My interest in crystals has been ramping up lately. The more I learn about the different gems, the more fascinated I become. I’ve got to create when inspiration hits, which it did after a recent Woman of Size Podcast episode.
In this post, I share the graphic, provide a brief summary of each stone, and give credit where credit is due – to the sources.
The Graphic
The Crystals
Selenite
Selenite is a great crystal for skin conditions. It amplifies healing and pulls away negative energies and blockages that cause that particular skin condition.
Turquoise
Touted as the master healer, turquoise has detoxifying and anti-inflammatory properties, helping to reduce acne breakouts.
Azurite with Malachite
Azurite with Malachite, a combination stone, is a powerful conductor of energy and a powerful healing force for the body. It is an excellent stone for treating all skin conditions.
Black Onyx
Black Onyx is a soothing, cooling stone. Use this stone to help fight infection and calm inflammation. This crystal helps to rebuild confidence and self-esteem.
The Wrap Up
Do you have any crystal recommendations for reducing acne? I’d love to hear them!
In the meantime, I’m working on a few more crystal-related graphics, so be sure to sign up for my newsletter to stay in the loop!
I really enjoy business card projects. Every design is different and comes with a unique set of challenges and considerations. I love the process of figuring out what the client wants, what they need, and how I can use my design skills to make it happen.
In this post, I detail the design process for Rustic Treehouse’s business card, including what went well and what could be better. I learned a lot on this one and am excited to see how they look when they come back from the printer.
Client: Rustic Treehouse
My talented sister, Emily, and her wife, Missy have figured out how to successfully turn their passion and talent for repurposing used wood into beautiful, handpainted signs, like these cuties:
Their business is growing organically and they need a basic business card that works in a variety of situations. The primary purpose is to include with completed orders. New business is a secondary objective – how awesome is that?!?
Logo
They have a logo that they love, and I have to say, I love it too. Until now, Missy had been hand painting it on the back of the signs, and in some cases, burning it in.
When I saw the wood burned version of the logo, I was excited to turn the image from a photo into a digital logo that they can use on future promotional material.
I asked Missy to text me the photo. Once I received it, I uploaded it Adobe Capture, a fun app I’ve been playing around with for a few months.
Say you were walking down the street and saw something that inspired you so much that you had to take a picture. Capture can be used to, well, capture, whatever it is about the image that inspires you – perhaps a color or pattern for example. In this case, I wanted to extract the shape, and it took less than a minute to do it!
Capture is compatible with other programs in the CC Suite, so I plopped it right into Photoshop, where I knew I could quickly transform the background from white to transparent.
Image
Early on, I floated the idea of using an image of wood instead of a solid colored background. They loved the idea, so I provided them with a few samples to keep the project moving. This was the crowd favorite after our initial design conversation:
Source: Adobe Stock
Imagine my delight when Missy shared this image of a Rustic Treehouse workspace:
It just feels more authentic, which makes sense, because it is. I was thrilled to replace the stock photo with an image that truly represents the business.
Fonts
Fonts were the most challenging aspect of this design.
The client uses a beautiful cursive script in most designs, and I wanted to honor that by incorporating a similar font into the business card. Early on in the process, we decided to use Playlist Script as the attention-getting font, but font pairing options were tabled until the last minute.
As if font pairings aren’t complex enough, I was too excited about using Capture to transform a photo into a digital logo to notice the R and T, which are a far cry away from a script font.
While the idea of pairing seemingly random fonts moderately inflamed my OCD, I wanted to get all the information on the card before playing around with the fonts. Before I could get back to fonts, the client fell in love with the back of the business card. If they’re happy, I’m happy!
Back of Rustic Treehouse Business Card
The front of the card, however, was a different story. It took some time to find a font that we could all live with, and I hope I can revisit the font sitch at some point. For now, this is the front of the card:
This Side Hustle has the Potential to be Much, Much More
The rate of organic growth for new sign requests is insane. What started out as a fun hobby for my favorite sign making pair has turned into an almost overwhelming obligation. I have a whole business plan designed in my head, and they know I’m here when they’re ready to move to the next level.
Tutorial Opportunity
They put a lot of time and love into each sign, and I’m inspired to document their process. This would allow me to build my video/tutorial skills, while delivering a solid marketing asset if they should ever want or need it.
