April 26, 2013 By Dru Cortez

2 More Great Sites for Free Vintage Images

Here are two additional websites to add to your list of great websites for vintage ephemera and vintage images.

I’m always on the lookout for websites that have an eclectic mix of great vintage images and a user friendly TOU (terms of use) policy and I have found a few more sites to tack on to my previous list of great vintage image resource sites.

Both of these sites provide an eclectic mix of vintage images from antique paper, to vintage banners and labels, vintage advertisements, Victorian ornate frames, angels etc. that are mostly sourced from public domain images and thus should be copyright free.

If your plans are to use the images solely for personal projects than there are no concerns, but if you want to use the images for websites or scrap for hire projects than these sites will provide just the images you need for your vintage web or online projects.

The blog owners also have their own Etsy stores and naturally they want you to visit; regardless, the blogs are geared to providing free vintage images and the personal marketing for their stores is almost nonexistent.

Most of the images are jpgs, so you will have to do your own image editing to remove the background and create your own .png files. That may be a drawback for you; however, for the most part the sites are a great resource.

I have included a screenshot of the main page of each website. Both websites include a list of images by subject on the blog’s sidebar in case you want access to a specific type of image.

Hope you enjoy these finds!

1. Vintage Feed Shack

Vintage Feed Shack website screenshot

2. Old Design Shop

Old Design Shop website

5 Great Sites for Vintage Ephemera and Downloadable Images

March 18, 2013 By Dru Cortez

Free Vintage Graphic – Rooster and Chicken

It’s a long story as to why I like chickens and roosters, and a kind of quaint one; however, the relative who used to raise them wouldn’t appreciate my sharing all the details of the story, so until I get clearance from that corner I’ll just keep it at that.

I found this following vintage graphic image as a public domain item, digitally cropped it and cleaned it up. It is saved as a .png file ( I know all you savvy digital scrappers know that a .png file is an image file with a transparent background).

Unfortunately, the chickens were standing in grass so their feet look a little rough and I didn’t have time to crop out the feet and/or add fake grass. And the rooster’s comb and wattle (actually had to look those up) are more of a brighter red. The preview pic is only at 72 dpi!

The actual image is 709 px by 535 px and once you click on the image another tab will open on your browser in order to download it from my ~~Photobucket~~ Google Drive storage. The image will display and you can pretty much save the file, by using the “Save As” function in Microsoft Windows.

Please read my TOU (terms of use) page before downloading. Disregard the white background in the screenshot, that’s just the way ~~Photobucket~~ Google Drive displays their images.

If you notice the screenshot shows the dialog box showing the .png extension. I hope that that clears up any confusion.

While I am still debating as to where to set up my image downloads in order to make it the most accessible to those who are interested, I’m going to test this on my ~~Photobucket~~ account for now. In the near future, I plan to upload larger files elsewhere. I hope you enjoy it!

February 2, 2013 By Dru Cortez

How to Create A Basic Photo Collage Using PicMonkey

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Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and there are probably a lot of projects you might have on your mind to create. But why not create a simple photo collage (using a free, easy and intuitive online photo editor) that you can share with family, friends and of course all your loved ones.

The following steps should get you started quickly.

*Remember: Picmonkey is free to use and requires no registration. (Of course, PicMonkey tempts you with all the goodies and bells and whistles in the paid Royale features but their basic tools work really well.)

Steps to Create a Basic Photo Collage

Go to the Picmonkey website. Go to Your Main Menu and Select the “Create A Collage Feature”.

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In this tutorial, we will be using Picmonkey’s current “Sweetheart” theme sample pictures and include one of my own, so that I can show you how to include your own pictures as well as use Picmonkey’s options.

Photo #1 shows the basic template layout and the main menu options on the left hand side. Go to the “Photos” option and you can select your photos from the drop-down menu.

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Photo #2 shows the picture of the vintage kitten valentine card image that I uploaded and the option now should read “From My Computer”. Your photos will be available to you by toggling between these two options.

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Photo #3 – To create the layout for this example, select the “Layouts” option from the menu and then select the “Square Deal” option and choose the 2 x 2 square photo layout, four squares total.

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Photo #4 was included to show you the “Fabric Swatches” option on the menu in the event you wanted to use a fabric swatch image rather than a photo, but for this tutorial we will only be using the pictures shown.

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Photo #5 shows the template filled with the pictures which I just dragged and dropped into the template. Notice the small grey rectangular area that it is shown in the screenshot as I dragged over the kitten valentine card. When you see this on the template, it means that Picmonkey will be creating a new square or rectangle to make room for the additional photo being added to the layout. Picmonkey will automatically adjust the template to the new photo I have dropped in and the photo template now has five photos.

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Photo #6 shows what the template looks like once I have completely dragged and dropped in the photo of the vintage valentine card. So, the basic template with a white background (the default) has been created. Adjust the images to your liking.

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Photo #7 shows the “Background” option on the Main Menu. You have four options in this menu, you will have to preselect or adjust:

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The following are the options included in this menu:

Spacing – This slider gives you the option to adjust the spacing between the photos based on pixels. For this tutorial, we chose 12. (Which stands for 12 pixels)
Corner rounding – this option allows you to adjust the corners of your photos if you like by a percentage. I chose 15% for this example.
Color – Picmonkey allows you to choose the color for your background based on the rainbow like selector, the color picker tool which looks like an eyedropper, and by the hex# (a six digit number that graphic designers use to identify specific colors). For this example, I used the color picker tool and picked the color from the vintage kitten valentine heart, and “Voila!” the background is filled with the matching color.
Transparent Background – Choosing this option would knock out your background and make it see through or transparent . Keep this box unchecked for this example.

Now that you have finished your creation, you can adjust it to your liking. When you have made all your adjustments, you will now save your photo collage to your computer.

Photo #8 shows you what the menu option looks like once you click the “save” button above your template. Picmonkey usually gives you a standard file name for your photo and will save it to your computer. To save time, I usually add a letter to the end of the name and rename it later, but you can name your photo whatever you like.

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A photo collage template at 1024 x 1024 pixels will print out at 14.2” by 14.2”, so you can use the change option to resize your photo at this point or you can save the photo to your computer and go back into Picmonkey and resize it with the “Edit a Photo” option.

And that’s it, you now know the basics of creating a photo collage. As you play with the options, you will be able to adjust the photo collage to your liking and create a wonderful image to share with your loved ones!