Skillshare, an Online Tool Resource of Learning

Skillshare is an amazing online resource to learn pretty much about anything from expert people like you and me. We all are good at something. Skillshare opens up that opportunity for experts to share their knowledge in a form of online class. It is a global learning community where you can learn real-world skills from real people (that is their motto).

Classes are varies from art, fashion, design, coding, cooking, writing, etc. To enroll, you simply just need to sign up and pay the class fee. The class is very affordable - usually from FREE to $50 (the most expensive I've seen).

I am taking this class from this amazing fashion illustration designer, Katie Rodgers at Paper fashion. The class is called Illustrating your favorite Runway Looks. Her work is amazing!

The thing about creativity is that - the more you learn and the more resources you have, it will add to your creativity in unexpected ways. Next time you decide to learn something new, check out Skillshare and you will be surprise what you will find. 

Live, love and be creative,

Ira.

Activity Resource Books for Parents and Children

For moms out there, we are all guilty of letting our kids watch too much TV and let the TV babysits them while we are doing other things. The truth is, kids are much better learner when they explore it by themselves. When they learn, listen, and do give much more experience that are more precious for them. But reality is that we are busy cleaning, cooking, working, preparing clothes for the next day, packing lunch, doing laundry and many other things that sometimes we'd rather do than play with our kids.

Parents, we need to equip ourselves with resources. Today, I wanted to share with you several books that can help you get creative and enough resource to fill in those TV time with meaningful and fun activities. 

Art Lab book for Kids (of all ages)

"Susan Schwake's Art Lab for Kids is a well-thought-out guide, making it easy to introduce art into children's lives. Simple, clear explanations of technique, combined with inspiration from established artists, will enable children to feel successful and encouraged to explore art as a form of expression." - Rebecca Emberley, best-selling children's book author and illustrator - Amazon recommendations

When I took a glance at this book, as an artist myself, I was amazed that this book has a lot of different techniques of art that we can teach our kids. It's not just doodle drawings, but more of method of the art they are making. I personally love this book.

Another book was also published mixed media by Carla Sonheim, which is also worth checking out.

For those of you who have toddlers in the home, this book is absolutely a great book. I recommend you to get it and get yourself resourseful with the information inside. 

The Toddler's busy book: 365 creative games and activities to keep your 1 1/2  to 3 year old busy.

Snippet from Amazon: ...stimulate a child’s natural curiosity with entertaining math, language, and motor-skills activities, encourage a child’s physical, mental, and emotional growth, celebrate holidays and other occasions with special projects and activities, and keep toddlers occupied during long car trips or while running errands. The Toddler's Busy Book is written with warmth and sprinkled with humor and insight.

Trish Kuffner, the author also published several books that might interest you as well. They are all available to purchase online.

Remember creative parents produce creative kids. :)

Live, love and be creative. 

Ira.

FREE Graphics and Templates for Blog improvements.

You're probably not a crafty person or don't know anything about creating graphic for web. Don't be despair, you can download free templates/imageries from Smitten Blog - for FREE.

Smitten Blog provides free template that you can download and adapt the code to your blog without hassle. Here's one example, where you can get customized wallpaper just by downloading the script. 

Smitten Blog also provides FREE graphic for your blog header. Example below for Garden Party theme.

However if you need to do a custom header and also background just for your blog, you can certainly pay a small fee of $195. 

Fun Pinterest Boards

Hi Everyone,

It's Friday, oddly it's the thirteen as well!... but don't let that worry you at all. Today I am going to show  you my Pinterest board. I have so much fun pinning lately. I have to share with you what I have been pinning. Come check out my Pinterest page.

Live Love and Be Creative Pinterest

What's so great about Pinterest is that, all the things that inspires me that I have seen on different blogs, just as long as they have pictures, I can pin them. All you have to do is drag the Pin It button to your browser's toolbar. These are collections of things that inspire me, or what I want to make one day or just simply to stare at, because they are so beautiful! :) 

Live Love and Be Creative Pinterest

If you need an invite, just let me know, shoot me an email and I will send you one! Start pinning everyone!

Ira. 

A Beautiful Mess Blog

I just came across this beautiful blog full of DIY projects, fashion tutorial photography, beauty and decor ideas. You're going to love this blog as much as I do. It's called A Beautiful Mess Blog. I came across this site, from Pinterest. Have you ever gone to that site yet?... it's full of inspiring images more than you could ever imagine. If you need an invite, just let me know. I will invite you to become a member of Pinterest.

