Author: Deb Cashatt
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High Tech Quilts
Welcome back. Today you can see what fun I had with parts I gleaned from taking apart computer hard drives, cd burners and cell phones. At our Studio Art Quilt Associates convention in Santa Fe, we’re going to have a silent auction of miniature art quilts just for people at the conference. This will be…
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Cool Computer Parts
I suppose I should title this post getting to know the Pixeladies—or, specifically, learning more about Deb than she wants you to know. Hi, my name is Deb, and I’m a packrat. [Audience: Hi, Deb] It started during the holidays. I was cleaning up the studio and throwing things away. [Audience: (applauding) Good job, Deb!]…
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Photoshop Elements 11 Has Arrived!
All I can say is WOW! Adobe has been listening. The Photoshop Elements (PSE) desktop has been completely revamped in Version 11. Here are some of the changes I’ve noticed: PSE has now gone back to the light gray desktop. (Finally!!! People have been complaining about this since the change—was it around version 7?)…
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Tech Tuesday: Photoshop File Size Limit
It finally happened. After using some version of Adobe Photoshop for 17 years, I finally hit the file size limit. I don’t mean the “no vacancy on the old hard drive” message or the “you’ve done something that’s using more computing power than your computer has” message, but the real “your file has too many…
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Tech Tuesday: Help! My Paintbrush Isn’t Working!
We got that frantic Photoshop message in an email last week. You know, the one that says, “Help! My brush has gone haywire!” You go to paint, and you can’t see your drawing line or it’s really faint. Has this ever happened to you? Well, there are some common things to check before you tear…
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Curating a Dream Collection
Kermit the frog sang about how it’s not easy being green. Well, it’s not easy being a curator either. Just try choosing six 12” square quilts from the 394 quilts donated to the Studio Art Quilt Associates’ (SAQA) benefit auction. That was the opportunity given to us by Executive Director Martha Sielman. Six quilts, SIX,…
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Tech Tuesday: Changing Your Brush Size
Sometimes I really hate drop-down menus. Take the example of changing brush sizes in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. I have to move my mouse, stylus or finger all the way to the Options bar, then click, then decide what a good size would be, then move my mouse, stylus or finger back to the image…
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Amber Waves of Grain: Tetsunori Kawana’s Bamboo Sculptures
For this post, we’re heading back to Denver again. I just love it when you go to a favorite spot and there’s something new to capture your attention. The Denver Botanic Gardens has once again come through for me. For the past few years, they’ve commissioned site-specific art for the garden. This year, in the…
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Denise Wallace
Okay, I’ve got to add a museum to our list of favorite museums. Denver Art Museum has been one of my faves for quite a while. Last month I went to DAM with a friend to see the Yves St. Laurent show and Madeline Albright’s collection of pins. Both were good, but I have to…
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Now, That’s Some Lace!
I’m sure you’ve all had one of those serendipitous events. You know, you planned for one thing and it just wasn’t meant to be, but then you got to do or learn something you never would have done in a million years. For me it was visiting the Lace Study Center at the Powerhouse Museum…
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Mapping the Family-Part I
On January 18th, we are going to be teaching a workshop for the River City Quilters’ Guild based on the commission quilt we finished in October. I just realized we had not posted a photo of the finished commission, so people who weren’t at the RCQG show or meeting wouldn’t know what we’re talking about. …
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Procrastination, Organization, and Inspiration
When I have a deadline I don’t want to deal with, my way of procrastinating is to do other things that I’ve been putting off. Like cleaning. So this week it was cleaning off my desk in the studio. Kris is gone, so I can spread everything out and go through each piece of paper.…
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Having Fun with our Sequin Stash
The theme was snow. We went to our local hospice thrift store and found 4 painted plaster (?) snowflakes and one brass one. The mission was to create ornaments worthy of Gail Bird’s ornament exchange. The real challenge was to only use embellishments from our stash. Well, I’m not sure if that was really a…
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Inspiration and Online Classes
I guess it all started in 1985. While I was working in Zurich for a summer, I got to visit the Verzasca Valley in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. It was breathtaking–the landscape, the color of the water, the fireflies, the lightning off in the distance. In 2000, I returned with my friend Weslee, whose…
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Organizing Patterns with Photoshop Elements
At the American Sewing Guild’s national conference in Los Angeles, we gave a short presentation about organizing your patterns with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements. The Organizer portion of Elements is a great way to catalog photos, videos, music, and yes, even sewing patterns. If you want to use the tags we created for patterns, save the…
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Santa Fe International Folk Art Market
It’s that time of year again–The International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe is almost here. Since I won’t be attending this year, I decided to pull out some photos from years past. In 2007, we missed the market by one day. The sparkly decorations were still up, but the artists and the collectors were…