FREE FONT FRIDAY: caviar dreams

Hello nuggets!! Happy Friday! I hope that you are like me and have the day off from your usual responsibility--days off from classes make me SO happy! I have been having the most productive morning in a long while, answering emails, doing design, lots of fun, busy things!

My family is in Michigan for the weekend and we're taking an outing apple picking later this afternoon. When I was younger and living in Minnesota, we used to go apple picking every fall and have them make our apples into cider there. So much fun! But there aren't really apple orchards in NC so we haven't done that in a long time.

But switching gears, I'd like to share with you one of my very favorite simple fonts. I love using Caviar Dreams for subtle things because it's so easily readable but still interesting, especially with the rotated 'e'. Love that!

 



 

To install:

1. Click the image to download.


2. Click show in folder, or open up whatever folder your downloads go into. Hint: it might be called downloads.


3. If zipped, right-click and click Extract, then enter.


4. When that opens, right click on the file (either TrueType or OpenType) and click install. Done!

If you like this font, please pin it! I know lots of you have design, blog or font boards and I would really appreciate the love! You can use my little buttons to the left or the hover on the image to pin it. You're the greatest :)

And in case a free font isn't exciting enough for you, I get to talk about one of my FAVORITE bloggers of allll time--Amber of And Yes to Joy! Isn't that the cutest blog name? Not to mention, she has a super cute design--she did it herself!



 

Isn't it gorgeous? Amber is so talented. She shares ahhdorable freebies + printables (like this one!) which I just love. One of my favorite things about Amber is how positive and inspiring she is. Personally, I like to be sarcastic and I kind of sort of really like to complain when life hits me the wrong way. Amber takes a super happy spin on everything from learning to love your blog to learning to have joy to simple things like the seasons of the year!

Check out this lovely lady all over the internet: facebook // twitter // bloglovin' // instagram.

I promise--you'll love her!

 

finding rest in the crazy.

Lately, life has just been hitting me hard. I hate to say that because I know there are so many people who are being hit even harder by life, but the daily grind has been a bit much for me. Lately it feels like there's always a paper to write, someone to call, an application to turn in and a miles-long to do list.

And that busyness is just part of life and the stage that I'm in. It's okay that I'm busy. But I'm struggling to maintain my level of positivity when I get only a few hours of sleep a night and don't have even a spare hour to do something just for fun.

This week, I'm making just one goal. I need to rest. I've been driving myself to do everything that my sleep and mental rest is basically nonexistent. I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to make rest happen, but I'm going to make it a conscious goal to rest my mind whenever possible, even if that's just for a few minutes here and there. I'm going to look into some meditative breathing and things like that to deal with stress. If any of you have advice on that, please comment below!

Oh and one happy thing...I got to hang out with this little piglet this weekend. :)



Thanks to everyone who has left comments on my last few posts. You are nice and you are important. I like you.

How do you rest your mind when life is busy?

 

September in Favorites

Hi friends. To start out this month, I want you to know that I'll be posting a little less frequently until maybe Christmas. This is just a hectic period of my life and I'm learning to balance classes and hobbies. Expect 2-3 posts a week. Sometimes more and sometimes less. I hope you'll understand that life will always come first and I hope you feel the freedom to take the same liberties with your own blog if you have one.

But back to my favorites of this month:



First off, I've started offering premade blog templates as a way to redo your blog on a budget! I'm so excited about this and I hope you are too. Also this month, I shared two easy peasy Photoshop tutorials. In the first, I taught you how to create a Pinterest-style collage out of your favorite pictures. You can use this on your blog to display pictures or make a poster of family pictures or your favorite quotes! Second, I taught you how to make personalized notecards. In one of my favorite posts of the month, I shared a little lesson on happiness. Also favorites: 5 Design Resources for Bloggers // Free Social Media Buttons! // [free wallpaper] be the best you that you can be!



This month, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini which was both incredibly painful to read and incredibly beautiful. It's a wonderful book but I can't recommend it because it's so intense. Be sure you know what it's about before reading it. I also started The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman for our Busy Blogger's Book Club. If you haven't joined, you still have time! We'll start chatting about it on the fifteenth!

Fire Escape // Gregory Alan Isakov
Romulus // Sufjan Stevens
C'est L'Amour // Rosi Golan

woods from alohahoran on 8tracks Radio.

easy peasy photoshop: personalized notecards

First off--the winners of the design giveaway are Cara H. and Aimee W. You'll be receiving an email soon! If you did not win, don't cry! Premade templates are on sale for $15 until midnight tonight so don't miss your chance! Or if you're just too unique, how about something custom? I'd love to make some pretty for you!

