All the Stars in Heaven

Did you know that all the photos collected by the Hubble telescope are in the public domain?  Thanks to Jordan's post, I've been pouring over the image galleries. You can access photos right here, and most files are available in hi-res. The images are so beautiful, an art poster or two would make the perfect gift for the space enthusiast in your life.  Quite simple and inexpensive!

Here's some of my favorites...

Be Good & Buy Handmade

I just love this little reminder from Indie Craft Parade!

The "be good & buy handmade" phrase was coined by the amazing Micah Coston, and the lovely graphic created by my very own Cory Godbey.

We want people to remember artists and makers this time of year, so feel free to share, reblog, or print this for your own personal use. Get the file at the Indie Craft Parade blog!

Lost Type Fonts

Even though I'm not a graphic designer, I've become quite interested in fonts and have started a little collection just for my personal use. Thanks to a head's up from How About Orange, I've been enjoying the lovely fonts of Lost Type. They put out beautiful high-quality fonts with a pay-what-you-want model. HINT: type a "0" in the amount box to get the font for free (since they state this helpful hint on the checkout, I guess it's ok. ;-D)

Take a look at Lost Type's lovely offerings, here are a few of my favorites...

From top:

Tommaso / Ribbon / Quaver / Mensch / Pompadour

Free Printable Wedding Stationary

You know I love me some paper goods, and these free printables from The Wedding Chicks really hit the spot. They've partnered with fabulous designers to bring you fully customizable wedding stationary... for free! From save the dates to full invitation suites, menus to escort cards, they've got you covered. And the best part is, you can completely customize every aspect of the design, from type to graphics, to fit your exact color scheme! You just type in your info, select the colors for each aspect, and voila! Their system generates a high-resolution image with your details. Then you just right-click and save to your desktop, after which you can send the file to your printer. Seriously, this is a dream come true for brides on a budget. Take a peek at some of the designs!

And there's more fabulousness where that came from! Check out The Wedding Chick's download section for their full range. Many of the designs are available with coordinating save the dates to unify your wedding theme. Don't forget to drop by their DIY section, there's more great printables along with some fantastic projects. They've also got a lovely blog, so be sure to say hello and thank them for the free designs!

Of course, these printables aren't just for weddings. In fact, I've got my eye on the Sweet Love suite for a shower coming up!

Bunting Invitation Suite

Mason Jar Invitation Suite

Photo Booth Sign

Photo Thank You Card

Sweet Love Invitation Suite

Fancy Photo Save the Date

Heart & Arrow Monogram

Bicycle Wedding Invitation Suite

Food Photography

One of my goals for this year is to improve my food photography skills. I love my camera, but I mostly sit back and let it do the work without any clue what is going on or how to make things better.

This is where Hélène Dujardin's new book, Plate to Pixel, comes in. One look at her marvelous food blog, Tartlette, and it's clear she is a master of food photography. Besides creating scrumptious recipes, she styles and shoots them perfectly. I haven't had a chance to start reading the book yet, but if it helps me to gain even a smidge of her talent, I will be delighted.

Check out this lovely video about Plate to Pixel...


Plate to Pixel Promo Video from Taylor Mathis on Vimeo.

Also! PW announced a FREE online food photography class for this weekend by the fabulous Penny De Los Santos. Penny is a very experienced photojournalist for Nation Geographic. Here's a couple shots from her extensive portfolio...

The class will air this May 13 – 15, 2011 from 1:00 - 8:00 pm EST each day. It's free to watch live, just register here. (If you can't watch live but still want to see the class, you can order a DVD for a fee.) I'm so excited about this, I'm going to try and catch as much of the workshop as I can.

Free Gift Tags

Check it out! Going Home to Roost is giving away free downloadable gift tags just for you. Bonnie has created 4 great designs, my favorite being the sweet stag pictured above. Get them here.

Shop Help from Going Home to Roost

Going Home to Roost is one of my favorite daily reads. Bonnie's posts are always helpful, interesting, and beautiful, whether she's gushing over her sweet baby chicks or sharing how to organize your craft room. I have a total blog-crush on her and can't wait to meet her at Indie Craft Parade!

Bonnie's series of Shop Help posts are great for anyone who has a store, either brick-and-mortar or online. Remember how I opened a shop? And then promptly abandoned it? As soon as I get past Indie Craft Parade I'll be working on it some more, and I will have a booth at the event as well.  She has just announced that she'll be offering a new e-class on this very subject, and if you know what's good for you, you'll sign up for it right now! If I wasn't already completely booked during the class dates, I would be all over it. Read her post about the class, check out the class details, and download her free e-book! The e-book alone is incredibly helpful, I can only imagine how great the class is going to be!

Poladroid

You know how Polaroids are all the rage... and how the cameras and film are very expensive now that they are mostly discontinued? Well, that's not a problem for me, since I just discovered Poladroid. Polodroid is an application that creates high-resolution Poloroid-like images from your digital pictures... for free! It even acts like a traditional Polaroid in that you have to wait for the pictures to develop, and you can watch them turn from brown to a realistic Polaroid! See how it works here, and download the application here. It's extremely easy to use, just launch the application, drag and drop in your photos, then watch them develop!

Here are a few of the Poladroids I've made:

Aren't they too fun!? It's interesting to save the picture at different stages to see the effects. Here is one after it finished processing completely:

And here is the same file, about 2/3 complete:

Depending on the mood I was going for, either one would be perfect.

I will say that the authentic film limit and processing time does lose it's charm after the first few files... I mean, it's obviously not the same experience as holding a real print in your hands, and waving it around to dry... but Poladroid is still pretty awesome and free to boot, so I'm not going to complain.

What are you waiting for? Get yourself some Poladroid!

Download and Print

Invitations from Download and Print, via iDIY

Download and Print is a great website that offers free invitation templates for personal use. Above are a few of my favorite designs, I especially love that sunshine yellow one. This would be a great resource for wedding invites, party invites, or announcements. Just choose your design, download, edit the text in Microsoft Word, then print at home or your local copy shop. The designs are quite nice, with a good mix of modern, elegant, and vintage. New templates are added often, and I'm loving the fact that they're free!

Wallpaper

Check out these delicious desktop wallpapers! Available for free download here from the lovely Ruche, via one of my daily reads, design is mine.

But wait! It get's better! Ruche gives full DIY instructions on how to replicate this wall treatment. Do I need a wall plastered with scrunchy white flowers? Absolutely.

Vintage Printables

I found Vintage Printables via one of my daily reads, iDIY. As stated there, they have a huge collection of free downloadable,  out-of-copyright images of vintage prints.  And most of these puppies are really high-resolution, which makes them perfect for printing your own artwork. Mostly scientific and natural history-related such as botanicals, birds, animals, butterflies, shells, art prints, etc.

I'm tremendously attracted to the mushrooms. (So elegant!) I think I'll use a few in my design for the office.