tortagialla.com - Artist + Designer Linda Tieu » designs

Date Location Notes Printable Journaling Notecards

linda — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:46:31 +0000

Happy September lovely blog readers! I’m still pondering over how I can organize and refine a posting schedule for my various blogs, including this one…see the last post for details. I’m always open to suggestions, so do let me know what you think. What do you want to see, learn, share, discuss about? In the meantime, I thought I would post this little printable freebie. I’m going into a lot of scrapbooking and minibook making for all my vacation photos, so these were some journaling notecards I whipped up to use. There’s space to put in the date, location and notes…especially good for itinerary types of memory keeping.

Download Date Location Notes Printable Journaling Notecards PDF

Hope you enjoy and until next time…when I get my scheduling sorted out! Thanks and ciao ciao!

Spring Flowers Stationery Set – A Printable Freebie

linda — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:03:41 +0000

Today would probably be the ideal example day for living in the Tuscan hills of Italy – sunny warm and happy bright weather. It’s the scene I think folks probably picture in their minds when I say that I live in Tuscany. You can almost feel the warm sun on your skin, hearing the birds chirping and listening to the cool breeze rustling through the many hills of grassy green. Well, it is true and is one of the reasons why I fell in love with this place…but it actually isn’t idyllic year-round. Only during this time of year, when the signs of Spring start popping up and it isn’t too hot where the grass starts to turn brown – does it look like the postcards you often see. My mood is always elevated by this lovely weather. I was inspired to whip up a spring flowers stationery set and it’s also part of my attempts this month to write more by hand. It’s National Letter Writing month after all!

Spring Flowers Stationery Set Printable PDF (228 kb)

I hope my design will cheer you up a bit, wherever you are…wild flowers have been popping up all over our yard so I have flowers on the brain! Even though dandelions are supposed to be weeds, they can be pretty as well or at least that’s what I tell myself because they’ve taken over our yard. Plus our niece has lots of fun blowing them all over. BTW if you like printable stationery, don’t forget to download the Airmail Stationery Set from last week as well. Enjoy and happy day to everyone! Ciao Ciao!

Airmail Stationery Set – A Printable Freebie

linda — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:35:29 +0000

So I’ve always loved the look of dip pen handwriting, reminding me of the time when traditional correspondence was the norm. Unfortunately, my touristy-bought Italian dip pen set has been collecting dust in a box. I have really bad hand control and found it so difficult to write anything at all. Perhaps I was too impatient or perhaps I just didn’t give myself enough time to develop, so I want to give it another try. I realize practice makes perfect…the wonderful wisdom we learn from kindergarten.

Printable Airmail Stationery Set PDF (258 KB)

I quickly designed a cute airmail stationery set to get myself into the mood of handwriting a letter. You can see from the photo that I printed on creamy cardstock which was perfect for the envelope but too big and too thick for the stationery writing paper. I reprinted the writing paper on plain paper and that definitely looks better. These were printed at half size to make mini-letters but of course the PDF is full US Letter sized paper. I thought I would share this printable with all of you, so feel free to download the PDF above and use for your personal writing adventures. Have fun! Now I can go practice my dip pen skills…wish me luck!

Creative Workspace Printing and Watercoloring

linda — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:57:44 +0000

Things are still a bit messy in my workspace, but I’ve been testing printing on canvas paper which is pretty darn cool! I used to not like the canvas texture when painting and wanted to cover it up with globs of paint, but now the texture is sort of nice to me. BTW I just created a little clothesline by tacking up some twine – it’s nice for wall decoration!

I also broke out some watercolors (I used markers in some spots, too) and trying to practice more. I haven’t really found what it is I really like about watercolor that I can do – besides the fact that I am totally inconsistent. I think it’s important to experiment enough so you can take from it what fits with your work…something like that anyway – not wanting to get all spiritual talking here. I want today to be a lazy free day.

In fact, I’m checking out ALL the other creative workspaces on kootoyoo this week… there are always so many links and usually I don’t get to see them all.

It’s Okay To Cry Graphic Art Print

linda — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:59:40 +0000

I think that I’m coming near to the end of this specific graphic art print series, Notes to Myself. Here’s the latest called, It’s Okay To Cry. I think sometimes we have to remind ourselves that. It’s not about weakness or being over emotional. It’s simply another form of expression and I think it is necessary at times – a release for the body. That’s what I wanted to remind myself with this saying, for those low times we all run into. With this design I experimented and played more with layers of texture and excited about the results and the possibilities. Although I have many more notes to myself, I do feel ready to move on to other things.

