Thursday, March 25, 2021

A picture of my late cat playing guitar with his teeth

Hello and welcome to Do Try This at Home!

If you came here looking for teacher resources or digital scrapbooking supplies, please visit my TPT store here.

If you are looking for reprints try here.

If you are looking for the Bayou Brew on 90.1 KPFT Houston, look on Facebook here.  

If you came for the beer bottle cap table it's right here

If you're just here to browse and don't care about any of that stuff, here's a blurry picture of my late cat playing the guitar. Yes, he played with his teeth just like Jimmy Hendrix.



Monday, March 15, 2021

In Which I Proclaim My Love for Pixel Scrapper

The Do Try This at Home corner of the internet has been through many iterations since its debut in 2006 but as many different directions as I've taken it, people have stuck around clicking and reading. 

For some reason. 

I don't know why.

It's definitely not for the silly signs anymore. Although for old time's sake, here's a silly sign:


That dumpster door is NEVER shut!

These days I am less inclined to post about silly signs and more likely to post about scrapbooking stuff or teaching supplies or whatever. 

In any case when Thani from Pixel Scrapper asked if I'd be interested in partnering, I figured why not? Why gain focus NOW of all times?!? 

JUST KIDDING! But not really. Because if you've been reading this blog for the past FIFTEEN YEARS you know that I have maintained a degree of professionalism that...oh no wait. That must have been someone else's blog. 

So now that we've established that this blog is neither professional NOR focused, we can get back to Thani from Pixel Scrapper. 

When he asked me about partnering with Pixel Scrapper, I made up an acceptance speech in my head and then walked on stage and...no that's not right either. What I actually thought was, "I post about Pixel Scrapper all the time! Why would this be any different?!?!" And then I went on to think up all the reasons I love Pixel Scrapper, which are numerous:

First off, without even paying a cent, just from having an account, you can get five free digital downloads a day. And Pixel Scrapper has really generous commercial use terms.

See the little doodle border on this worksheet I made for Passover? It came from Pixel Scrapper:

Passover worksheet

And then today when I needed to make a thank you card, Pixel Scrapper is where I went for graphics.

Of course I use it for the intended digital scrapbooking too. Here are a couple of scrapbook pages I've made using Pixel Scrapper graphics:




I had to go back to 2018 because so many of my personal digital scrapbooking pages include other people's kids. 

But these two layouts only have MY kid who started life as a photo prop and isn't about to stop now. Although these days I generally have to bribe her with chocolate to get her to pose in front of the camera.

Back to Pixel Scrapper. They have SO many kits for digital scrapbooking, cards, basically any paper craft you participate in. Check out the kits here: https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/browse/kits.

The forums have helped me learn so much about digital scrapbooking and using Adobe Illustrator and even taught me some new tricks in Photoshop. Some absolutely amazing designers hang out in the forums and willing to help pass along their expertise.

There are forums for challenging yourself such as the layout challenges or the designer challenges. I frequently take a look at the layout challenges when I am starting a scrapbook page just to get ideas.

So anyway, that's a lot of the stuff I love about Pixel Scrapper. 

Now I'm unclear if I have to give a disclaimer about being offered downloads in exchange for posting this piece. 

And so my disclaimer is, if you are allergic to penicillin, amoxicillin, or bee stings, please do not take medical advice from me. I know nothing about those things. 

No wait...that isn't my disclaimer. 

My disclaimer is that I was offered downloads in exchange for posting about Pixel Scrapper. But I do visit that website at least a few times a week and everything I just said I would have posted anyway.