new techie toy (and a few other happy things)

today i discovered photoshop brushes. now, many of you might be thinking, um, those are really old news and where have you been, ms. happy stuff? hiding in a hole and singing “la, la, la, i don’t want to learn photoshop, i just want to stumble along blindly and try to make it work using the three tools i already know how to use, thank you very much!” and you’d be sort of right. photoshop has always been a little intimidating to me. there are sooooooo many mysterious terms lurking within its menus like “rasterize” and “color dodge” that i just figured i would never be able to learn how to use everything (and even if someone showed me, i’d forget how to do 98% of it) so i just learned how to convert photos to black and white, crop stuff and use the eraser and clone tools. ok, maybe i learned how to do a few other things, but really, that was all i ever did on any sort of regular basis. then i made my discovery of the day. apparently, there are artists out there who (like fonts and desktop wallpaper) like to create “photoshop brushes” that you can download and use for free! some of you might be thinking, “i don’t get it. aren’t the photoshop brushes just different sizes of circles? maybe some with solid edges and some with blurred edges?” and you would be sort of right. there are brushes for those basic and very useful shapes. but there are also very fancy “brushes” that are sort of like clip art stamps that you can add to your photos and make them look (i think) really cool. here’s an example–

the picture by itself (lovely and simple):

the picture with photoshop brushes called “floral swirl” (and some text):

what do you think? i think they are lovely and i see so many fun potential uses for these! they come in all sorts of different designs and design styles and are as easy to install as free fonts. wheeeeeee! now, if someone out there has been using these for a long time and can tell me if it’s possible to rotate your brush and how to do that, i’d be very interested to hear that information. i figured out how to make it bigger or smaller and how to change the color and the opacity (another fun word!), and i even figured out how to put the brushwork additions on a different layer (another milestone for me. i had a prejudice against using layers ever since trying to use them in website design with dreamweaver (or was it “fireworks”?) and ending up swearing and throwing things around the room.), but rotating the brush i havent’ figured out yet.

in other news, this weekend was apparently the “winter festival” downtown. for some reason, i missed it yesterday because i thought it was at the university, so i went downtown today to see the snow and ice sculptures. i should have gone yesterday. the snow sculptures were mostly destroyed already, except for one “shoe house” which had a little person peeking through the window:

and i wandered around forever and finally found the ice sculptures. they were mostly intact, but one had broken. here’s one of them:

so that was a little disappointing, but never fear! serendipity is here! while wandering around looking for the ice sculptures, i happened to notice this sign:

he is a favorite artist of one of my best friends, so i had to go inside to see the exhibit. the prints weren’t quite as colorful as i remember his stuff being, but there were definitely some familiar elements and it would be so cool if my friend could be here to see this! (you know who you are!)

on the way back to my car, i finally decided to visit fromagination. there was a guy standing outside with a big cow bell thing hollering that there were free samples of hot chocolate and mulled wine inside and i’d been wanting to check this place out for forever, so i jumped at the chance. the hot chocolate sample was simply delicious and if i had thought it was a low calorie drink, i might have purchased a whole cup. as it was, i decided to try out one of their natural sodas and a sandwich from their deli case (made with neuske’s smoked ham and some freakin’ delicious cheese–the guy told me what kind of cheese it was, but honestly, in a store with that many cheeses, i couldnt’ remember which one he said was on the sandwich.) he wrapped it up in white butcher paper and a piece of tape (i’m a sucker for that kind of classy packaging* although i suppose i would have been even more impressed had he tied it with string instead of clear tape. ooooooh. that would have been super classy. the sandwich also came with a side of cornichons.

when i got home, i toasted the sandwich in the toaster oven and i have to say it really was a delicious sandwich. whatever kind of cheese it was, it was smoked and drool-a-riffic.

because the soda is natural, they have a note on the bottle to help offset the settling of solids that occurs:

(in case this is too small to read, it says, “gently shake my hips before placing bottle to your lips”)

i hope you had a good weekend too!
*”classy” as opposed to the papers they wrap sandwiches in at burger king.