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my blog (on the right hand side of the screen) to learn with me. Check out Rustic Treehouse on Facebook to see more of their inspired designs.
After spending too much time researching how to build my graphic design skill set, I decided to do what every piece of research recommended: just start doing it.
Many of the articles I read suggested re-creating designs and images that already exist. I’ve never been short of ideas, and I was hesitant to go this route at first, but ultimately, I decided it was better than what I was working on, which was not a gosh darn thing.
Luckily, when I looked over at my ever growing “interesting things” pile, Eeboo’s Good Citizenship Flash Cards were sitting right on top. I picked three of my favorites and pinned them up on the bulletin board above my desk.
I think this is the debut of my Nessie bulletin board pins! I picked these up during a recent trip to the National Building Museum. They have a sweet gift shop that I highly recommend!
I picked the elevator card to be one of my first because it’s good advice that I’ve never really followed – I’m more of a “close, close, clOSE, CLOSE” button pusher.
This reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of Radiolab. They provide some very interesting information about the Close Button around 4 minutes in.
Concept
I’m going to try to do these using extraterrestrials instead of animals. The elevator card was easy enough to turn into an abduction scene, so naturally, that’s the route I went.
With the exception of the starry background on the front of the card, these images are from Adobe Stock. I believe the starry background is from Pixabay, but I downloaded it a long time ago and I’m not 100%.
I used photoshop to remove the backgrounds from the three individuals (2 aliens (which are different species/races if you ask me) + 1 white dude). I’m getting pretty comfortable with the magic eraser and background eraser tool.
As much as I’d like to switch it up and learn new programs, I’m still learning how to use Canva and it provides me with all the functionality I need at this point.
Once I uploaded each of the images, it was just a matter of adjusting them on the page.
Lessons Learned
When removing the background of an image, choose one with a solid background
It’s a lot easier to remove an all-white background from an image. Let’s just say I wish I would have watched this 3 minute Adobe Photoshop tutorial about 16 hours before I did.
Save Image As PNG to retain transparent background
Once the background is removed, save image as PNG (TIFF / GIF work too) to retain transparent background. Saving as a JPEG will just save the same image you were working with – colored background and all.
I need to keep building my Photoshop skills
This was a really good start, but I want to be able to do more. For example, I’d really like the running white dude to be dirty, like he’d been there for awhile. It would be great to make it look like he had a bloody nose, which is creepy, I know.
Pay attention to the details
As I put together the images for this post, I noticed that the back of the original card has a border on it. I need to be done with this project, so I let it go for now. Next time I want to be sure I incorporate details like that into my design.
The same goes with the shape of the card. They have rounded corners and I totally missed that detail.
I need to keep building my Canva skills
I don’t know how to create these with rounded corners, so I need to see if Canva has the functionality to create images with rounded corners.
Crystal Ball Time
Stay tuned for my next interpretation, which will either be the Recycling Card or what I call the “squealer” card. I can’t even wait – I have mixed feelings about the quality of this advice:
Want to know when the next one is done? Be sure to subscribe to my blog (on the right hand side of the page) to stay in the loop!
A few years ago, I was looking for some images to include in an eLearning module. I wanted to incorporate visuals into some of the more text heavy slides, but didn’t have a budget. I thought it would be easy breezy to find free images to use.
Man, was I wrong.
At the time, free images were scarce. I spent countless hours searching, but in the end, I used my personal account to purchase stock photos.
Thanks to today’s collaborative and open resource sharing culture, free high quality stock assets are easy to find, if you know where to look.
Free Stock Photos
In my first obsessive search for free images, I found this super helpful article that lists 14 Free Stock Photo Websites.
These articles provide so many options for finding free images that it seems silly to compile my own list. Instead, I’ll just highlight a few of my favorites.
I’ve never met, or even talked to, photographer Ryan McGuire, but I really enjoy his images and the way he views the world. Many of his photos are offered as free images on Piktochart, which I thought was interesting.
I can always find something that inspires me or makes me laugh, like this praying mantis smoking a ciggy:
This is a cool and easy to navigate site that I like a lot. They hooked me with this shot of a beautiful blue volkswagen beetle (sigh):
This list compiled by Adobe Stock is similar, but includes sources that offer additional free assets, such as video and illustrations.
