I would love to be able to tell you that I took a 2 month break from blogging to relax, but that would not be the case. I have been working day and night on my  MFA thesis project and I am happy to say that the semester is over and I am excited to have a homework break, this semester was a killer. I haven’t baked in months, I haven’t taken a photo in weeks, and food styling has been non-existent. Needless to say, it’s going to be a long and hopefully fun summer.

i am almost finished with my first app and I will be submitting to apple in a month or so, I am so  excited and can’t wait to share a few screen shots with you in the upcoming weeks as I prepare to launch.

Thanks for sticking around it’s good to be back!

I came across this site yesterday called Teespring via tech crunch on Facebook and I thought this was such a neat idea and a great way to get fun, quality printed tee shirts for your organization or just for fun. Here’s how it works, I have to sell a certain amount of shirts in order for them to be printed up, now I can go over the goal, but I have to sell at least 50 of them for them to be printed and shipped, crowd funding at it’s best. So I need you, my loyal readers and followers to help out and buy a shirt to promote blogging. Whether you design, write, or read blogs, don’t miss this opportunity to help blogs with this fun tee. All the shirts are  professionally screen printed on Gildan ladies tees, relaxed fit, and then mailed to you via Teespring and at $15 each you won’t break the bank either.

Follow this link to purchase a tee: http://teespring.com/readablog

The months seem to be flying by and it’s approaching that time of year again, the end of the school year! In a couple of months teacher appreciation gifts will be on everyone’s mind, I know I get tons of requests each year for creative ideas when it comes to giving teacher gifts. I mean they do teach your kids all year long and it only seems fair to give them a nice gift that they can actually use and is cute to boot!  I have been a long time fan of personalized platters, but they can be a bit pricey when ordering custom platters online, especially if you have more than 1 child. Today i thought i would give you the lowdown on how to order your own platter without the middle man that ticking the price up on these. I have designed a few different teacher platter templates that you can use to upload to different companies and pay the wholesale price for these instead of the high retail price. Also, if you have Photoshop, Corel draw, or any other photo editing program you can add your teachers name to give it a personalized touch as well. I have the files in a .zip file that you will need to download and then upload to makit. You get 5 free platter templates in this download the two pictured above, plus the chevron platter in pink, grey, and lime.

Here is the template download: teacher_platter_templates

Here’s where you can upload the artwork provided: http://www.makit.com/TemplateDetail.aspx?ProductID=2261&PK=8253e113-969a-4285-bba6-7528e8f6fab4&TemplateID=818

I have ordered countless of times from makit and I trust them with my designs and the end result is always glossy and professional! If you want to know how to design your own template in Photoshop view my video tutorial here: http://delightfuldesignideas.com/photoshop_tutorial/

Happy giving!

One of my good friends had a baby shower a few months back and I was in charge of finding cute decor for the party! There are so many fun ideas out there for parties it was hard to choose my favorites as we were on a  budget! We knew we wanted a stylish table for all the guests to oohhhh and ahhhh over and one of the cutest things we found for our tables were these adorable mason jar mugs! We used stripe straws and a pink strawberry lemonade punch to top it off, it was a hit! Everyone got to take home their own mug and the guests were delighted to get a cute take home gift to have a reminder of this special day for years to come! Our mom to be was so surprised because she had no idea we had these hand painted mugs commissioned for her party, it was a unique gift from us to her to make her party personal and special! The shower theme was shades of pink baby buggies and we also used a light aqua floral print as an accent, these mugs were the perfect accent for our theme!

Heres where you can get these adorable mugs: http://www.jbeedesigns.com/store/WsDefault.asp?One=734

Eat right for a better life, that’s my motto for healthy living, I truly believe you are what you eat. I was watching a video from plate in Malibu, Plateis an all organic restaurant that serves local, farm fresh cuisine. You can go on their website and watch the video, one important thing I learned was that the vitamins from the food you eat goes directly into your blood and thru your organs. So the food you put into your body is directly effecting your health and well being, it made me think twice when I was eating doritos last night, I wondered what kind of chemicals it was pumping into my organs, scary!

That being said, I made up a recipe for healthy fruit popsicles using fresh organic raspberries from my garden (I live in FL) and major bonus they are only 15 calories each, so they are great for your waistline as well. I used tall shot glasses that I got at Target to make these as ell as popsicle sticks. I also didn’t buy popsicle sticks from China, you have to be careful about that, I don’t want chemicals from the stick in my organic popsicles.

Recipe:

1 bottle dasani water

30 raspberries

4 drops of crystal light drops strawberry lemonade flavor

pour in glasses and place stick in center when half frozen.

Whew, it has been a busy start to 2013 already and I can’t believe the first day if Spring semester 2013 is already here! I am excited to take user interface design and a scripting class this semester, can’t wait to learn more about user interface design. In January I entered a couple of design challenges at school and the outcome was pretty sweet, we were asked to design the UI for a new feature for AAU’s  campus mobile app for ios and Android, as well as a second design challenge to create the look and feel of the app! This was my first experience with crowdsourcing, I really enjoyed the entire experience, the challenge was hosted by CloudSpokes, an independent crowdsourcing community that matches companies with developers.They give cash prizes for participating + bragging rights if you win!

