[.more.member's.creation.]

One more creation by member! This time is from Becky. Don't you think it is so sweet? Thank you Becky :-)



ps: the contest will be announced end of this month :-)

[.member's.creation. + .inspiration.board.]

Amy sent me her creation :-) I'm so glad she gave me permission to post it here :-)




And I'm certainly very happy that many of you like the frames {blush}. Turned out I make alot of frame backgrounds using my tile collections. I will upload them all very soon. And just today I was thinking of also making bigger (800x600)frame background and I call it 'mood board' or 'inspiration board'. I find it more convenient using this bigger background tile to create scrapbook-like inspiration board.

The step by step is very much similar to creating frame picture. I inserted the 800x600 background to MS Power Point, then inserted pictures and arrange them freely - resized them, sending them backward or forward (using the 'draw' function), then select all, and copy and paste it to MS Paint.

On MS Paint, I decorated the board with my graphics (see the tutorial on previous entries), saved it as PNG, and voila! An interior design inspiration board with pictures from Jonathan Adler. I really love his design! Especially his decorating philosophy: "Happiness is Chic". I can't agree more! :-)



This picture of course looks very small on the blog...click on the picture to see it at it's real size.

And, ok, what do you think of the mood board? Is it a good size, or too small? I'd love to hear your opinion :-)

[.contest.idea.1.]

Well, I'm so excited about the contest idea :-) Tomorrow I will upload many blank frames and frame backgrounds to the member area, and all members will be able to participate in the contest. The rules and entry to be announced probably in one or two weeks from now, in order that there is sufficient time to have trial-and-error-and-tweaking with the graphics.

The first idea that came up to me for this contest was photo blogging. Participants will have to create several framed photos in sequence and to put text / comment / story to accompany the pictures.

Probably something like this imaginary conversation between my two little sisters, when they were small. I love looking at these pictures, and they had these cute little-rascals-ish sparks in their eyes as if they had been plotting something :-D




WELCOME BABY SISTER... "i've gotta tell you we've got a big sis, and she thinks she's our boss, but together we're stonger than her!!"




"...okay, do we stick to our plan? we're both bigger now, and chubby as well!"


Sometimes, when I got remarks from people that I'm an upbeat person...I just thought of my little sisters, you may guess where the surge of energy often came from :-D


Well, this is the first idea, let me know what you think and let's have our first contest soon! :-)

[.picture.frame.tutorial.2.]

Hi everyone,

I just forgot to mention in the tutorial that when you paste the frame from Power Point to MS Paint and want to decorate the picture with graphics, make sure that the “draw opaque” function is unchecked (so that the graphic’s background stays transparent).




And below are a few more free blank frames. If you are a member you will be able to find more blank frames and frame backgrounds in the member area this weekend. You can have more variations! :-)

PS: if you decide to use these frames, a link back to www.amretasgraphics.com will be appreciated. thanks :-)

Anyway, thank you for your responses! I think I can confirm by now that the competition is on. I will start preparing and announce it about two weeks from now. Stay tune :-)

[.picture.frame.tutorial.]

Okay, a little tutorial time. We’ll start with one pre-made frame and see if you like it :-)

I particularly like this one for blogging. To make it easier, if you use the premade frame below, first of all you need to resize your picture to 800x600 pixels.

The programs you’ll need are Microsoft Paint and Power Point. So have them both open at the same time.

First step, right click this frame below and save it to your own hard disk.




On Power Point, insert the frame to the blank document (click ‘insert’ on the menu on the top, choose ‘Picture’ and ‘From File’). Normally the frame will be inserted to the middle of the page.




After that, insert your picture. If your picture’s size is 800x600 pixels, it will automatically inserted also to the middle of the page (which means to the middle of the frame as well). And it will look like this:



(it’s a picture of me and my great friend Beryl in Stockholm last year :-))


If happens that the picture is not right in the middle, you can use the ‘align’ function in Power Point, and you can also drag the picture to the side if you don’t want it to be in the middle, for example.


When you’re happy with the result, the next step is to select the whole picture then cut or copy it, then paste it to Microsoft Paint. Tips: I always have the MS Paint canvas smaller than the picture, so I won’t need to adjust the edges after pasting the picture.


That’s it, and then you can save the document in PNG format – so far I found that it is the most practical format, since BMP format would be quite heavy, and if you save it in JPG or GIF format the picture will not look so good, a bit deteriorated.






