Thursday, June 27, 2013

New Blog, Vintage Freebies!

Hey everyone, sorry for the looong break! I've made a new blog and I'd LOVE to have you follow me there to get new freebies! I just posted some vintage freebies this week you may want to check out!

http://velveteensnowbird.blogspot.com/

Since I last posted, here's some major changes that have occurred in my life:

-I moved from Alaska to Idaho
-I had a full legal name change (I go by both Jesii and Yiskah now!)
-I got married to an AMAZING man!

I'm so, so, so excited to be blogging again!

xoxo, Jesii

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Back, with a Jellyfish!

Here's a freebie I've been waiting to release, I have a sketch that goes along with it but I'll have to post it some other time. I haven't been posting recently because I was gearing up for my move to Alaska but now the move is done and all I have to do is unpack and find work.


Download (vector included)
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I have an incident that happened recently I'd like to share in the hopes it won't happen to you as well. I recently logged into my gmail account and found that it had been accessed from two other locations that I did not log in from, one of which was China. Essentially, they had managed to get in because my password was easy to guess, even though it had some numbers it had a word in it and could be figured out! I ended up spending a few hours devising new secure passwords and changing all of my login information, especially on my banking and email accounts. My beau's stepfather helped in this process and it was a huge benefit to have someone who knew what they were doing to help me come up with secure passwords.

If you're interested in getting your accounts under control and you need help with the passwords, he's devised a really useful system for creating passwords that are difficult to decipher but you can still remember. The system is available in a downloadable document for $1.99, cheaper than many digi stamps I've seen out there and I can attest to how useful this bit of information was for me personally.

Purchase for $1.99
(Paypal & major cards accepted)

The site you're buying from is very secure, the link I'm giving is the direct link to the shopping cart with the file ready to be purchased. After the purchase, you'll receive an email with a link to download the .pdf that will be good for 48 hours.

Shoot me an email if you have any questions or want to know more. :)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Two Owl Freebies!

To make up for the lack of posts, I'm putting up two freebies today. Both of them are owl themed, I LOVE owls! The first one is a limited release, it's only available for this weekend!

***Only Available 4/15-4/17th!***


Download (vector included)
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I was going to wait to post this but I decided that I couldn't wait any longer! I now have an Etsy shop with some image sets up for sale. If you put in the code CHICKADEEBLOG you'll get an additional 10% off you entire order. I'm also going to be holding challenges here in the future with some of my free images where you'll get a chance to snag your favorite sets from my shop!

Click the image to check it out!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LittlePaperFinch

I'll hopefully be posting some new sets soon and some new freebies here. ;)

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Requested- Kitty Freebie

A reader wrote in with an image request so I decided to give it a go. Michelle, I hope you enjoy the freebie! I love kitties and used to volunteer with them at a sanctuary. There are few things sweeter than a sleeping kitten.


Download (vector included)
Image Only (.png)

It's been a whole week since I've posted and I'm sorry to have gotten so far behind on my posts but I promise I have good reason. I'm working on lots of art right now and spending time with my beau. He's leaving for Alaska to get us set up for our new life in Barrow in less than two weeks so I'm trying to enjoy this time of peace before our lives get turned upside down!


Also, thank you to Michelle of MichelleMyBelle's Creations for a thoughtful award and link back on her blog. The thought is very appreciated! I'd like to pass it on to the following bloggers:

Nancy @ Inkcicles
For her wonderful detailed cards, inspiration and kindness. Without her I wouldn't even have a blog or the courage to have put my images out there in the first place!

Katie @ My Paper Haven
Another inspirational blogger, a friend of Nancy's whose blog I've been following for a while as well. Her art is beautiful and her style is so unique.

Ash @ "Hastkala"...Ashaon Ka
One of my readers, another blogger whose cards I really enjoy. Her use of color is interesting and inspiring, very beautiful work!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Over 11,000 hits! Free Dressform Stamp

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful comments, link backs, input and support! As a thank you to everyone, I've decided to offer this dress form and pincushion set for free. I know the sentiments are a little cheesy but I personally think they're cute. I noticed that there aren't many free dressform stamps out there and my last one went over fairly well, so here's a simple one along with a cute traditional tomato-shaped pincushion.


Download (vector included)
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Free Programs

So let's face it, times are hard for most everyone right now. Most people don't have hundreds of dollars to invest in art software unless they do it as a career, and even those people may not be able to afford the price of the popular software options. But don't worry, there ARE free options out there!

Open-source software is awesome for many reasons. For one thing, it's free to use and distribute. Secondly, it's made by many people in a collaborative effort. The source code is available for developers to enhance and add onto so you can get lots of neat add-ons that sometimes eventually get added to the program itself.

Right now, I am creating using only free software. I had the Adobe suite for many years but after a change of computers in November I lost all of my programs and decided not to go through the trouble of installing my outdated pre-CS version of Illustrator and Photoshop. I needed to find new options so I looked to open source and free software and I'm very happy with my current workflow. Here's what I use.

Inkscape
http://inkscape.org/
Vector software, open-source

This program is excellent and I've found it's much simpler and intuitive than Illustrator. Don't get me wrong, Illustrator CS5 has some far more advanced tools and they serve their purpose, but as a basic vector program for creating clean images, Inkscape is pretty amazing. The only downside is the lack of keyboard shortcuts which feels cumbersome if you're accustomed to Adobe's programs. I feel like for simple black and white images the tracing features are far better in Inkscape, which is really nice if you like to draw by hand and scan in images. It does not handle large or intricate images very well, but I've been told that there are people working on that issue.

Gimp
http://www.gimp.org/
Raster software, open source

You can do just about anything you can do with a professional photo editing suite with this program. The learning curve can be a bit steep if you're used to Photoshop, but it's a really solid program and many artists use it exclusively. The color tools are fantastic, and it also has many standard features like levels, curves, contrast & brightness and much more. I'm not a fan of the clone stamp or repair options, but they'll likely be updating it in the future to get up to par with the other programs available.


I plan on writing up some tutorials for creating using these tools in the future, but for now you might want to download them and play a little bit. :)

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Free Stamps, Vine and Bird

I've been working on a a few projects even though I haven't been posting the past few days. Right now we're staying with my boyfriend's folks who have graciously welcomed us into their home while we wait to hear back on a job in Alaska that my beau applied for. Hopefully this time next month I'll be looking to head north! His mom is the crafty and creative Nancy of Incicles, go check out her fabulous cards! It's really fun to see how she works and creates, it's nice to be staying with someone who likes the same things I do. :)

Today I'm posting up a couple of free images I put together really quickly for a banner I was making. The bird is a finch but it could be colored to be many different kinds of birds. The vine is simple, but would make a fantastic accent piece or repeating background.


Download (vector included)
Image only (.png)

Download (vector included)
Image only (.png)

I hope you enjoy these freebies, I plan on using the bird as a logo of sorts for something I'm setting up but I would love to see it get used and enjoyed by others! :)

And again, thank you for the support. I now have an email set up just for the blog, so if you'd like to message me about something in particular and need a response contact me there. craftylittlechickadee@gmail.com