I went with the four equal sized squares for my Kilauea Bakery Treats.

STEP #4: Click on Upload to upload your photos.  After uploading, your photos will be stored where the image icon is on the left as indicated by the orange arrow.

STEP #5: You can see my bakery treat photos showing up on the left.

STEP #6: This is so easy.  Simply drag your photos from the left over to the squares where you would like to place them in your collage, then click on Save.

STEP #7:  I then go back to pickmonkey.com, and click on edit photo.  From there, I follow the steps from my How to Use PicMonkey tutorial and add shapes and text to my photo as seen below.

Easy Peasy.  I love PicMonkey.  As if you didn’t already know.  🙂

Over the past year, I have created several blogs.  When I create a blog, I like to make sure its pretty.

The header is the first spot your reader’s eyeballs fall, so its important to make sure it conveys the message you’re trying to deliver.

For my first few blogs, I went to fiverr and found great graphic designers to create headers for me for $5.  It worked out very well.  I was happy and the header was cheap.

What I started to realize was that I enjoy change.

I think its neat when I visit a blog and the header is slightly different than it was the month before.

I found myself wanting to change around my headers all the time.  I could see that this could quickly become an expensive proposition rather than an affordable one.

So, I looked into other ways to create my headers.

Of course I had heard about photoshop.  Apparently its a great tool, but comes at a high price.  If you are an established business, this is fine, but for publishers just starting out, it is always nice to stick with FREE tools whenever possible.

Then, I discovered Gimp. I love this free tool, and am going to share a quick tutorial on how to create a header in gimp.

STEP #1: Go to Gimp.org and download the FREE software.  Its quick and easy.

STEP #2: Go to File, Create New Image and the following box will show up.  Put in the dimensions of your header.  I used 1000px width and 110px height for the example.  Note:  the screenshot shows 640 and 400.  I changed to 1000 width and 110 height.

STEP #3: Click where the orange arrow is pointing and choose the foreground square.  If the toolbox does not show up by default, go to the Tools menu and choose toolbox.  Notice the white rectangle below – this is what shows up after creating your image in step 2.

STEP #4: When you click on the foreground square, an array of colors will present themselves. You can choose anything you want by choosing from the color display on the top left or choosing from one of the rectangles below.  I chose the dark purple rectangle.

STEP #5: This part is so easy.  Just drag the purple rectangle to your header, and voila!, it turns to dark purple. 🙂

STEP #6: Now its times to add text to your header, so click on the capital A (the text tool).

STEP #7: A color box will appear after clicking on text tool.  Choose your color.  I chose white.

STEP #8: Click on the header and a font style and size box will pop up as well as four little squares as you see on the left.  The four little squares are where you manipulate the area for the text.

STEP #9: After adjusting font style and size, type in your title and tagline. I actually chose cinnamon cake, a font I downloaded from dafont.

STEP #10:  Select the rectangle select tool as indicated by the orange arrow.  I placed my logo on my desktop as you can see.  After clicking the rectangle select tool, click on the logo and outline the image that you want on your header.  Then go to edit menu and cut and paste onto header.

STEP #11: As you can see, the logo is way too big.  No worries.  Its easy to manipulate, as you will see with the scale tool in step 12.

STEP #12: When you click on scale tool, a grid will show on top of your image.  You can then grab the sides and manipulate to the size you need.  I knew that the height of my header was 110, so I made the height 108.

STEP #13: Your image will still have a moving dashed line around it until you anchor and set the image.  To do this, click on the fuzzy select wand, go to layer menu and click on new layer.

There you have it, a new header.  The more you play around with the gimp toolbox, the quicker the process becomes, and before you know it, you will want to change your header every few weeks because it is so darn fun.  🙂

There are so many amazing fonts available online, and I recently learned how to download and install these fantastic fonts to my computer.

Effective web tools that make creating a prettier blog make me so happy.

I want to share how you too can add more fonts to your collection, because its FUN!

