Tag: Jodie

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General myJanee.com News Janee's Galleries My Day

Oh, just go and have a look!

I got Jodie’s Story published and I invite you to go and have a look! It’s linked back to my Family Photo Album, which has a new look as well. In Jodie’s Story, I’ve posted pics of her from her earliest days, her first days with us, activities she’s done with us, and just plain cuteness!

I’ve made more progress on the Janee’s Interiors page. There’s more to do on that. My goal is to get all of the before pics up (mostly done), the during pics posted, the “afters” posted, and then what new things I’ve done lately.

For 2020, this includes our Covid projects: things that we got done because we didn’t spend the time or money traveling this year.

Above is the 2020 arrangement of our Great Room. The sectional in the bottom third of the room is new, we’ve gotten rid of the cupboard and the rust recliner is going to get new life in the bedroom. Jack’s building a new TV stand with a swivel for the TV and display storage.

The top third of the room is another conversation area with our couch, plum recliners, and the little swivel club chair.

The middle area with the circle is our dining/puzzle table. The circle is the round rug on which this furniture lives.

All of the furniture is in place, with the exception of the TV stand which is being built right now. The lighting in the sectional/TV area is very different, very new, and just perfect for us. We will move our ceiling fan from what is now our dining room over to above the TV area. And we will need to reinstall our dining room fixture above the dining room.

I’m also beginning to think about lighting for the conversation area with the couch. We have a kind of arc lamp which we really like, but I’m not sure that it will give us enough light. The interior design class I had spoke very little about lighting.

I really should study lighting more. While I love what we have in the other areas, I just don’t know what to do about the living room.

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General myJanee.com News My Day Travel Tales

Some new states, goals and some adulting

Today I posted the pics for North Carolina and Oklahoma — pics I shot in 2010 and 2011. I’m so PROUD of myself for finally, after all of this time, getting these pics into the light of day.

This website revival has been such an epic task and I really didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to discipline myself enough to a) learn the technology and b) just knuckle down and do it all. So yay, me!

I still have goals, even after the States are all posted. I now have a web cam and a mic and headset, so I can set out to learn how to do video tutorials. So many people are vlogging; how hard can it be? I do know that I need to get a haircut before I put myself on camera.

I was trying to get caught up today, because I’ve been off doing adult stuff. Two check-up doctors’ appointments, the dentist, the dog groomer, laundry, yeah, adult stuff all!

Here’s Jodie after her drastic grooming. I’m really loving this cut! We’ll let her topknot grow out a bit, after her puppy hair is all gone, but yeah. Loving this.

Poodle Nose!
Jodie after the drastic grooming
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General myJanee.com News My Day Travel Tales

North Dakota and New Mexico added!

Our country is so beautiful and there’s so much art and architecture to see. Today I worked on New Mexico and North Dakota, getting their capitol pages both published. Go look at all of these. I have some nice pics in there.

Here are a couple. The white flowers are ones I spied in Santa Fe. The Great Seal is in Bismark, North Dakota.

It just occurs to me that I put New Mexico’s capital city as Albuquerque. I will go and change that.

So I mentioned that Jodie had a haircut. Here she is! The poodle people in my group all say that poodles shed their puppy coat about this age (10-11 months) and then it just mats.

So she’s happier now, and so am I! And her topknot will grow out. I’m going to keep it far shorter than the 3.5″ she had been sporting. Ugh.

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General myJanee.com News My Day Travel Tales

Kentucky is a Commonwealth, not a State!

Yes, I’ll bet you knew that. And so is Virginia. I will leave it to the curious among you to find out the differences between a Commonwealth and a State. Kentucky is now posted! And yesterday, I posted Jack’s pics of Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

I’m making headway! As of today, I have 19 of the state capitol pages published. Yay, me! Here’s the link to this project.

I did some adulting yesterday! I had my teeth cleaned, which is, aside from a few trips to Walmart, the most dangerous thing I’ve done, with regards to Covid-19.

I also made an appointment to get Jodie groomed. She’s so tangled and matted that I’m feeling like a terrible dog mom. I don’t know why her topknot gets so matted. Drives me crazy and I just simply cannot comb the mats out without both of us crying.

I still have not gotten brave enough to get my own hair cut.

We’re working a little more on our new living room. I’m setting up a lighting system that I really hope is the answer to our lighting issues. I want lights we can read by, turn off when we are not needing them, and which look great. I want a bit of a repeat of the island lighting fixture with the gas pipe and lights hanging off of it.

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My Day

All new Photoshop Art: Geometrics Gallery Revealed!

I was busy yesterday! I did some new art and I posted a new Geometrics Gallery! This piece is reminiscent of one I did for the cover of Photoshop Elements Most Wanted in 2002.

I’m eager to be useful. I want people to discover my work and to see that I offer good instruction that will make them into real Photoshop artists.

