March 2015

Color, Freebies, Hand Drawn, Photoshop, Tutorials, Typography

How to Add Watercolor Textures to Typography

It’s hard not to see watercolor textures everywhere these days! And it makes sense why – they’re beautiful and add such a personal, handmade touch to anything they’re on. That’s why in this week’s tutorial, I’m pairing them with my favorite thing – typography. The same rules apply if you’d like to add watercolor textures to hand lettering, too for an even greater handmade look. As a bonus, I’m including 3 free high res watercolor textures so you can play around with your own type or hand lettering. Let’s get started!

March 31, 2015

54 Comments

Freebies, Photography, Resources, Roundups

Affordable (and Free!) Stock Photo Sites

If you’ve ever found yourself working on a project searching for just the right image, but only finding overpriced stocky looking images instead, you are not alone. My frustrations peaked about 2 years ago when I was working on collateral for a law practice (do photos get stockier than that?) and, after going through shutterstock, istock and yes, even ridiculously priced getty, I’d had enough. I knew there had to be a site with photos priced for real people that weren’t so obviously staged. So, after searching the typical sites, I adjusted my google query, panned + mined, then struck gold. This week, I’m here to share the photo wealth 🙂 Read on for my go-to sites for the best in free + affordable photos.

March 26, 2015

7 Comments

Freebies, Photoshop, Tutorials

How to Create and Apply a Halftone Texture in Photoshop

The other week on every-tuesday’s facebook page, Valarie asked how to replicate the texture seen on this ice cream cone. This week, I’m here to deliver the answer! In this tutorial, we’ll create our own halftone texture, then apply it to a similar ice cream cone to replicate the same effect. As a bonus, I’m including the ice cream cone used in the tutorial as a psd file for free so you can follow along exactly if you’d like. Click read more for the download and to see how it’s all done!

March 24, 2015

6 Comments

Freebies, Hand Drawn, Illustrator

Freebie: 10 Hand Drawn Decorative Dividers

This blog is a little overdue for a freebie! With the templates I create, I typically draw out a bunch of different elements, scan them in, then clean them up – very much the same process I use for vectorizing hand lettering. There are always some elements I wish I had used, but they never quite make it onto the design. This week’s freebie are some of my favorite hand drawn dividers that I plan on using for something, but rather than leave them sitting in a folder, I’m giving all 10 of them to you! Each divider comes as an ai, eps + psd file for versions of Illustrator and Photoshop, CS3 or newer. Read on for the download link!

March 19, 2015

5 Comments

Business, Personal

A Day in My Life as a Graphic Designer

Happy Tuesday, friends! Last week Shirla emailed me and requested a video describing a typical day in my life as a graphic designer. I loved the idea, so I decided to document my day last Friday in photos from the morning commute to coming home to my home office/studio set up. So! In this week’s video, I’m here to talk about it all! I walk you through my work’s studio, where I sit, the equipment I use on my desk at work, how I spend my day at work, then a mini home office tour where Spencer and I work on our own things on week nights and weekends. I hope this little glimpse will benefit anyone interested in graphic design, just starting out – or maybe give other graphic designers something to compare their own experiences to. I know it’s something I always wondered about 🙂 Read on for links to all the equipment I use and the video walk through!

March 17, 2015

5 Comments

Hand Lettering, Personal, Tutorials, Typography

Laying out Your Lettering For Letterpress

Happy Tuesday! This past weekend was reallllly busy for me! I designed our wedding invitations and recorded a Skillshare class on the entire process from start to finish: all of the research, sketches, lettering experiments, then finally setting up and saving the file correctly so it’s ready to hand off to my letterpress printer. You can watch the free intro to the class (called Laying out Your Lettering for Letterpress) here and just for my blog readers and YouTube watchers, I’m sharing one the other videos today. This video covers the sketching process of lettering based on research which determined the look and feel we were going for (Southern rustic). If you’re interested in seeing the rest of the class, you can sign up for Skillshare free of charge for an entire month using this sign up link.

March 10, 2015

0 Comments

Fonts, Resources, Roundups, Typography

Brush Script Fonts to Increase your Text Drive

Brush script style fonts have been gaining in popularity – from hand drawn versions to vector point-perfect variations. Brush script styles lend themselves to applications with character and personality, an artsy organic feel, or just an extra human touch. This versatility gives brush scripts a well deserved spot in any font library. Here are a few for free and for a fee to round out your brush script font collection.

March 5, 2015

2 Comments

Freebies, Hand Lettering, Photoshop, Tutorials, Typography

Create a Hand Lettered Photo Composition

There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to create hand lettering, but far fewer on what you can do once you create your lettering. In this week’s tutorial, we’ll create a hand lettered photo composition using just photoshop. We’ll start with placing and coloring our lettering on a chosen photo, then go over the basics of masking and applying environmental shadows to give the final piece a polished look. As a bonus, I’m including the lettering used in the tutorial so you can follow along exactly if you’d like. Let’s get started!

March 3, 2015

4 Comments

Courses

Messy Watercolors in Procreate

Gouache Botanicals in Procreate

Learn Font Making

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