I love going to dafont.com to check out their files and files of beautiful fonts.  They have them separated into categories like script, basic, gothic, etc…

Talented font artists submit their new fonts to the site, and you can download most of them for free.  We love that.

I thought it would be confusing to install a font onto my computer, so that it would always show up when I clicked on my font dropdown menu.

But, guess what?  Its easy!

I have prepared a hand holding tutorial for you below as I install the handwritten font, “Cinnamon Cake” onto my computer.  I use a MAC OSx, so this tutorial is specifically for MAC users, but I would think much of the information is similar for a windows environment.

STEP #1: First, you will want to go to the website, dafont.com.

STEP#2: Under the Script category, Handwritten subcategory, many choices will pop up for you to peruse.  The Cinnamon Cake caught my eye, so I decided to download this one.  I am looking for a new font style for my title and tagline for MOTM, and this might just be the ticket.

STEP #3: After clicking on Cinnamon Cake, you will click on the download button as indicated by the orange arrow.

STEP #4: After clicking on Download, the zip file will appear on the bottom bar.  You will need to click on the arrow to the right of the zip file, then a dropdown will appear, and you will want to click on open.

 STEP #5: You will see your font in your downloads file.  From here you will click on the cinnamon_cake (1) file to bring up the other files associated with the download.

STEP #6:  Click on the .ttf file.

STEP #7: After clicking on the .ttf file in step 6, this window below will appear with samples of the your new font.  In this case, Cinnamon Cake.  Simply, click on the “Install Font” button.

STEP #8: You will notice that your new font is now in your computer’s “Font book”.  How exciting. 🙂

CINNAMON CAKE is FULLY INSTALLED: In the photo below, you will see I pulled up my textedit program and checked out the fonts to choose from.  Cinnamon Cake showed up!  It worked.

 

This is so much fun, and can really spruce up your site or ecards or scrapbooking.

I love it so much, I just had to spruce up a photo of a dafont screenshot with PicMonkey, of course.  🙂

HAVE FUN!! 🙂

You know when you are commenting on a post you like, you hit enter, and a grey background with a white outline of a face shows up next to your comment?  How boring is that?

Well, there is a solution to this problem.  Instead of being the ghost guy in the grey square, you can have a super cute photo or your logo pop up next to your comment.

Today, I am going to take you through a step by step tutorial showing the VERY simple steps necessary to set up your own gravatar.

Once this is set up, whenever you comment, your new shiny photo will show up and make your comment more personal.  🙂

This is another “hand holding” tutorial.  So, while there are 13 steps below, they are all Very easy steps, and should only take you a few minutes.

STEP 1: This is the home screen for gravatar.com, the easiest spot to create your own gravatar.  Enter your email where the orange arrow is pointing.

STEP 2: After entering your email in step 1, you will come to this screen where you will enter your username and password.

 

STEP 3: You will arrive at this Confirm Email screen.

STEP 4: You will receive this confirm email.  Click the link highlighted in blue, and you will be taken back to gravatar.com.

STEP 5: Click on the My Account drop down menu on the right.  The orange arrow is pointing to the menu. Click on “Manage My Gravatars” to go to the sign up screen.

STEP 6: Click on the link indicated by the orange arrow.

STEP 7: Click on the box indicating where you will be importing your photo from.  I chose the first option, “My computer’s hard drive”.

 

STEP 8: Click on the “Choose File” button and upload your photo.

STEP 9: I used my bobble head photo for our example.  This is the screen that pops up.  You will then crop your photo to your heart’s content.

STEP 10: Click the “Crop and Finish” button indicated by the orange arrow.

STEP 11: Click on the blue “Confirm” button.

STEP 12: This screen is where you will rate your photo.

STEP 13: Last Step!  Yay!  Choose the image you want for your gravatar by clicking on it where the orange arrow is pointing, and you’re all set!That was super easy, wasn’t it?  If you ever want to change your photo, just go back to your gravatar account, and upload a new one, and select it on the screen above.  Easy peasy.

