Tutorials

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DIY valance

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We finally got around to making valances for the bedroom. The hubby constructed the boxes out of foam insulation board. It's extremely lightweight so you can construct very large pieces that don't require massive hardware to hang. We just put two small L-shaped brackets and set the boxes on top.

We chose upholstery fabric as our covering and used Aleene's Fast Grab Tacky Glue to attach it to the foam board. For a little extra security I inserted some dressmaker pins at an angle on the interior fabric folds. We are pretty darned proud of our new window treatment.v

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valance2.jpg
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Color palette generators

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Color palette generators are great way to explore color harmonies and get inspiration for new combinations. Two of my favorites are Kuler and COLOURlovers. Browse existing palettes, create your own from scratch or sample pixels from photos to generate swatches. You can download palettes for use in Illustrator and get the color mixes in HEX, RGB, CMYK and more.

Kuler

Kuler

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers

Extracting images from Word Documents

I often get client files in which images are embedded in the document and need to be edited. Thanks to Devin King I found a way to do it! If you use a Mac and have iWork here's the process: 

1) Open the Word document in Pages.

2) Save the document as a Pages document.

3) Now, change the file name extension from ".pages" to ".zip"

4) You will be asked to confirm this change. Select "Use .zip"

5) Now Control-click or Right-click on the newly compressed file and choose "Open With" and select "Archive Utility"

6) A new folder will be created that will contain all the images and more extracted from the document.