Mostly I want people to be able to learn Photoshop, instead of just watching other people do it. Sure, many people enjoy those cooking shows, where you watch other people cook. But, if you really want to make something, you’re searching online for a written recipe, or you’re going to your cookbook collection.

Which brings me to another complaint I have about the ubiquitous youtube tutorials: Many are just a recipe for some effect. The goal is the effect and not in teaching anything outside of that particular effect. Whine. LOL.

Today I did some more site tidying. I have been working on my Photoshop Resource Links, getting rid of dead stuff and adding new good links. I’m also working toward getting all of this stuff onto the WordPress arm of my site.

And, of course, I did some more Jodie-art!

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My Day Photoshop Tutorial Announcement Travel Tales

New Photoshop Pen Tool Tutorial

I’ve been busy, busy! Today I finally finished my all-new Pen Tools in Photoshop Tutorial! In this one, I go through some detail with how to use the Pen tools and why anyone would want to do that in the first place.

I take you through such riveting projects as creating my feather to the right and making this flourish as you see below.

I just love doing vector graphics, and should probably take another dive into Illustrator, but not today.

And Jack and I bought an RV yesterday. We had sold our 2019 View the day before. It was just too small for us. We did like the beds in back, but, once we got out of bed, it was a fail. We decided that we just need more space for all 3 of us.

We found a 2019 slightly used Pace Arrow 33D in Anthem, went to see it, and loved it. They’re doing some little projects for us: adding solar panels, installing window awnings, putting in a washer/dryer. We will be picking it up in 2 weeks. Here are some teaser pics of it:

Jodie became instantly well when we went and got her a new bag of food. We’re still feeding Pro Plan Savor, which she LOVES, but that was just a bad bag. I emailed Purina, but got no answer. We had been feeding her puppy food, and it was suggested in my Standard Poodle FB group that she should be on adult, so we switched.

We also had her groomed yesterday and, so far, knock wood, she’s doing fine. Recall that she had gotten sick the day after her grooming every time we have taken her to her first groomer. We took her to a different groomer this time. If you have a reason to want to know what groomer we are now patronizing, email me.

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My Day Travel Tales WordPress

Making a mailto link… and other amazing things

Jack and I have discovered that it takes as much work to get going on and re-enter from a small trip as it does for a very long one. The small trip in question is the Show Low jaunt from which we just returned.

We had left to escape the simmering summer heat here, and we were mostly successful. While it was 116 here a couple of the days, it was “only” 95 there, and that’s a 24 degree difference! But it still felt hot.

We had lots of fun, mostly with Jodie at the Dog Park at Venture Inn, the RV Resort. She behaved very nicely with all of the other dogs, and they all seemed to like her. There was a big cottonwood tree right in the middle of the park and everyone sat in chairs and talked, as we watched the dogs play.

We learned some things, as one hopes to do, when one is on one’s maiden voyage in a new RV. We learned that we are happiest when we have a spatula and a serving spoon, but that we won’t die without them.

Even with both of us showering twice and doing dishes daily and no bathhouse available, we still only used 1/3 of the graywater tank and 2/3 of the black water in a full week. We have both gotten pretty good at conserving water!

And the recliners that are standard with the Winnebago View V are really not good. The springs are not adequate to hold the position when you try to actually recline. Buzz. We may be seeking new recliners. Jack got us new springs, but they are not easy to install, so we will wait till it’s less than 400 degrees to try the project again.

We made Reflectix covers for all of the windows. That stuff, which looks like shiny silver bubble wrap, is great for keeping the heat outdoors and the cool indoors. Except when it’s cold! Then they keep the cold out very well.

Today I did a little more touching up on my site. I updated my Contact Janee page, and figured out how to do a mailto link in WordPress:

  • Highlight the part that you want to be hyperlinked.
  • Click the link button at the top.
  • In the URL section type Mailto:?Subject=Tutorial Question (or whatever you want the Subject line to read.)
  • Click Enter.

I did a few cosmetic changes to my Dog Portrait tutorial.

And I looked at some long-forgotten, long-hidden, probably for the best, pages on my site. I wonder, really, how many pages and how many files I do have. At one time, I had over 25,000 files. I’m quite sure I have many more than that now.

Here’s one of the pictures I found, for example. This was one of my early site interfaces. I always thought it was kinda pretty, although, looking at it now, the lighting on me should have been different.

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My Day Travel Tales

Who was that unmasked man?

Today was a mellow and relaxing day for us. We love that our site here at Venture Inn is so close to the dog walk and the dog park! We took Jodie to the dog park and she played with a tiny feisty dog named Ralph. He kept barking at her and trying to get her to run and play and it was so cute.