Now, go out there and use your beautiful gravatar.  🙂

I recently discovered what might be one of my MOST favorite web tools yet.

The tool is called PicMonkey and its FREE. 🙂  if you don’t know about PicMonkey already, you really need to pay attention to this post.  Trust me, you are going to love this little gem. 🙂

A few weeks ago, I decided that I should probably start watermarking my photos.

I’ve placed a gazillion photos on this blog, and would like to make sure that my website’s name is on said photos when people are viewing them either on my blog or through media searches.

My search for a watermarking tool led me to PicMonkey.  But, what I found was not just a watermarking tool, but a wonderful, seamless, robust, and easy to use graphics tool for my photos.

I thought the best way to share the details of this tool would be through a tutorial.

I know when I am introduced to a new tool or software, I really appreciate a hand holding approach to teaching.  🙂  The photos below will guide you step by step with an example from my Rocky Road Brownies post.

So, here you go…..let the hand holding begin…….

STEP #1:  Click on “Edit a Photo” on the main home screen of PicMonkey.  You can see the spot where the bright blue arrow is pointing.  You will then be prompted to upload a photo from your computer to PicMonkey.

STEP #2: On the left side bar, you will see the Editor area.  Click on the “P” to indicate you want to add text to your photo.  There is a small purple arrow indicating where the P is located.

STEP #3: A list of font styles will pop up and you choose which one you would like by clicking on it.  It will highlight for you in aqua as you can see below where the purple arrow is pointing.  I have grown fond of Chelsea Market, but there are many great ones to choose from for your text needs.

STEP #4: Click on “Add Text”, then a box will appear over your photo, as you will see in the next step.

 STEP #5: You can see the box in the middle that the purple arrow is pointing to.  This is the box that pops up after you click “Add Text” on the left. Also, the color, size and alignment box pops up where you can make your text appear exactly as you’d like.  This box is highlighted with the blue and orange arrows.  For this photo, I chose a bright aqua color for my watermark.  I change the color up based on the colors of the photo.  Its more fun that way. 🙂

STEP #6: The orange arrow is pointing to my lovely watermark.  After I typed it into the box in step #5, I dragged the box down to the lower right hand side.  Very easy to maneuver.  No worries.

STEP #7: The next step is to add some whimsy if you’d like.  For most photos, I just watermark it, then move on, but sometimes, I might want to add a little extra.  You can do that too with PicMonkey.  Below, you will see the yellow arrow is pointing to some shapes in the left bar.  When you click on it, several different types of shapes pop up.  For this photo, I chose “geometric”, the first choice in the list.

STEP #8: When you click on the “Geometric” section, 8 shapes will pop up.  I chose the one where the orange arrow is pointing.  When you click on it, it will show up over your photo as you can see below with the black rounded edge rectangle over the marshmallows.  I decided to choose a lavender color as you will see in step 9.

STEP #9: I chose lavender for the strip and started to stretch it out to touch both sides of the photo by grabbing the box and moving to the left and right.

STEP #10: I wanted to remind people making my recipe to add the marshmallows immediately to the brownie after removing from the oven.  This is an important step to ensure proper melting of the marshmallows to stick to the rocky road brownies.  In order to highlight this step, what better way to alert readers than with a lovely strip of instructions right in the center of the photo. 🙂  I placed orange arrows with the six steps involved in putting the text on the geometric strip.  Really, its just like the watermark steps – you’re just placing the text on a shape now and centering it or left or right aligning, whichever you prefer.  I centered my text. Step #6 is pointing to the little circles on the corner of the text box that you click and drag to place the box exactly where you want it.

STEP #11: Tadah!  The once bland photo is now fancy and eye-catching.

STEP #12:  The most important step is to name and save your file to your computer! Very easy, just follow the arrows below and you’re all set.

I LOVE this tool.  🙂

Have fun with your own fancy photo creations!