I have one more note to finish up and that would make ten prints in this series. I do get obsessive compulsive at times with round numbers You can see the prints in my Flickr set as well. So, lately I’ve been in one of those slumps and I suppose that contributes to why I chose to do this particular note to myself. I am feeling disorganized and it’s really impeding my creative flow. Looks like it’s really time for Spring cleaning!

Springtime Postcard

linda — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:25:43 +0000

Today was feeling a bit down with the gloomy rainy weather. I’m ready for Springtime, but apparently there’s still a lot of cold weather to come. I decided to make myself a new desktop wallpaper, something cheery. I ended up with this design – sort of calming cheery and I thought I would share it as a graphic postcard. Looks nicer in this smaller size I think. Print a postcard, tack it on your inspiration board or make a bookmark out of it. Feel free to use it for your personal musings…ciao ciao!

Update on Prints

linda — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:25:26 +0000

Happy Tuesday to you! Today I am spending time doing some Spring cleaning from a digital standpoint. I tend to always have so much going on, things can get a bit messy on my computer. I am also wondering how I can organize things better and reduce the cost of listing items on Etsy…even though it doesn’t seem much at first, over time it really adds up.

My first experiment was setting up my big cartel shop with the cute kitchen prints you see above. I can only list 5 products with a free account, so I suppose it’s not a long term solution. However, I did want to try it and it is certainly very simple to add products and set up shop. Creating these graphic art prints sort of replaced last weeks notes to myself art print, but I did get to illustrating one this week – Smile!

Again, due to listing costs I won’t be listing these prints into my Etsy shop anymore…will have to figure out a way to share them somewhere. Although it’s nice to be part of the Etsy community, there are so many shops it doesn’t seem like listing there helps you to be seen really…you have to get people there no matter what. In which case, isn’t it better to just list items in your website and have a Paypal button? I wonder…

In other musings, I also created a new digital stamp set of owls and gave them funny names like big mister, chubby and wiseguy… I liked them so much, I had to use them for a repeating pattern. Here’s a little peek of the pattern as I play around, but not done yet. What do you think?

Double Happiness Celebration Today

linda — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:27:37 +0000

Graffiti Style Valentine Mini Digital Kit

linda — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:49:07 +0000

Happy Wednesday to everyone! I have been thinking about creating digital kits for scrapbooking, cardmaking and general crafting for a while now and decided that today I was just going to do it. Sometimes your fears and hesitations really hold you back from experimenting, so I had to tell myself that this was just an experiment and I wouldn’t be judged for all eternity. I know I still have a lot to learn and already have ideas for more unique themes, but I wanted to get something out there to share and discuss. So here is my mini digital kit release, totally free and themed for upcoming valentine’s day. It’s graffiti style which was inspired by the brick background I created first, so everything grew from that graphic.

Download the Graffiti Style Valentine Mini Digital Kit (29.1 MB)

I hope that you can use it for your personal crafting adventures, please spread the word for others you think would enjoy it. I would love any feedback you have so I can learn more regarding designing digital kits. Also, feel free to share anything you make using the kit by commenting below. If you like freebies don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter as well…I created the coolest little Lunar New Year design for an upcoming newsletter…so excited!

Love and Peace Wallpaper

linda — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:19:51 +0000

I know it’s considered pretty geeky to watch and subsequently become obsessed with anime series. Stories range from classic romance to funny, whimsical characters and even quirky or downright weird at times. I’ve certainly gone through my fair share of passionate obsessions. I have a 200GB drive filled with subbed anime from my college years! Although it’s impossible to follow all the series, the bright side is that there’ll always be something new to watch.

One of the more popular stories that made it’s way to the USA audience is titled Trigun and you might have heard of it already. I learned a great phrase from that series…“love and peace,” says Vash, the main character (I’m pretty sure this is not the first time I am mentioning him on the blog). It might sound childish and simple-minded, but hey, it makes me happy and I have no issues learning life lessons from cartoons. I totally love watching the newer generation of animated movies like Shrek and Wall-E that aren’t so classical fairy tale like.

The image you see above is a desktop wallpaper I designed for myself. I thought it would be nice to share it with you as well, perhaps you can print it out as a card or even wall art. I got the idea of offering free art from illustrator Stephanie Fizer (an artist I totally admire) and she offers occasional free downloads and pick-us-all-up messages, too. I really like her free art for the IndieFixx Feed Your Soul Project - you can see the print here. Enjoy and happy Wednesday!