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Design a Website, Really?
We’ve written about collaborating on our art, but did you know that Pixeladies is actually a business partnership, too? In the business part, we don’t collaborate as much as divvy up the jobs. Fortunately we have, as our dear friend Weslee calls it, complementary skill sets. Kris and I like to say Kris is the…
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We’re Showing Our True Colors
This is Kris with a post about colors. Although the ongoing pandemic has definitely put a dent in the Pixeladies’ creative productivity, it has also allowed us some time to explore random topics that keep us inspired. One thing I’ve noticed recently is the incredible things some businesses have done . . . sure maybe…
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Art vs. Craft: The Greta Gerwig Sacramento Edition
For those of you who know me (Kris), you know that I love to spend my Sundays working on the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. So what does that have to do with the big art vs. craft debate and Greta Gerwig? Let me explain. The Art of the NYT Times Crossword Puzzle Well,…
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Oops, They Did It Again: Adobe Organizer’s Category Glitch
We are simply dumbfounded. When Photoshop Element’s 2020 version came out, we checked the Category feature of Organizer. It had been broken since about Version 15. Yay! Adobe had fixed the issue. You could change a sub-category into a category as the Adobe manual describes. But when we checked a couple of weeks ago, it…
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Collaboration in Isolation: A New Road Map
This is Kris with a short explanation of how the Pixeladies are creating a new road map to help us collaborate in isolation. Let me tell you, it ain’t that easy, but we are not complaining. All of our families are safe and healthy. And, although we have several family members (on both sides!) in…
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Copy and Paste Multiple Layers at Once with Copy Merged
By now you probably know that we teach Photoshop Elements. We really like to teach, for all sorts of reasons, I especially like it when we receive questions that I have to investigate or double check the answer I was initially going to write. In the process of answering a question from student Barb S.,…
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Collaboration During A Pandemic And Our SDA Article
Well, we’ve been sheltering in place in California for over a month now. That’s not very conducive to collaborating, especially when you are the most creative when the two of you sneak out for gelato or have giggle fits when making your text collages. We’ve managed to stay busy, though. Deb has sewn almost a…
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Make A Meme Using Photoshop Elements’ Guided Edits
meme noun \ˈmēm\1: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture2: an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media Merriam Webster Dictionary There have been some crazy funny memes floating around the Internet…
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Take Our Organizer Class For Free!
It looks like we’re all going to be staying close to home for quite a while. With lots of people thinking this is a good time to organize their photos, we have decided to offer our Photoshop Elements Organizer class for free. [Note: This offer expired June 30, 2020.] Click here to read more about…
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Photoshop Elements’ “Remove An Object” Guided Edit
We’re getting ready to teach our Photoshop Elements Essentials classes again. We’re always amazed at how many tips Photoshop Elements has built into the program. Deb thought you might like to know how to use one of these guided edits, Remove Objects, to eliminate a bald spot as well as getting rid of background objects.…
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Deb’s Love Of Art And Basketball Explained
This is Deb here to answer the burning question, “What does a visit to your local museum, in my case the Crocker Art Museum, have to do with basketball?” I’ll drive or even fly for hours to see a museum exhibition, but it’s hard for me to take three hours out of my day and…
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MACC: Go For The Art, Stay For The Networking
As members of Studio Art Quilts Associates, we are always on the lookout to see the exhibitions the organization mounts. It’s a way for us to do some networking and see great art at the same time. We usually have to travel to do this, but in September we’ll get to see SAQA’s “Stitching California”…
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Why We Love Photoshop and Why We Teach Online – Try Us!
This Deb with a little post about how we here at the Pixeladies Studio use Photoshop all the time. We love to use it for things like collaging two images together, changing image colors, testing out quilting lines, and resizing photos to enter into exhibitions. It’s one of the most important tools we have. Here…
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Are You Registered To Vote? Our Art Asks You To Protect Your Voting Rights!