This post was originally shared on the Whale and Wasp.

Today, I'm going to be sharing an installment in my series: "Easy Peasy Photoshop". I think lots of people get intimidated by Photoshop--but there's lots of fun things you can make with just a few basic skills! So even if you've never touched (/clicked) Photoshop before, I gotchu covered.

Specifically, I'm going to show you how to make personalized stationary. Super, right? I loooove writing letters and notes to people, and I think personalizing it adds a special little touch.

#1. Decide on a size. To keep things simple, I'm gonna make a plain 3x5 notecard. Open up Photoshop, click File>>New. When it gives you size options, it probably says pixels. Change that to inches and put in your desired size. Change your resolution to 111 pixels/inch. This will make 3x5 look pretty true to size on your screen.

EXPERT TIP: If you wanted to make really high quality note cards, you should put your resolution on at least 300 pixels/inch. But that gets a little tricky so don't try that if this is your first project.



#2: Go to View>>Rulers, and check it. Then, press 'T', just the letter on your keyboard. That'll get your text editor going. Line up your cursor just under 275 pixels on your top ruler (i.e. in the middle) and click.

#3: Choose a font + size up on the top leftish. I've recommended some fun free fonts down at the bottom.

#4: On the top of the screen, you'll see a little square that is probably black. If you want to change the color, click the top one and choose a color--this will be your text color. Right to the left of the color chooser, make sure your text is centered.



#5: Type away! You can choose to do your full name, initials, monogram or just a little message! If you need, you can highlight the text and change the size. Or if you need to move the text, hover below the text (your cursor will become and arrow) and drag it around.

#6: If you want, you can make lines by using the type tool again and holding underscore (Shift + -).



#7: Go to your layers manager and click the little arrow on the top right (under the 'x'). Click Merge Visible. Then, click Select>>All and copy the selection. (This is the layers manager.)



#8: Open up a Word document and paste. If you made a 3x5 notecard, you can fit 3 on a page if you make your margins smaller.

#9: Print! That's all there is to it! Well, and cut them out. But you can handle that. For best results, print on cardstock or a slightly heavier paper.

Now admire your pretty skills.

Will you make these personalized notecards? What would you like to learn how to make in photoshop?

I used Contribute font in this tutorial.

5 Design Resources for Bloggers

Hey dollfaces. As you know, I'm on vacation(ish) in the NC mountains and am a little too busy for this blog right now. But don't worry, I've got Kate here to give you some tips on designing your blog. She's giving away all my secrets! :) 


Hey friends! I'm Kate from over at Diaries of an Essex Girl where I talk about travel, health, love and all kinds of random nonsense. I am excited to be sharing something with you all today on Allie's blog, isn't she just a pretty cool lady? I'm pretty sure we can all admit to thinking dinosaurs are pretty rocking - amiright?

Blog designing is something I've actually been into for years but as times have changed, so have blogs and although now it is less time consuming - it requires a lot more tools that just Photoshop and somewhere to code. In fact, you don't need either of those things anymore if you don't want to or know how to use them. I've compiled a list for you of the 5 top resources you need to start using now to make your blog designing that little bit more seamless and the best part is - they are all free!

1. Design Seeds

Design Seeds is an awesome website for designers because it has thousands of colour palettes to choose from. Each palette has six colours that compliment each other beautifully and are inspired by different themes or images. Some of my favourite categories are Flora, Autumn and Nature. No matter your blog niche, writing style or personal colour preferences - you will find the perfect palette on Design Seeds!

2. Browserling

Have you ever coded an awesome layout and then had someone tell you it looks crappy in XYZ browser? No? Well it sucks. Browserling allows for cross-browser testing so all you have to do is type your URL in and it shows you how it looks in all available browsers. This way, you can spot an error BEFORE you share the blog design with the Interwebs and have someone tell you your design sucks for them. Winning.

3. Image Maps

If you already know how to Image Map, that's awesome. If you don't, let me tell you how and welcome you to the world of prettier designs! All you need to do is upload your image, create a shape around the part you want to link, enter the link and then move on to the next shape. Done. This can create lots of different links on one image without them overlapping - great for pretty navigational bars and social media icons.

