Happy post-Christmas!

Happy post-Christmas! I hope you had a wonderful and restful Christmas.

So, now I can finally post what I made my mom for Christmas!

A flying hedgehog:


And magnets:


Tahdah!

Merry Christmas!

Whether you're having a Christmas full of old traditions, or a Christmas full of new ones, I hope you're having a lovely day!

Merry Christmas!

Creating Gift Certificates for your Facebook fan page

I just made a gift certificate for my etsy shop!

It's available on the Fibrous facebook page or on the right hand column of this blog. It's a paypal gift certificate, so it will be easy to use during the etsy checkout.

If you run an online shop and want to make your own gift certificate there's great instructions at Handmade Spark.

There's only a few things I would add to those instructions:

• one is that you can get to your Facebook admin page by clicking "edit profile", the other is that Static FBML can be found all the way on the bottom of the Applications page. Click "Add Application" to add.


• Still in Applications, you'll see several links under "FBML". Click "Go to Application". Box title is "Gift Certificates". And the Paypal code goes in the FBML box.


• You'll be able to find your gift certificate tab by pressing the >> on your page. If you'd like to rearrange your tabs just click and drag.


• If you'd like a space in between your description and the button code enter this html code: <br>


• aaaand, if you ever want to amend what's written in that box click on "Go to Application" next to the FBML icon.

Let me know if you need any help!

How to add a Santa Hat to your avatar using photoshop

It's festive hat season! And not just any hat - it's Santa Hat time!!

If you have Photoshop it's actually quite easy to make your avatar, like this one.

First, find a Santa Hat. There's plenty of free clipart websites online.

Open the hat image in Photoshop.

Then open the other image, the one you'll be adding the hat to. I think it's easiest at this point to make both images roughly the same size by going to
Image -> Image Size
But don't worry about getting the images exactly the same size.

Now we're going to use the magnetic lasso function.

I usually magnify the image before I use this function. You can do this by pressing CTRL and then the + sign on your keyboard.

The magnetic lasso is easy to use, just click on the outline of the hat, then move your mouse along the outline. Sometimes, especially at sharp turns, you can make a "fastening point" by clicking your mouse. You will have to go all the way around and close the lasso by clicking on the first square you made with this tool. You'll know it's created a complete circle because the line becomes squiggly.

Don't stress about it being too perfect, we can erase the excess white a little later on...

Once you've finished that press CTRL C to copy the hat.

Then click on the non-hat picture and paste the hat.

You can use

to move the hat to the right place. And if the hat's too big you can click
Edit -> Transform -> Scale
and then click and drag one of the corners to make the hat smaller.

If the magnetic lasso hasn't done it's job properly and there's too much white around the hat just right click on the Eraser button and pick the Background Eraser Tool.
And click the white areas to make them disappear into the background!

And there you have it! Some extra festive cheer!

Minor Humbug

As of right now J is on an airplane, off to visit her mom for Christmas. As of right now I'm spending Christmas alone, in a foreign country, without good friends or family around.

It's been less than 48 hours since she'd been out of town and I've already started eating microwave food and have had waaaaay too much chocolate and shortbread. Actually, no wonder I'm already sad. Sugar crash.

This is my first Christmas away from home. Though really I've been a minor humbug for a few years now. Most of my family is into traditions, but I think I'll be ok without watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the 29th time in my life! *ironic*

I've also decided in the past 24 hours that I won't be buying a real Christmas tree for a logical albeit strange reason (totally not going to depress you by going into more detail on that). But that just might be the shortbread talking...

... so, um, Happy Holidays.

*off to eat something healthy so I'll stop being so melodramatic*

We're expecting more snow this weekend so I'll have pretty snow pictures for you soon.

It's beginning to look a lot like handmade

I was going to start off this post by bragging that nearly all my presents this year are either made by me or handmade by other people... And then I bought two touristy "I Love Edinburgh" and "I Love Scotland" t-shirt... That's what I get for thinking about bragging :)

Here's one of the things I bought from a fellow etsian:It's called Envy and is from Dyeingforewe (I'm just a tad bit green from jealousy that I can't keep this lovely yarn! :)

And although one of my sisters and I weren't going to exchange gifts, I found out my friend Beadybird was going to be at a craft fair nearby, so I bought this:

It's made from items found on a local beach! I think she'll love it.

My mom requested some of my magnets, so I'll post pics of those after Christmas!

How I feel when I leave the house

Have you seen A Christmas Story? The scene where Randy is getting ready to leave the house? Yup, that's how I feel.