Wednesday, February 19, 2014

FEBRUARY 19 - DAY THREE, WEEK FIVE

Happy Wednesday! Today is a bit of a review -
guess you could call it a "mish-mash".
Cinderella slipper by Anne Temple

If you were unable to create a bingo “card” prior to the deadline, you may still play and become eligible for one of the weekly prizes. Click here for how to play without a card (see No Bingo Card? And Weekly)



Wooo hooo! We are getting closer and closer to the end!

I surely hope that not everyone needs the same last word! That would not be good at all!

When a player does have Bingo, please be sure to email me immediately using the e-mail address on the right panel of the Sparkle Adventure Blog.

Today's words are:

137 Sparkle
109 Cayenne Star
174 Love
50 Flocking
72 Gallery

Cinderella Shoe by April Williams

A little recap about Flocking:

  • Using strips of Tear-ific Tape, or 2.5" Tear-ific Tape, or Super Adhesive Sheets, or Sticker paper, you can achieve similar results on your cards as you do with glitter. Striped or framed designs on your cards, burnished with Flocking or Sparkle N Soft will produce incredibly unique textures, and works with most styles from cutesy to artsy.
  • To dry emboss a prepared flocking background, it is not necessary to ink one side of the embossing folder - a fabulous and elegant look is achieved when it is all one color. The debossed portion of your flocked panel will have "shadows" to help achieve dimension.

A little recap about yesterday's preliminary thoughts for digital images:


  • Each printer is different, so it is important to experiment and see if your coloring medium will work with the ink in your Printer. I have a Canon MG8200 series, and copics work very well without smearing the ink at all. I can lightly watercolor with this ink, too, as long as the ink has set overnight and dried completely.
  • Some of the el cheapo printers and older printers work great with digitals - so it has nothing to do with the "age" of the technology or the cost of the printer itself.
  • You do not need Microsoft Word in order to play with digitals. Any word processor will work. 
  • While digital images may be printed directly from the download, they are usually "too large" to do that. Resize them in any word processor. If the actual digital image is resized and saved, then printed directly from it, the image is permanently that size, and you may not be able to enlarge it in the future. Any word processor may be used.
  • It does not matter if you are using a PC or Mac, both accept digitals.
  • Usually, I save my word processor document when placing digitals in it. I click on "SAVE" and choose a name identical to the digital image. That way, the computer files both of them together, making it very easy to locate if I want to print more of that image.
Clarification about "what is a digital"

Several responses yesterday indicated that they preferred having layers, using lots of glitter, and that is why they do not care for digitals.

My confession is that my hands are increasingly unable to grasp stamps and press with them. I drop them and make lots of mistakes and it is quite painful. So I use digitals with LOTS of layers.

Mermaid Kisses with digital image, embossing powders and glitter.
I feel sheepish to admit this is actually a digital colored with Copics. It has lots of texture, layers, embellishments and embossing powder on it. All of the glittery parts are embossing powder, and all the embossing powder (on the mermaid, in the distressed areas of the die cuts, and in the background layers) is adhered with either VersaMark or VersaMarker. No one would know that this was not stamped with Memento Ink and colored with Copics.

So fear not! Our inks, glitters and embossing powders will not go unused when "stamping with" digi images!

How To Better View YouTube videos:

VIEWING VIDEOS: At this time SNS only has one tutorial in their Tips and Techniques section for digitals. It is a video. I find viewing the video there too small. There are two other options. In the bottom right of the Video square there is the word "YouTube" and also an icon of four corners. All YouTube videos have this on their "windows". You can click on the word "YouTube" and it will take you to the actual YouTube page where a slightly larger viewing is automatically available. Or we can click on the "4 corners" icon. This will increase the size of the video to our monitor/screen size. It may be blurry if it has enlarged too much. Click on one of the corners (often the right bottom corner of your screen), and pull/drag inward, to decrease the size until it is clear, without the blurriness.

A "General" Search Technique Tip for You:

Amber asked a very good question about "searching" the Tips and Techniques Page to make finding techniques by name a little easier. Such an outstanding idea, but unfortunately, too costly for a small business like SNS to invest in at this time.

HOWEVER - May I please share a time-saving tip I use ALL THE TIME?
When viewing a document (word, pdf, etc) or visiting a web page their is a time-saving way of wading through all those words without having to read them.

For PCs - use CONTROL F
For Macs - us COMMAND F (if an old keyboard, use the "apple key" and F).

The keys need to be depressed at the same time.

For example, when visiting the SNS Tips and Techniques page, let's say you want to find out how to make a SPINNER CARD. Go to the T&T page, do the COMMAND F and a little box will pop up (in Chrome it is in the top right - in Firefox it is the bottom left - in Safari it is top right). It is small and just big enough for you to type in a word or two. I find usually one word or a partial word is best. So do your CONTROL F (F for find), and type in Spinner. Some of the browsers will tell you how many times the word appears on a page. Others just provide "arrows" for you to click on to scroll to the words.

The actual word must appear on the page for the CONTROL F to work. So if you are trying to find "digital images" it might be best to type in "digi" and the words that contain that will be highlighted for you.

I hope this helps. As I mentioned, I use it all the time, and have discovered very few people know about this time-saving tool.

Tips and Techniques:

Sparkle N Sprinkle also has a section for "other techniques" which are popular with papercrafters. We tried to make these techniques user friendly for SNS customers who enjoy using our products but want to use other popular products as well. So you may discover that there are some ideas in the "Other Techniques" section that work well with the techniques listed under glitters, flockings and embossing powders. These are techniques that we feel you can also use embossing powders with, or embellish with glitters.
Today's Challenge Questions:

There are a total of 15 opportunities to have your name submitted to Random.org on Saturday. Be sure to send an email to SNS_Bingo@tampabay.rr.com with your name in the Subject Sentence followed by the date of the challenge questions.

1) (1 entry) True or False - you must have "Microsoft Word" on your computer in order to use digital images.

2) (1 entry) True or False - you cannot use digitals if you have a Mac. They can only be used on PC.

3) (3 entries) What will CONTROL F for PC (or COMMAND F for Mac) allow you to do?

4) (1 entry) True or False - digital works of art means that there are no layers or dimensional products used.

5) (1 entry) True or False - There is only one size of video to view with YouTube videos.

6) (1 entry) True or False - only new technology printers can be used with digital stamps

7) (1 entry) True or False - To dry emboss flocking or Sparkle N Soft, one side of the embossing folder must be prepared with ink.

8) (1 entry) Is it wise to occasionally "save" the digital images on your computer to a back-up CD, DVD, or thumb drive?

9) (5 entries) What are the two ways of searching for items in the SNS on-line store?

Good Luck, everyone!
hugs,
de



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