Friday, October 11, 2013

Chalkboards - How I did it!




I have been saving quotes for most of my life. I have them stuffed into drawers, folders, and places I am not even sure where.  They are written on napkins, post its, the back of junk mail, torn pages, etc.  



I pin them on my own Pinterest board I named "Quotes" (creative huh?).  I follow lots of other pinner's boards who seem to be more creative than me and name their boards cute names like:


Wisdom and Wit
Letters upon Letters
Words
Words, just words
Inspire
Write this down


Have you noticed all of the
pretty chalkboards on Pinterest?
I wanted to learn how to do it.

Blogging is also somewhat new to me. I love to read blogs with tutorials, how to paint, how to decorate, how to make things, and more.  So today is my first attempt at a "how to" for my blog.  So... here I go...

Picmonkey is a FREE photo software that the blogging world calls easy, that is how I found it, I needed an EASY one.  I have no photography background so I started with just the basics. I found Picmonkey to be so much fun and easy to use, I upgraded and purchased the software.
Not quite centered, but a good try!

My camera is a very inexpensive but reliable 5 year old Kodak EasyShare C813 that our business uses to take photos of empty, vacant and most of the time "stinky" houses. It is a dirty job. Since the companies we work for require a date stamp, that option is always turned on (because I forget to turn it off).  Recently I had to learn how to go into  picmonkey and cover it up. You can see it in my previous posts, the date stamp is there in my photos, in bright yellow, in the corner, or it has been pasted over with a bright purple daisy. I was so proud when I learned how to fix that.


                                       Click here to go to Picmonkey!

I found a black chalkboard background on the internet by simply asking google to find me one. It gave me several to choose from. I then saved it to my computer.  I then resized it and made it bigger with a free resizer I use for our business to make images smaller (making images smaller makes them faster to upload to the web when quality is not an issue.) You can probably also find one on the internet, just ask google. Or you can use mine below.


You can right click on this image and "save as" to use mine!

Then I opened picmonkey and selected "edit a photo", then uploaded the chalkboard image. 


 I proceeded to place text in different fonts around the chalkboard choosing the text tool. I chose a light yellow color and then selected lighter from the blend option.  I played with it, using different fonts.



Then I went to the overlay option on the menu on the left and chose my overlays, you can see the tree I have chosen.



Then I moved onto the Textures option and chose the "smudge". 





This fades the text and blends it all together.  Be sure to select the apply button afterwards to save your work.  Then I saved it to my computer. 




Whew, my first attempt.... 
at a how to.... 
on my blog...
is now over....



16 comments:

  1. That is awesome ! Thank you so much. I intend to try a few things on picmonkey when i get home. Great post !

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    1. Thank you Linda, I have went back and edited it a couple of times (after I fixed dinner), and googled how to print my screens. Hope this helps explain it a bit more. I am still learning and appreciate everyone's patience and guidance. I am learning to love picmonkey. I used the free version then later purchased the full package. I am not very crafty, but I have enjoyed learning this.

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  3. I'm impressed. I love your result. I like picmonkey but I upload most of pics directly to Flickr and ipiccy lets me manipulate the photos on flickr.

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    1. Thank you for popping over here!!! I am enjoying the computer so much now that I have found picmonkey. I found pizap thanks to the red snapper today, fell in love again! it has so many choices and was easier than picmonkey for me.

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  4. ummm...i can't do that!! now you, have inspired me!!

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    1. you always inspire me with your photos, I have a new appreciation for your great state. I must admit, all that i knew about NJ was housewives and snookie, LOL!

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  5. Looking good, I use picmonkey every day!

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    1. I am so happy to get to have a conversation with you! Any helpful hints you have for picmonkey you can share? I can use them!

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  6. I am a PicMonkey addict. there are six different chalk boards in PM... go to the punkin at the bottom and click on school and all the way to the bottome are the chalk boards, this is new in the past couple of months....

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    1. Thank you so much for the info. I found it, but I don't know how to open picmonkey without having a photo. Is it possible to open it and then go to schoob - boards and get a blank chalkboard? Help!!

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    2. typo again, darn fingers.... school!

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  7. forgot to say you did a great job on your first how to tutorial.

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  8. I have just got to set down and make myself play around with PicMonkey
    thanks for the encouragement
    this weekend it's to be cool and I am not going to Homecoming for Mizzou so maybe I can play online

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  9. Great tutorial. Thanks for sharing the background! I am going to play with it.
    Blessings,
    Laura of Harvest Lane Cottage

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