And, after pasting it to MS Paint, you can also decorate the pictures with more graphics! If you’re already member of Amreta’s Graphics, you know that you can open the websets in the browser, then right click on the graphics of your choice, click ‘copy’, and paste it on MS Paint and play with them :-) You don’t have to past it directly to the open MS Paint with the picture – you can open one more MS Paint in another window, then play with the graphics there first. Below is one example, the same picture as above, decorated with more graphics :-)




Hope you enjoy the tutorial and feel free to email me if you have question. This covers only the basic steps and certainly you can always explore your creativity and try more things. By the way, this was the results of many trials and errors so don't worry if you think it's a little bit difficult at the beginning ;-)


::ATTENTION TO MEMBERS::

If you find this fun, I will make this project the first competition for members next month. Let me know what you think :-)

[.fasting.month.]

During this fasting month my daily schedule is “tweaking” – just like when you talk about computer: “tweaking” means “making performance modifications to software or hardware”. Don’t you think it’s amusing when you think about it that way? The fact is, I have to wake up at around 3 a.m. to eat, which means, in order to have enough sleep, I’ve got to go to bed earlier. The break-fast is at around 6 p.m. which is exactly the time I finish work. Sadly it’s impossible to have the breakfast at home then. But it is the case of many people who have full time job, too – so I’m not alone :-D And eating out during the fasting month can be quite interesting. Many eating places, either street food stalls or in-building restaurants, very often serve special menus only available during this ‘season’.

Traditionally the break-fast starts with something sweet (ho-ho, that’s dessert for breakfast!), then gradually we eat ‘heavier’ meals afterward. In this case longing is good. I never find food seem more appetizing than during the fasting month! And the call for prayers at sunset, the time we can eat and drink again, sounds like the nicest music in my ears.

In my hometown Yogyakarta in Central Java, in the area where my mother and sister live in the old town, every day at around 3 p.m. along the main pedestrian street, you can find various traditional food (many of them available specially during the fasting month only) by local food sellers. When I was kid and still lived there, it was a ‘fasting month tradition’ of the area to bring out specialties of each house to the neighbourhood. I still remember, around 2 hours before the break-fast time, my mother would assigned me to ‘hunt’ for fried rice-noodle at Mrs Hud’s stall, warm guava soup at Granny Jonah’s, sweet sticky rice with coconut and palm sugar at Auntie Ani’s. The next day would be different food from different stalls. These traditional pancakes or cupcakes (mostly using palm sugar in the ingredients), black rice porridge, sweet sticky balls with palm sugar inside, banana sweet soup, boiled vegetable with kaffir-lime-leaves-scented peanut sauce…hmm yummy! I miss those food, really, especially this special time of the year. No wonder, the words about this tradition spread outside the neighbourhood and according to my mother now every day during Ramadan the main pedestrian street looks like a ‘food market’. It’s fun to hear that. Now it’s my turn to give my little sister an ‘assignment’ to hunt – not for food – but for pictures of the food market. I haven’t got any at the moment, and I guess I really need some to be posted in this blog :-D

In the meantime, I browsed for some pictures of the neighbourhood on the internet. And here they are:

These pictures are from YogYes’ website with a description about the neighbourhood.
http://www.yogyes.com/en/yogyakarta-tourism-object/places-of-interest/kauman/






These pictures I found on Flickr:

The Grand Mosque of Kauman

© Rachma Safitri. This picture is originally located here.




Typical arch entrance to the neighbourhood

© Bklanting. Original location here .

What’s so nice about this picture when I found it: see the house with green fences on the left? it’s the house where my mother and sister live! Quite interesting that I saw it on somebody’s picture on Flickr :-D

[.lovely.reminder.]

I was..so suprised when checking the gastronomy in Stockholm - Budgets and Cafés section on visitsweden.com...there on the right corner, I saw my own name - and my story about a day in Stockholm plus one picture I posted on Community of Sweden sometime ago! I got giddy, you know :-D

I guess it's kind of reminder that I have to write again now about my trips. If you're interested in traveling to Sweden, VisitSweden.com should be your first destination on the internet. And then if you want to read the stories and see the pictures by those who have been there, Community of Sweden is the right place to go. To be very honest it's been sometime since the last time I was logged in {blush}. Well, well, I love suprises, and it really is a lovely reminder :-D