4. Design Your Way

When browsing Google one day, I stumbled across an incredible page - Big fat collection of free resources for designers. I mean, the name alone sells it right? This page is full of textures, patterns, brushes, themes, fonts, social media icons, vectors, EVERYTHING you could possibly want. All for free to download right this very second. Happy browsing!

5. Pic Monkey

Maybe I'm a little late to the party with this one, as I believe Pic Monkey is pretty popular with bloggers. However, I really think it's an important one to share because it shows that you do not need Photoshop to create pretty images for your blog. I've seen some amazing tutorials online for Pic Monkey on how to make navigational bars (with Image Maps!), advertising buttons, bio images and page headers. On their blog, Pic Monkey shared the Top Ten Tutorials for using their service to pretty much design your whole blog. Can't ask for more than that can you?
Here's hoping I've shared at least one tool with you today you didn't know about - unless you are a total blog designing superstar and in that case, lets hear about your favourite design tools!

What tools do you use to design your blog? Sharing is caring!

FREE FONT FRIDAY: olivier

Hi friends.

Happy Friday! I hope you all have had productive and happy weeks and that you're ready for your two days of rest! My week was cahh-razy getting all my makeup work done before my trip next week but I did it! Go me.

I've also been doing lots of design lately, which just makes me so super happy! Most recently, I did a full redo for Poverty Luxe this past week--a design featuring mustard yellows and charcoal greys with cute scallop details. It's simple but I'm loving how it turned out!

On that note, if you're looking for design, I may be your girl! The next FIVE people who order the Tango blog redesign (includes a custom header, social media buttons, an ad button, size of your choosing, a signature/follow bar + a welcome blurb!) can get it for $25. And yes, they're usually $50. Go crazy folks. (Use code fiveonfriday.)

In the process of my design, I've become acquainted with close to a hundred different fonts that I use. The nice things is that the right font can convey a whole different feeling than another one might. And lots of fonts are completely free! So every two or three weeks, I'll be sharing with you some of my favorite free fonts!

And of course, I had to sneak in a little Marie Curie in there. Y'all know I love her. You go Marie.

To install:

1. Click the image to download.


2. Click show in folder, or open up whatever folder your downloads go into. Hint: it might be called downloads.


3. If zipped, right-click and click Extract, then enter.


4. When that opens, right click on the file (either TrueType or OpenType) and click install. Done!

That's all there is too it! I hope you all enjoy this font and make oodles of noodles of pretty things!

As always, if you liked this, please pin it! That would make me one happy girl.

What fonts do you love? What pretty things do you make with fonts?

3 weird music genres that aren't actually that weird.

This post was originally posted on Amanda K by the Bay.

So if you hang out around these parts, you know I'm all about owning my quirks (and you owning yours!), whether that includes my obsession with dinosaurs or tendency to sing really loud in the car!

One of said quirks is that I listen to weird music. But like good weird! When it comes to music, don't restrict yourself to a genre. Don't say, "I like rap!" or "I like pop" when there's so much more you probably haven't given a chance yet! So today for example, I'm gonna give you three kinds of music and I challenge you to give them a try. They sounded weird to me at first too, but there's beauty in trying something new!

Example one. Celtic rock. Wanted to feel classy and badass and dramatic all at the same time? This is for you. And I don't drink, but these sure would make a heck of a drinking song. Bagpipes can be awesome, man. Especially with those electric guitars. (More here.)

 

Start with: If I Ever Leave This World Alive // Flogging Molly (sorry, weirdish grossish name, but it's good.)Siobhan // The Tossers Old Black Rum // Great Big Sea Follow Me Up To Carlow // The Young Dubliners

 

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Example two. Electro-swing. Stick with me guys, just try them once! This is 1920s style swing, remixed with some techno. I don't like techno, but I love this kind of music. Start off easy with a cover of Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" and go on from there. The first two both have rad, retro videos too.

 

Start with: Thrift Shop // Postmodern Jukebox Christopher Columbus // Nuno Endo Bad Boy Good Man // Tape Five

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Example three, the weirdest of them all: Gregorian chants. So maybe this isn't music, but it's so relaxing to listen to, especially after a long stressful day. Like all of the above, give it a chance!

 

Gregorian Chants How about that! Very La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, right?

So what did you think? Weird/worthless or weird/wonderful? Do you have any weird music likes? If you like things like this (or I do post "normal" music too), head over to my blog! You can see more playlists here, here and here. And be sure to know you're coming from here--leave your blog and I'll check you out!