Here are a few DIY things that you can find from A Beautiful Mess Blog -
Canvas Transfer // 5 ways I display photos in my house // Make your own floral suitcase

Hope you have a nice Thursday,

Ira

Personalized Children Gifts

I was reading at One Happy Mama blog this morning and I really like her post about The Super Incredible Big Sister post, it was about a personalized book from I See Me, inc that she won for her daughter. A personalized story book just for her daughter that comes with a medal awards for being an awesome big sister! How sweet is that?

The Super Incredible Big Sister Book

Then I thought about Lucy, maybe she can have a personalized book when she turns one in January. She will really like that, I thought. Maybe a book about Fairy Tales?

Or perhaps this book - Who loves (your name)?

I once was told by a colleague of mine that she reads book to her daughter everyday, one book for when she turns one every night, two books for when she turns two every night, and three books for when she turns three every night, and so on... I think that is a great way to motivate your children to love to read. 

I also found Frecklebox site from Living Social deal at one time of personalizing gifts for your children. They have huge collection of gifts collection such as lunch boxes, chore charts, folders, stickers, etc. They also have quite a collection of personalized books and lunch boxes that you can select from!.

Speaking of lunch boxes, I usually not a big fan of cutesy stuff, but last weekend, I just got Lucy this wonderful Pinguin insulated lunch bag from Amazon - from this creative company called SkipHop. They have really creative products. I was really happy when I got this in the mail, and Lucy seemed to like it as much as I do.

Happy Friday, I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Live, love and be Creative,

Ira

Free Sewing Pattern

If you're always interested in learning how to sew but can't create pattern, here's a blog that provides free sewing pattern daily. At Free Sewing Patter daily Blogspot, you will find many fun projects such as iPad Slipcover and Baby kimono.

You can also find free sewing pattern from All Free Sewing. They have varieties of projects that you can find from dining, home decoration things, down to quilt.

Here are few examples of pattern you can make: Frilled Pillow Cushion and Retro Apron.

Daily Craft Sewing section also has varieties of different sewing pattern from beginner/simple sewing to more difficult/advanced. Here's one example of the super simple and yet it's a fun project for babies hanging toys - bird watcher mobile.

But if you need to find more sewing projects, you can always trust these talented ladies for sewing inspirations:

Made // Make It Love It // Sir Bubbadoo // Ruffles and Stuff // See Kate Sew // Craftiness is not Optional

// Aesthetic Nest // Skip to my Lou // The Long Thread // Simply Modern Mom // Sew Much Ado // Stumbles and Stiches // The Purl Bee // Stop Staring and Start Sewing

and the list goes on and on....

Have a great weekend everyone!

Live, love and be creative,

Ira.

Free Photo Collections from PixMac

Have you heard of PixMac before? They are much like iStockphoto or ShutterStock. The only difference is that they have huge collection of FREE pictures that you can download. It is more than 60,000 pictures you can download for FREE. How fun is that?

So next time if you need generic images for home decorating, or any other crafting purposes, you can easily choose from their images. Here are some examples from their collection. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Live, Love, and Be Creative,

Ira.

Colour Lovers

Have you heard of Colourlovers.com? It is a creative community where people from around the world can create and share colors, palettes, and patterns, and discuss the latest trends and explore beautiful articles... All in the spirit of love.

You can browse palettes that already been created by others or you can create one yourself!.. This color palette also helps you to decide what mood you want to bring to your creative piece. Here are some examples of the palettes that were created by others for you to enjoy!

Here's the latest wedding trends palette that people have put together.

 

Or palette inspirations for home trends?

This site will surely help you get started with finding the right color, themes and inspiration for your next creative project.

Tune in for more useful resources every Friday!

xoxo,

Ira.

Mocii: Free Vector Graphic and Art Design Blog

The other day, I was browsing for ornamental vector art and I stumbled on this blog called Mocii: Free Vector Graphics and Art. I was very pleased on the large collection of freebies in this blog. You can find many things such as free vector art, textures, background, photoshop brushes, photo stock, etc.

To download the file, it will take some time, but it is free. However, you can speed up your download by purchasing the premium fee from filesonic. Depending on your internet connection, free download option might take a little bit longer than usual. 