Adobe Captivate Asset Store
This is pretty specific to eLearning developers that use Adobe Captivate, so I won’t dwell on it too much. I learned about this resource during one of my research binges for a class I was taking. It was perfect timing, and it helped me provide specific instructions in the reboot of a storyboard I was working on at the time.
Free Images
These next few sites may be considered something other than images, but I’m not exactly sure how else to classify them. All I know is they’re super cool and I’ve lost time – lots of time – geeking out and downloading my heart out.
This site requires a bit of patience to navigate, but I’ve found it to be well worth it. For example, I found this gem that I plan to use as the foundation for one of my next tattoos:
As I put together this post, I included Vintage Printable as an afterthought – I had actually forgot about it! When I went to find the site, I came across this Vice article that is a must read if you’re into vintage posters. I spent about a minute looking around before I found this gem:
Have fun exploring these sites! Keep in touch with any suggestions or additions to the list. Feel free to share this with your pals!
I’ll keep these free resource posts coming, so be sure to subscribe to my blog if you like what you see.
I struggle with colors, especially when it comes to matching. Without any formal training, it’s been tough to know what really works and what colors to use if I’m trying to achieve a specific purpose, like motivating learners or gaining subscribers.
I’ve spent countless hours obsessing over colors and have found several helpful resources that help take some of the guess work out of it for me. Hopefully one of my four favs will save some color-challenged designer from the eyestrain that I’ve come to associate with color matching.
The feature that I use the most on this site is the palette. You simply choose two colors that you want to work with and voilà – you’ve got yourself a palette! Since I invested in Camtasia for school, as well as to build my video editing skills, I made my first very short, very silent tutorial on how this baby works:
Besides the palette feature, the icons and colors sections are worth checking out as well.
This site is more inspirational for me than it is functional, but I spend a lot of time on here looking at beautiful colors. If you love a famous work of art, this site might be able to provide you with the color palette. For example, one of my favorites is The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai, and with the click of a button, this site provided me with an inspired color palette to use as I wish:
I became enamored with Neil Patel a few years ago when I stumbled upon the guide that he co-wrote with Bronson Taylor, The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking. It really spoke to me and helped me uncover my natural ability to understand consumer behavior. I subscribed to his blog and was really excited when I heard about another guide that he co-wrote with Rita Puri, The Complete Guide to Understanding Consumer Psychology.
Chapter Four, The Psychology of Color is amazing and is one that I look at on a regular basis. For example, this is just one section of an infographic that conveys a lot of super helpful information:
Source: Patel & Puri, The Complete Guide To Understanding Consumer Psychology
I took what I learned from designing the first business card in my series, networking like a shark, and got to work on the next one.
I minimized both screens (Canva and Colordot) and put them side-by-side to use Colordot to find a green close to one on the image on the back of the card.
Please let me know if you have any recommendations for color matching resources – I’d love to hear what you use and how you use it so I can give it a try!
We’ve been talking about updating the CPD logo for awhile, but it hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, a great networking opportunity made business cards a priority. I used the current logo as a point of reference.
current logo
Considerations: Heidi incorporates a lot of blues into her designs, and loves those clean lines
I wanted the design of her business card to represent her distinct style, and here’s what I came up with.
I have used Vistaprint in the past, so I knew they could turn the job around quickly and deliver a decent quality product. Plus, they almost always have a sale.
After the cards were ordered, we both realized that there was one little detail we had missed: the website was wrong. Luckily, Heidi was able to work some sort of web magic to resolve the issue.
When the cards arrived, the fonts were smaller than they looked on the screen, but otherwise, they looked great!
Lessons Learned:
Logos are Complex I spent a lot of time researching logos and logo design before deciding that logos are far more complex than I thought. Perhaps I’ll go into it another time, but it’s worth noting as one of my major takeaways from this project.
Be Careful with Font Sizes
In particular, modern fonts on printed material. Next time, I won’t order 500 cards the first round, no matter how enticing Vistaprint makes the offer.
Confirm the Details
It did occur to me that I should get up from the computer and take a 5 minute break before uploading and sending to the printer, but we both just wanted to get the project done. Next time I’ll trust my instincts and try to have fresh eyes when I finalize the design.
Capture is compatible with other programs in the CC Suite, so I plopped it right into Photoshop, where I knew I could quickly transform the background from white to transparent.