We went to Walmart and Safeway this afternoon, and, if I should come down with Covid, and they’re trying to do contact tracing on me, I’d have to say I got it today. The number of loud unmasked undistanced people was disturbing. We wore our masks and tried to steer clear of everyone. And we got slippers. And milk. And forgot to get water.

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My Day

They kiss and ride off into the sunset

Today we awoke in Sun Lakes where there high was expected to be 116. We loaded up the RV and drove the beautiful road for 3 hours to Show Low, where we have the windows open, a light rain is misting down, and we almost need a light jacket!

Jodie did great on our drive and she’s relaxing with us now as the couple kisses, ending a Hallmark movie. Life is good!

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My Day Photoshop Tutorial Announcement

Stunning Colored Pencil Effect in Photoshop

I know! You were wondering if you could use Photoshop (or Elements) to make a photo look like it was drawn with colored pencil, right? Well, have I got a tutorial for you!

Before

It’s HERE and it’s for beginners and YOU, if you want to have some fun playing with photos.

After

Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year. In PHX, they are expecting 117. Here in Sun Lakes, it’s usually substantially cooler, more like Tucson, or even a degree or two less. I don’t know what the official temp is now, but this morning at 5 am, when we left for our walk, it was already 89.

I came up with another idea for a shirt:

Better a quarantine coif
than a Covid cough!
Stay HOME!

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My Day

I’ll tell you a story

Today I wrote out my story about how I got to be a Photoshop artist, educator, and author. Here’s the page! You can come back here with a click on the Blog in the top menu. Heyyy, I’m navigable and stuff! Working more on navigability every day!

I also made myself a redirect. I did an online search for myjanee.com and discovered that many sites (old ones, sure) are still linking to my site… but to a no-longer used link! So I reopened that page and put in a redirect. I learned this from my buddies at W3docs.

I used this for an article in Photoshop Fix.

Creative stuff? I’ve started a composition project using the pics of Jodie on the rock. And that’s about it.

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My Day Photoshop Tutorial Announcement

New Sticky Note (Post It) Tutorial!

I am off to a roaring start today, having gotten one of my tutorials completely rewritten and published! It’s my Sticky Note tutorial. I also made a Shading Brush tut which is linked from there and from my ever-growing Tutorial Index.

It’s so hot today that it feels like you’re just going to catch on fire. It was 90 already when we left to go walking at 5:30. We are nearly always very gone at this time of year, though, and I pray that this is the last summer we don’t have any choice in the matter.

Ok off to lunch! Jodie’s getting restless. Here’s a pic of her just the other day, as she turned 8 months! She climbs this rock every morning. It used to be a big deal — like a real climb. But now it’s nothing for her.

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My Day Photoshop Tutorial Announcement

New Photoshop Tutorial: Making a Signature Brush

I’m looking out at our lake though before the 9th green, just outside my window. Big news here is the heat. While we’re not breaking any records, we’re above average this week. Average for Phoenix right now is a staggering 106°! So I’m happy inside.

I did some good work yesterday, writing another tutorial: Making a Signature Brush.

Here’s my capstone image for this tutorial. Love it! I still haven’t worked the code for getting new visitors – or old ones back – to my site. I suppose that, someday, I’ll look back on this post and laugh. I hope so anyway.

Jodie’s back to doing great. We went on our normal walk with her and she did fine. Then she had a little runabout in the backyard with both of us. She loves that so much! Now she’s being my faithful co-worker right by my side napping.

I made this.
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My Day

Frustrations and Questions

Some days you’ve got it and some days you don’t. I’m trying to come up with something — some cool effect in Photoshop. I want to do something that hasn’t been done before. Ok, that’s the hard part. In my Photoshop career, I’ve come up with a few things all on my own. Most of the things I have come up with, though, are the result of people asking me how to do something.

One technique that is entirely mine is the one that I used with my Poster Effect tutorial. The part where I used Dodge and Burn to bring parts of the image into the whiteness or blackness — that was original and I first published that in 2004. Now, it seems like everything has been done and redone. But I’m still finding people in the tutorial groups asking basic questions. That is making me think that there may yet be a market for my style of teaching.

“My style,” of course, is coming off as old-school. I personally hate video tutorials. I see them more of a “look what I can do” presentation, than as a real teaching tool. Not that there isn’t a place for showing off, but I don’t think that people learn well by watching others do stuff. Most of the “tutorials” out there today are youtube showoff videos. Yawn.

Jodie’s tummy is all better today. She does so well with Pepto Bismol. What’s vexing her today is her ear. The groomer plucked all her hair out of her ears. Sounds gruesome, but it doesn’t hurt the dog, if it’s done right. The problem is that I don’t think it was done right. The poor dog has raw places in her left ear which are oozing and sticky. :/ The current literature on poodles is saying DON’T pluck. So I won’t have that done anymore. But wahhh. I really wish that she had not done it at all.