Love My Wacom Tablet!
- Water Lily Sketch
I installed my Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet last night and have been playing with it today. New toys are sooo much fun! It came bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Painter Essentials and some other program that I haven’t installed yet. I didn’t install Photoshop Elements since I already have the full blown version, but I did install Corel Painter and it’s pretty neat and very easy to use. My daughter has been bugging me to install the tablet for weeks now and I’ve promised to let her play with it today after school. I can just see -we’re both going to be fighting over it now. 
The pencil tool feels surprisingly like sketching on paper – there’s even an eraser. It takes a little practice getting used to the fact that while I was sketching on the tablet, I was watching my computer monitor. My hand didn’t always do what I wanted it too like I was having a eye/hand coordination issue. At any rate, after a bit more practice, I’m turning some digital sketches into ceramic laser toner decals.
I used the trace function today in Corel to “sketch” an image of a painting I did a few years ago:
Water Lily Painting o/c, 2006
Cartoon Me
Happy Monday,
~Cynthia
Colorado Potters Guild Website is Finished
Colorado Potters Guild Screen Shot
WHEW, and let me just let out one more extended audible wheeewwwwwwwwwwww for my own benefit. I finally finished the Colorado Potters Guild website today – what a relief! I feel like I can finally get on with my life and I’m sure my family will be happier too since I will no longer be multi tasking every single minute of the day. Go ahead – head on over and take a looksie.
The good news about building a site from scratch is that I benefited from the knowledge I gained from all the mistakes I made on my own site. The bad news is that now I have to fix a lot of stuff on my own site – including my – the archive search is broken, among other things. It’s all good though because my own site isn’t nearly as pressing as the Potter’s Guild site. I’m going to make a list and tackle one or two items a day which will eventually get the job done.
More good news to share – my husband was spared the ax at work which is a relief and now we are making a few plans. I have decided to attend my first ever NCECA conference (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts for you non clay readers) taking place April 8 – 11th in Phoenix this year. I think the family is going to come along, but I’m not sure how much time we’re going to spend together. We have friends in Phoenix that we haven’t seen in awhile, including friends from high school and one of my husband’s college buds and former room mates.
We also renewed our passports recently and are planning to take a summer vacation. Hubby is trying to talk me into a European vacation, I’m still on the fence about where to go. I have to think of the dogs after all – one of them fasts whenever we leave for an extended period of time.
And finally, in regards to my last post about my daughter’s solar heat collector that she made for her school science fair – she won 2nd place overall for her school! Pretty cool if you ask me…. She was relieved because she didn’t want to go to District Science Fair (don’t ask me why, I never got a straight answer) and only the 1st place winner gets to go, but also pleased because she won a prize and was rewarded for all the hours she invested in the project. She was also happy because one of her best friends won 1st place which is cause for celebration. At any rate, we brought her project home and we’ve decided to do some more experiments on our own with her solar heat collectors. We saw some plans for ones with fans that are generated by mini solar photo voltaic panels – so we have some work to do. By the time it comes to make a larger version for me, we’ll be all set to go! I told you I was being a little selfish.
I’m signing off for the day to hit the studio for a tad and now that I’m finally finished with the CPG site, I’m going to install my Bamboo Fun Wacom tablet that I haven’t allowed myself to play with out of fear I would become too distracted. I made a couple of porcelain pendants the other day that I thought would be good canvases for some ceramic decals.
I hope to catch up with what everyone has been up to lately in the next week,
~Cynthia
Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet – Another Present
Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet
After finally installing my new HP P1006 Laser Printer the other day (love it!), I am now waiting patiently for the laser decal paper that I ordered to arrive in the mail since I could not find it locally here in Denver. In the meantime, I’ve been sketching a bit and after scanning the drawings into my computer, I remembered looking at one of those computer graphics pens a few months ago. It’s pretty cool, you sketch on the little pad and it transfers to your computer digitally.
I decided that I absolutely needed one of these little toys! After chatting about it with some fellow Etsy Mud Team members yesterday, I was ready to run out the door and pick one up. Though every fiber in my body said, “Run like the wind girl – go get yourself a new toy NOW!”, I exercised a bit of self restraint. But, not much – I’m picking it up today instead. 
I decided to go with the small Bamboo Fun Wacom Tablet, instead one of the larger versions after reading reviews online. I may decide to go with a larger version in the future, but I think for my needs it will be just fine. The Bamboo Fun comes bundled with Adobe Elements and Corel Painter Essentials – I don’t need the former since I have full blown Photoshop loaded on my computer, but I might make use of the latter.
My mom is being very generous this year since she’s footing the bill – Thanks again Mom!! I think I owe her something special now, don’t you? In some ways shopping for myself for Christmas takes away the surprise element, but since I don’t really need anything and she insists on buying something for each of her kids, my Mom always asks me what I really want that I might not buy for myself.
Meanwhile, I’m going roller skating today. My daughter turned 11 on Thursday and she really wanted to have her birthday party at a roller skating rink. She invited all the girls in her class + a few others – this ought to be fun. I haven’t been roller skating since I was a teen. I have memories of skating around the rink in continuous circles to Donna Summers and when the occasional slow romantic song was played, sitting off on the sidelines casting side ways glances at cute boys hoping that one of them would ask me to skate with them. While my husband may or may not ask me to skate with him this afternoon, I expect to come home with a bruise or two. (lol)
Have a great weekend,
~Cynthia