In the spirit of giving things away finishing up my thesis app I thought I would host a giveaway! If you are interested in developing an app an ipad is a great way to spark your imagination and explore the possibilities of app development. In the near future I will be posting a few teaser images of the app that I am developing, so stay tuned!

Here’s how you enter to win:

Comment on this post for 1 entry!

For 2 entries follow on FB: https://www.facebook.com/DelightfulDesignIdeas?ref=ts&fref=ts

For 2 entries follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/delightideas

For 4 entries follow on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/Delightdesign/

Blog about it or share on pinterest for 10 extra entries!

The giveaway will end on February 14th, 2013!

Did you hear? Our favorite pinning site is getting a new look and new features as well. Bigger images, new search bar and much more. If you want to be one of the first to sign up for the new layout, follow this link and sign up here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/28/pinterest-redesign/

When I first saw this recipe I couldn’t wait to make these Pecan Pie Cookies, the only problem is that I have a nut allergy so I had to make them with pretzels, but they are just as delicious! So if you are looking for a great nut allergy friendly cookie recipe, this is it. I get so tired of the same cookie recipes because I can’t eat nuts, but this one was a surprise, the cookie part tastes like pie crust, with it’s silky sweet texture. Then you bite into the sweet, salty, chewy and crunchy center, and it’s heaven in cookie form. They really do give you the rich flavor of Pecan pie, but in a bite size cookie, a fun cookie for the kids to help make as well.

Cookie:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup dark corn syrup

2 large eggs

2 1/2 cups flour

Filling:

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup powdered sugar

3 tbsp dark corn syrup

3/4 cup finely chopped pecans or pretzels

Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy, add corn syrup and eggs, beat well. Add flour and chill for 1 hour.

Melt butter in heavy saucepan over heat, stir in powdered sugar and 3 Tbsp corn syrup. Cook and stir often until it boils, remove from heat and add pecans or pretzels. Chill 30 minutes.

Shape mixture by 1/2 teaspoons full into 1/4 balls, set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, shape cookie dough into 1 inch balls place on cookie sheet, bake for 6 minutes, remove from oven and place a pecan or pretzel ball in the center of the cookie and place back in oven and bake for 8-10 more minutes. Remove from oven let cool 5 minutes and then place on wire rack to cool.

Photoshop effects tutorial: How to make a chalkboard effect in Photoshop

I have been seeing insprational quotes and cute little designs done in chalk all over Pinterest and I have wondered how I could create one of these to share with my Pinterest followers. With a lot of trial and error in Photoshop I knew that I could create this effect in Photoshop  and finally it worked. Although I am an advanced Photoshop user you can learn how to create this create chalkboard Photoshop effect with some basic Photoshop knowledge, so don’t be intimidated.

So I am going to start off by opening Photoshop and creating a new blank canvas with a width of 525 pixels and a height of 700 pixels. I then made a chalkboard background and I have included this background for you to download and use so you can start creating right away, your welcome for cutting out an extra step!

After you have your chalkboard ready you will need to type some text on your board. Then I am going to add an overlay over your text, a pattern overlay, you can do this quickly by going to your layers panel, and adding a paper overlay. If you don’t have a paper overlay, I will attach one to this post and you can download the paper, open in photoshop, and then click edit > define pattern > name and save the pattern. Then when you go over to your pattern overlay you will see the new paper overlay show up in your pattern library.

So you can see we are starting to get somewhere with this and it beginning to look like chalk art! Our next step is to add a few more effects to our text, the first thing we are going to do is rasterize our text layer so that we can manipulate the text anyway we want. Do this by right clicking on your text layer, find rasterize text and click, you will see your text box change and know that you have completed this step. Then we are going to go to filter > noise > add noise and set our noise around 35%, you can choose what you think is best for your text.

Now we are going to use a brush to make this effect look a little more realistic. Go over to your panel and click on eraser and choose an eraser brush that looks like a round speckled brush, like little tiny dots in a circle. You will need to turn down the opacity on your eraser to around 10%, but play around with it and see what you like best. Here is what we have so far:

Next, I am going to add a little more chalkboard effect with a paintbrush to make this look a little more realistic. I am also going to add a little creative detail and add a little print and pattern to this piece and follow the same steps above when adding pattern. When you are ready take your paintbrush and keep the same dotted circle brush, almost like a stipling brush, turn the opacity down, I am using around 25% opacity, but once again you can play around with what you like best. Gently swipe your paint brush over the canvas until you are happy. Switching back and forth between the eraser and paintbrush, adding and taking away as much as you like.

And that’s it, is really is that simple! I can’t wait to see what you create, you can pin to our Pinterest board or facebook us with your designs so we can see your creativity as well!

Another graphic design freebie, these chevron pattern save the date cards are super stylish and perfect for a spring wedding. I used LINEN one of Pantones most popular colors for 2013.

chevron_pattern_save_the_date