Wednesday, May 15, 2013

My Alternative to Photoshop.

For the past few weeks my mom and I have been planning an engagement party for my brother and his fiance when they come to town in a few weeks. We decided to go all out and have invites and place cards ect. So I have been working on coming up with cute invites for their party, and it was fun and difficult!


I don't own photoshop, in reality I have no use for it or at least time to learn it and use it properly! But to make the card we were going for I needed something that would let me layer images and input my own fonts ect. So after much trial and error one day with different software I discovered that Powerpoint works perfect for these types of things!!

I am a windows girl, so I love all microsoft office tools, I personally think they are intuitive and easy to use! So I thought I would give you all a few tips/tricks that I have learned, for those of you that enjoy the occasional collage or blog button ect but don't have photoshop!

I don't want to make this post tooo long so I am just going to start with the basics of why I think it is a great tool and then I will get into a few subtopics in some up-coming posts!

1. You Can Resize your Slide to Any-Size to Make a Template
              This is a really great feature if you are working on making a button or picture for you blog. There         are tons of sites that give you a size guide you would need for all things bloggy related and you can resize your slide to fit those so you get the best quality!













2. You Can Save Your Slide as a jpg
           within each slide you can layer images and text, when  you get it to be perfect you can save it as a jpg so it is easier to import that layered image in future slides!


















3. You can Import Many Fonts
             Bloggers love using a variety of fonts, and there are tons of sources out there to download free ones. I used to think I could only use those in photoshop but that is not the case! You can import different fonts in to power-point with a few easy steps!

Use this how to guide: Add New Fonts to Use with Office

4. You Can Lock, Center, Move, Overlap items super easy - without having to "insert layer"
          Ive used gimp before (the free alternative to photoshop) and I have found the layer thing to be super hard to grasp. I just don't get it. I love that in powerpoint it is super easy to adjust your layers, it doesn't take tons of time!

5. Duplicating Slides
        When I was making the card for my brother I found this tool to be key! Once I knew where I wanted text and images I duplicated that image and could play around with different fonts. That way the card was the same but a quick fix gave it a new look and you could view them side by side!

I hope this was a helpful post. Please comment with questions and opinions, id love to continue this post with a few other more in depth tips if requested!

Monday, May 13, 2013

Friend Connect!

It's Tuesday which means it's time for the Friend Connect Blog Hop!
I am pretty excited to be co-hosting this week!!!
It's the time to meet new friends and find new blogs. You can choose to follow the cohosts in whatever way is best for YOU! Here are some of my favorite ways: GFC, BlogLovin', HelloCotton, RSS, Twitter, Facebook.
Ok, so let's get to the party, shall we?
RULES are simple:
1. Follow your host 
The First link below
2. Follow your co-hosts 
The Next 8 links below
3. Link up below using your main blog url not a specific post.
4. Make sure to visit some of the blogs in the link up and follow them 
and if you want to leave them a comment, I'm sure they'd appreciate that as well.
5. Tweet about this blog hop
6. Share about this blog hop by grabbing a button and putting it on your sidebar!
There are cohost spots available! Email Melissa if you're interested at melissa@thelifeofanotsoordinarywife.com

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