How'd you make a Blog (or Facebook) Banner: PicMonkey

The current blog banner referenced in this post.

For those that have a blog or curious about banners, let me tell you - you can do this too! Oh, and did I mention, free. No downloads required.

I'm please to introduce you to PicMonkey. PicMonkey is a website that allows you to edit photos or create collages. Simple, user friendly and free. (I'm not an affiliate, just a big fan!)

To create the blog banner, I actually used both PicMonkey functions, edit photo & create a collage. First. click "Create a collage." Then upload the images you would like in your banner. Select the size "FB banner" and proceeded to drag and drop the uploaded images.

You can resize and add images beyond the template suggestion. Also I added scrapbooking files to fill in space to make certain images larger than others. I also recommend trying to keep the banner mostly symetrical.

Then, click Edit, to add text. In the banner above, the text on the left side "Love Laugh Live" and the text near the bottom right "Project Life" was added using PicMonkey.


Presto, your own blog (or Facebook) banner.

Thanks for visiting!

All the best,
Jessica

How to Recolor Images and Photos on Gimp: NO PHOTOSHOP NEEDED

Hi Blog Reader,

You'll come to find, I do not use Photoshop. I'm not against, I'm cheap and I just can't bring myself to pay for such as expensive tool that is not user-friend and most of its usefullness can be found for free. And here's a perfect example...

Recoloring images or photos.

This can  be done for free with a nifty tool called GIMP. Maybe you found or bought digital images, scrapbook kits, paper, etc. that would be great if only it would  match your photos. And I'm kicking myself now, but I've had GIMP for awhile and never knew that I could do this, yeah! I stumbled across an article that mentioned they used GIMP to recolor an image (without explaination), so I tried it myself and after fumbling around figured it out. Well, I should have searched because there are some great resources. But I only discovered these when I literially said out load, this awesomeness must be shared (and I'm too lazy to try to explain the steps).

Long story... here are some great resource step-by-step instructions for you to consider:
I like this first link because this is what I've been doing and have ultimately found I love the "SELECT BY COLOR."
This link taught me how to color photos, blows my mind. That I really don't need Photoshop because I how spent many hours talking myself in and out of buying it. I always figured the image recoloring could be done, even Paint is a very simple, free (clunky) tool that allows for recoloring... but recoloring photos for FREE... mind blowing.

I tell ya, I learn something new everyday:)
I hope you learned something that could help you design too.

Thanks for visiting!

All the best,
Jessica

My first freebie - Project Life: Week in Review Cards

Welcome


I love Project Life, why... because I can actually get photos on a page to share and it's not intimating, has some structure and it's simple. This little cocktail helps my creativity thrive and I hope to encourage your's too.

Here are some simple - "Week in Review" cards in various colors for your Project Life. There are 10 .png journaling cards in this compressed zipped folder.
BONUS: it makes it so easy to journal

       Update: Also available for free download are matching Month in Review cards here.

Please let me know what you think and share with your friends. Just point them back using a link.


Jessica Hines Designs: Freebie digital Week in Review cards

Click here or on the image.

Project Life is a back-to-basics approach to memory-keeping created by Becky Higgins. It can be anything you want it to be. To learn more about Project Life check out Becky’s Website. The pieces used in my album are available through Jessica Sprague here and Lettering Delights here. My Project Life is all digital, I'm using MyMemories Suite. Simple.Thanks for visiting!

All the best,
Jessica


The copyright in this blog, and the material on this blog (including without limitation the text, computer code, artwork, photographs, images, music, audio material, video material and audio-visual material on this blog) is owned by Jessica Hines. If you would like to share, only link back to this blog. Downloads are for personal use only.