Vector selection:

Photoshop brushes selection:

Photo stock selection:

Icon selection:

To open the files (.rar), you must have an application that will allow you to open it. I use unRarx for opening in Mac. You can also use 7-zip, or winRar to open with PC. 

So if you need to get some freebies for vector, photoshop brushes, etc, be sure to check Mocii for their selections! : )

Join our mailing list for more useful resources send to your email inbox.

Live, Love, and Be Creative,

Ira.

Free Downloads from Veer.com

Did you know Veer has free download? I always love their fonts!... Yes, FREE! They have free illustration, wallpaper, photos that you can download every week and font every month. Check often for their free items. It's pretty awesome!

Check out for what's free:

This month: Astromos font 

This week: Starfish on an old rustic door.

This week: Counter Culture wallpaper

Check their site often for freebies update!.. especially their font!

Live, love, and be creative,

Ira.

Seamless Pattern Resource

If you need a seamless background for your blog or phone wallpaper. Look no further, Pattern Cooler allows you to add your own colors to 100s of cool FREE pattern designs, or browse from 10,000s of pre-colored patterns using the new pattern seamless editor.

Check out these wonderful patterns:

They also have pattern editor, where you can modify your pattern color to your desired colors, and download it afterwards. This is pretty cool I must say!

How do you like your blog background be filled with these pretty pattern?

Check out Friday's useful resources for more fun resource such as textures, DIY Invitation templates, etc.

Live, Love, and Be Creative,

Ira.

Get Yourself FREE Textures

If you're a graphic artist like me, you would appreciate free textures.  Zen Textures provides hundreds of free textures that we can use.

Take a look at some of the textures they have.

The person behind the scene from Zen Texture, also have a blog that you can read up from Lostandtaken - Caleb Kimbrough. We (artist/design community) appreciate you, Caleb!

Live, Love, and Be Creative,

Ira

Invitations and Stationeries Freebies

Who doesn't like freebies. One of my favorite things to find is free tutorial and of course free templates to download.

You can download this beautiful wedding templates from Weddingchicks website.

From Wedding Invitation Suites, save the date, wedding signs and labels, to DIY wedding flowers, Weddingchicks has all you need for a nice, simple yet elegant choices.

Another place to check out for invitation freebies is hgtv.com favorabe printable party invitations for year-round celebrations.

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  Cheery Invitation by Easton Place Designs
  
  
  Another resource for invitation freebies is Creature Comfort Blogs freebies. They have tons of things you can download. Below is the Winter bird gift tags that you can download from their website.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Few more lists, and I will be done giving you more inspirations.
  Eat Drink and Chic - Free stuff
  Miss Cutie Pie
  
  Hope your day will be inspired. Next week we will begin with the new schedule I put up. Have a great weekend!...
  
  Live, Love and Be Creative,
  
  Ira.
  
  
  
  

Edit images for free with online photo editor, Pixlr.

Recently I stumbled on a totally free online photo editor called Pixlr. There are few things you can do with it, you can edit your content online. You just need your browser and internet connection. You can edit in a manual way with Pixlr editor or you can express edit your image using Pixlr Express.

In Download and Print, you can have template freebies and they will teach you how to use the online editor.

The other thing you can do with Pixlr - is that you can make image look vintage. Recently I blog (titled 'Home') about a cool  cool iPhone apps called Instagram? This editor can do the same thing as that app.

Want more cool things from Pixlr, you can also choose their Pixlr Grabber , where it lets you right click on any image in a webpage and load it into pixlr for editing. These only work in Firefox and Google Chrome. Firefox will also let you capture the whole or parts of the browser content (print screen).

Check out Download and Print Freebies. You might like their free downloadable invitations.

The Hydrangea Set invitations (Free to download)

Live, Love and Be Creative.

Ira.

Home

RAINING UMBRELLA EXERCISE

Another exercise of Raining Umbrella that I have been struggling with the visual is to draw/design or photograph the word 'HOME'. I know that wherever my family is that will be home for me. But I'm struggling on how to visualize this perspective until today where I found these awesome apps from iphone, called Instagram and Labelbox.

Let me get into details. Instagram apps allows you to create vintage, polaroid, or many other effects to your photos. While Labelbox allows you to add creative label and caption to your photo. Both of these are FREE apps in iTunes. Did I say 'FREE'? Yes.. It's FREE!

I think twice before I purchase an apps, so for these apps to be absolutely FREE is priceless!... Check out what HOME means to me through this pictures: