THE DAISIE COMPANY has a free gift for you, of beautiful recipe cards that were made by DAISIE COMPANY members just like you!  These were created in a contest where individuals designed their own recipe cards using the wonderful art and graphics available for sale at THE DAISIE COMPANY.  When you see these amazing cards, remember that ordinary people with no special graphics skills were able to create these layouts.  It’s not as hard as you think!  Each comes with a recipe and a blank version.  To download the files, click on the image and then save them to your computer.  This is a large download so be patient!  (UPDATE: the link has expired.  Please check back for other specials about once or twice a month).

Have you ever tried making your own recipe cards?  Tuck one in the plate of chocolate chip cookies you make as a get well gift with the recipe you used and watch the recipient’s face light up!  If you’ve never tried working with graphics, most computers come with a simple graphics program like "Paint."  Play around with it and see what you can do.  At the very least, you’ll be able to take the blank versions of these cards and add your own recipe to it. 

DAISIE COMPANY TERMS OF USE 

The DAISIE COMPANY’S website is www.daisiecompany.com.  You can sign up for their newsletter and receive information about what’s happening at DAISIE and special little gifties like these on a quarterly basis.  I WILL NOT ALWAYS HAVE THE RECIPE CARDS AVAILABLE ON THIS BLOG, SO IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE ALL OF THEM YOU WILL NEED TO SIGN UP AT DAISIE!  Once you do, check out the website a little.  There are forums for digital scrapbooking and digital paper crafting, forums for Microsoft’s Digital Imaging Pro (DIP), Corel’s Paint Shop Pro (PSP), Adobe’s Photoshop Elements (PSE) and several other smaller graphics programs.  There’s a forum called "DAISIE General How-To’s" that’s a great place to begin.  There’s also a lot of praying, sharing, caring and laughing with each other that happens in the General Chat forum 

DAISIE’S message board is a very real, very caring, VERY FUN place to hang out while you learn more about digital scrapbooking or crafting.  I can’t say it nearly as well as Mary Roberson, who’s screen name is "Handmade Heartfelt" has here:

"I have owned a computer for 10 years, but had never learned to work with graphics. That is, until I found DAISIE, through Stacey Thomas. I desperately wanted to learn how to make pretty greeting cards and craft projects like those
I saw other people making. What makes DAISIE unique from other message boards is that the members share tips and advice about how to use the graphics and how to work with software programs that allow you to turn graphics into projects that you design.

I had given up hope that I’d ever be able to do more than use printable sets to print ready made projects, but Stacey didn’t give up on me. She told me to stick around the community and come to the online crops and told me she believed I could do it. She encouraged me (as did other members) that once I learned a few basic tips, a whole new world would open up to me, and it has! I never understood the concept of digital scrapbooking until I came to DAISIE. LibMary has good information for beginners, with screen shot visuals, which I find very helpful because I can see the exact steps she has taken to complete her project. There are tutorials to help the beginner, but more than that,you have wonderfully patient people who hold your hand and guide you along the way." 

If you want to learn more, here are some resources that I gathered simply by asking a question on the message board yesterday.  Here are the wonderful replies I received:

1. Barbara said: "PhotoImpact is one that I’ve used and there are some fantastic resources for those who are trying to learn it at www.pircnet.com (including a beginner’s workshop which pairs them with a mentor that helps them through a series of lessons designed to familiarize them with the different tools – all free of charge).   www.visual-arts-academy.com is another resource for several different programs and the cost of the lessons is low for the amount of information."
2. Margie said: "A great place online to learn software is LVS – www.lvsonline.com. The courses are $25 / $20 for returning students. They last 6 weeks. I’ve taken many courses from them and most have been excellent."
3. DAISIE is having a custom browser program developed that will store your graphics and also help you create things with them.  It is in the last stages of development and will be extraordinarily well priced.  Stacey Thomas of DAISIE COMPANY said yesterday "We are still testing it out, but free trials of their higher priced software can be had at www.fxfoto.com"
4. Tracy said: "You’re probably already aware of scrapgirls.com where they have several free tutorials and a lot of one you have to read. Also Linda Sattgast has several CD’s for sale that are really good at explaining the basics of PSE 4 and 5. That website is scrappersguide.com."  
5. Cheryl said: Inkscape and Gimp(similar to Photoshop) are free. Gimp is the most popular one that I come across in the instructional technology field but it isn’t the easiest to learn. There’s a list of freebies here at wikipedia
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Graphics_tutorials

There’s whole new world waiting for you and a lot of new friends waiting to help you discover it, just give it a try!

Audrey Jeanne Roberts