Month: April 2011

Food Corner: Strawberry Season

Published by Sula H.

Yes! Strawberry season has begun, and for us that means lots of delicious delights. My friend just got me a huge bag of fresh strawberries just the other day, and now I can enjoy them for breakfast, with yogurt, or as a snack on the side. Since I am talking about snacks already – have you ever tried to make strawberry ice cream? All you need to do is, get a couple of strawberries and freeze them. Then you throw them into a blender, add plain yogurt and a teeny-bit of vanilla extract, and there you have the most delicious, and yet very healthy ice cream dessert!

Behind the Scenes: Creating a Digital Design Tray

Published by Sula H.

It’s time for our monthly Photoshop tutorial, and I thought, today I’d like to take you to the world of Bevel & Embossing. In other words, I’m going to show how you can create a design tray similar to the one I did just the other day. SSD has a challenge this month, for which they used a really cute design tray as inspiration, and I loved the image so much, that I wanted to try my hands on this kind of design. The problem: I don’t have any such design tray – neither in my digiscrap stash, nor a physical one at home. But I had an idea of how I could achieve a somewhat similar look digitally, and here is what I did: 1. Create a blocked background I started by creating a blocked background with the Rectangle Tool on my blank canvas. After filling the whole canvas with blocks of various sizes, I selected all the layers in the Layers Panel, and duplicated everything. The duplicated layers I merged into one layer; …

Places to Go: Tomb of Qin Shi Huang (Xi’An)

Published by Sula H.

Great myths surround the death and burial of  Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. Legend has it that the emperor -afraid of death, and wanting to preserve is life forever – went through great measures to ensure his afterlife was well established and protected. The famed Terracotta Army – next to the Great Wall, maybe the most remarkable historical attraction in China – is also credited to Qin Shi Huang, as is his legendary tomb. Tales of palaces and scenic towers, of rivers made with mercury, jewels and immeasurable riches being buried together with the emperor have circulated for centuries. Due to the lack of appropriate technology which can preserve the hidden treasures, the tomb has yet to be opened. But there is a replica of the tomb in close proximity to the actual site, and visitors can get an impression of what is awaiting future archeologists and historians in the real tombs of Qin Shi Huang.

Chinese Corner: Foreign Teacher

Published by Sula H.

I’m no Chinese expert by any means. But what I love about the Chinese language is its simplicity – in some ways. There are many words in the Chinese language that you can already guess, simply because they just put two descriptive words together to form this new word. So, today, I’m introducing a new corner of my website: the Chinese Corner. Every week (I hope), I’ll post one new word for you to learn about, and who knows – you might end up a Chinese expert after all! Since I’m a foreign teacher here in China, how about I start with a very simple word that lends itself to be the first ever word in my Chinese Corner: Lesson 1: Foreign Teacher   外教 – wài jiào   wai = outside; in addition; foreign; external jiao = to teach waijiao = outside teach = foreign teacher (If you can’t see the Chinese characters, because you don’t have any Asian languages installed on your computer, don’t worry about it.)

Monday Highlight: Fancy Pants

Published by Sula H.

I haven’t done any digital scrapbook kits in a while now in the Monday Highlight, so how about we talk about a kit that was released just a few weeks ago: “Fancy Pants” by Traci Reed. Fancy Pants has a great color scheme that works both for masculine and feminine layouts, which makes it really versatile. The kit also comes with a great number of unique elements, and I especially love the handwritten pieces of word-art. On top of that, I love everything banner-like (others call it bunting), and Traci’s kit includes a very fun, unique banner. Fancy Pants also comes with a fun plastic alpha in four different colors. This last weekend, I just played around with this kit for a bit, and look what I got in the end:

Sweetshoppe Specials

Published by Sula H.

I just realized that I forgot to tell you about a special sale that has been going on at the Sweetshoppe. As all of you surely know already, more than a month ago, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan. In order to support the relief efforts that are underway, the sweetshoppe designers got together to create a beautiful Asian themed kit that will be available through April. 100% of the profits will be donated to the American Red Cross. So, if you’d like to contribute to help Japan, here is a great opportunity to do that. And since I’m living in China, this kit is a must-have for all my Asian memories! Here is a sample page, using this kit: And while we are talking about special sales already, let me point you to another fundraiser project that was released just this weekend: A Little Help From My Friends is a huge collaboration kit by almost 50 designers, dedicated to Sweetshoppe designer Lauren Grier who fell seriously ill a little more than a week …

Saturday Feature: Oh Balcony of Mine

Published by Sula H.

Did I ever tell you about my balcony? I love my balcony. It’s the one thing that makes my little place more like a home for me. The only problem is the dirt factor. You may remember, that a couple of weeks ago, I told you about the dust bunnies that so love to intrude our lives here. Well, if the dust loves our apartments, it loves my balcony even more. So much so, that – in fact – whenever I clean my balcony, after two days you hear the dust crunching under each step you take out there. For that reason, I’ve given up trying to keep my balcony clean over the winter. This, however, means cleaning the balcony for the first time after months is quite the task. Just a couple of weeks ago, I took on the task:   During After Now, with all the dust storms we’ve recently had, my balcony is almost back to stage 1 again. Looks like I have to start another bucket & water campaign!

Freebie Friday: Campus

Published by Sula H.

Have your next template ready. It’s based on one of my recent double pages of my parents’ visit to China. It’s late over here, and I’m ready to go to bed, but I hope you’ll enjoy this one. Have a great weekend, everyone! Note: Please do not re-distribute this template in any way (you may share the link to this post), and when you use this template, please make sure to credit it to Misty Hilltops Designs.