It's Not Alive!: Printer go bye bye

I am so bummed. This is probably what I deserve for being too lazy and not caring enough about my leaky ceiling from the freak storm last week.

Last night when I tried to print my DIY Spongbob pop-up card for D's nephew, my printer, which happened to get dripped on, gave me a weird error. What do you mean "Remove and check cartridge on right"???

Please printer Gods, bring my HP photo printer back to life! My crafts depend on you! Should I try to make a Grilled Jesus and pray like Fynn did on Glee last night?

Anyway, before I discovered my comatosed printer, I was creating a Spongbob pop-up card template using one of the papercrafts as a baseline. Spongebob obviously also had to have a message to deliver so Google led me to some cool sites that have Free Speech Bubble Brushes for GIMP, Spongebob fonts and Disney fonts. I had to brush up on how to install brushes into GIMP but in the end, i'm happy with the results. Now, if only I could print the damn thing! No printed project, no pictures. :-(

Thank You Cards: Stamped, Glued and Yet to be Delivered

Where does the time go? It's been 2 weeks since the big party and I'm still a bit upset at myself for not taking a single picture except for one shot with the birthday boy as he was cutting his cake. But, at least we have reminders of the special day (the 'seeds of wisdom' or more like 'seeds of sarcastic jokes' jar, the koozies, the sunflower seed favors, everyone else's pictures of the bag pipers, the boylan's rootbeer bottles, holes in the ground from the pitched tent, large mason jar centerpieces, and lots of play sand).

It is now up to D to send out the 30+ thank you cards that I made using leftovers from the invitations and a theme inspired by the 'seeds of wisdom'. Lets see how long it takes for his hands to hurt from the writing.

I was inspired by Twig & Thistle's surprise 30th birthday invitations envelopes. First of all, what a coincidence is it that the posting was for a surprise 30th Birthday? Secondly the timing couldn't have been closer. D's party was August 14th while the date on Twig & Thistle's invitation says July 10th. It must be meant to be (insert smile here).

In any case, I loved the idea so, I used Gimp and Pages to bring the project to life. I also got a little help from the following resources:

- Gimp Arc Text Filter

- Instructions on how to draw a circle in Gimp

Mac App: Gimp isn't so Gimpy

I love my Macbook & I love all the mac open source applications as well. It took a while to find a good open source graphics editing app but once I found Gimp, my arts never went limp [insert corny smile here].
I recently upgraded to v2.6 and I just started using plug-ins and custom brushes. There are so many plug-ins and custom brushes out there but very little information on how to install them. After doing a bit of googling, I puzzled some of the many solutions together and here you are folks, a comprehensive list of instructions to follow on how to install Gimp plug-ins and brushes to Gimp v2.6.

How to Install a Gimp Plug-in (v2.6) on a Mac (Leopard OS):
Pre-requisite knowledge: Basic navigation on a mac (opening files, right-click,
locate downloaded files), basic knowledge of Terminal, know what your terminal password is, how to locate and use Gimp Plug-ins

1. Download the plug-in (files with .py, .c, etc extensions)
2. Navigate to /Applications
3. RIGHT click & select "Show Package Contents"
4. Navigate to /Resources/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins
5. Move/Copy the plug-in file to the "plug-ins" folder
6. Open Terminal
7. Type "cd //"
8. Type "cd applications/gimp.app/contents/resources/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins"
9. Type "sudo chmod u+x [insert plugin name here].py"
10. Enter your password
11. Restart Gimp
12. Follow instructions from site or readme file where plug-in was downloaded to locate the plug-in on Gimp


How to Install an Adobe Photoshop brush into Gimp (v2.6) on a Mac (Leopard OS):
Pre-requisite knowledge: Basic navigation on a mac (opening files, right-click, locate downloaded files), how to locate and use Gimp Brushes

1. Download the Adobe Photoshop brush (files with .abr, etc extensions)
2. Navigate to /Applications
3. RIGHT click on GIMP & select "Show Package Contents"
4. Navigate to Contents/Resources/share/gimp/2.0/brushes
5. Move/Copy the brush file to the "brushes" folder
6. Restart Gimp

Happy Gimping!

Here are some of my Gimp creations for various occassions.