We live in California and for the longest time our primary took place in June. We were, for lack of a better term, irrelevant. Now our primary is March 3 on what is now truly a Super Tuesday primary. Over the past few years, our art has sometimes focused on the political process and the…
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Cribbage, Dad, Quilts, And Making Lasting Memories
National Cribbage Day is February 10, and Kris’ dad’s birthday is February 21. Now, what do those two things have in common and what do they have to do with the Pixeladies? Well, let Kris explain! The Quilt The first quilt we ever made together as the Pixeladies was for the River City Quilters’ Guild’s…
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Love, Christo, Jeanne-Claude, And The Wrapped Reichstag
Love is in the air, so In honor of Valentine’s Day, I (Kris) wanted to talk about a great artistic couple. I am not talking here about men and their muses, think Dalí and Gaia or Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne. I’m talking about the husband and wife team of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. I love their…
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Use PS Cookie Cutter Tool for Cool Valentine’s Cards
Happy almost Valentine’s Day. If you don’t want to pay an exorbitant price for a Valentine’s Day card, Deb’s back to show you how to make very personal greeting cards using the cookie cutter tool in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Gather, Cut and Paste First find a bunch of photographs with you and your…
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Craft In America: The Quilts Episode And Susan Else
This is Kris, with a non-techie blog post today. PBS started airing the Quilts episode of Craft in America. If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, I highly recommend it. This episode focuses on just four artists, but they are representative of the diverse field that is our medium. I was struck…
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Neat Trick To Fade One Image Into Another
It’s Deb, back with a slick way to put two images together with a fade effect. I have a photo of Dave and me in front of the Bell Tower, a historical monument in Placerville, California. Then I found a wonderful map of Placerville* from 1888 which actually shows the Bell Tower. I want to…
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Copy Layers Between Images in Photoshop The Easy Way
Yes, you can teach old dogs new tricks! This is Kris with another Tech Tuesday post. I often want to copy layers from one image to another. In Photoshop Elements, I always thought it was easy, but Deb just showed me an even easier way to copy layers between images, and as she always says,…
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Stamp Visible: A Useful Keyboard Shortcut In Photoshop
This is Deb with one of my all-time favorite Photoshop shortcuts: Stamp Visible. We’ve written many posts on the advantages of using layers in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, but sometimes we need to combine some or all of the layers together to perform a certain task. And Stamp Visible can help us do this. Let’s…
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Happy New Year! Let’s Start 2020 Together
Happy 2020! We’d love to start this new year out with a bang, so please join us on Sunday, Jan 12, 1 pm at Bay Quilts for our talk called 3 Women, 3 Stories. Faith Ringgold, Mitsuye Endo, and Katharine McCormick are three of the most interesting women we’ve ever encountered, and we can’t wait…
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Happy Holidays . . . With Eggnog!
We at the Pixeladies Studio want to wish you all happy holidays. We hope you can be with family and friends, are happy and healthy, and looking forward to the possibilities of many tomorrows. We’ve already had our wine-tasting dinner this year with old friends. It was loads of fun, and the wine was delicious.…
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Create Simple Pattern Repeats With Photoshop Shapes
This is Deb with another Tech Tuesday blog . . . just in time for those of you who still have holiday notes to write. You probably know about the custom shape tools in Photoshop Elements (PSE). And if you read our previous post on shapes, you know how to add shapes to the ones that…
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There Is Such A Thing As Pixidoku – Help Spread The Word!
This is Deb with a special blog post about Pixidoku. So what’s Pixidoku all about, and why do we want to talk about it? Well first off, like the “Pixe” in Pixeladies, the “Pixi” in Pixidoku doesn’t refer to pixies. Second, we love Sudoku. Third, Heather, one of the co-creators, is the daughter of my…
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To Name Or Not to Name Layers in Photoshop
To name or not to name layers, that is the question. Well, that wasn’t really the question. Shakespeare was more poetic than that, but we just couldn’t resist the parady. To be honest, we’re presenting a another case of “whatever works for you.” We think it might have to do with how you best learn…
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Happy Thanksgiving 2019!
Just a short note to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving 2019 and to let you know that we are taking a little break this week to spend time with our families. We are so grateful for them as we are for our friends, students, and colleagues. Here’s a short reminder of how to make…
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Add Custom Shapes to Photoshop Elements
This is Deb with another Tech Tuesday blog post just in time for the holidays. Today it’s all about custom shapes. There are a lot of things we like about Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, but their selection of custom shapes is not one. Fortunately there are a lot of clever, artistic, and generous people out…
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Voting Rights And Our Fannie Lou Hamer Project
Our new project is an artwork for the exhibition Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices, Women’s Rights, which will premiere September 2020 at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. The curators, Allida Black and Allison Wilbur, asked us if we were willing to do a piece about Fannie Lou Hamer. Born black, poor, and uneducated…
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Sam Bowker Provides Context For The Tentmakers of Cairo
The Tentmakers of Cairo We’ve just returned from a visit to the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles to hear Dr. Sam Bowker present a lecture* on the history of the tentmakers of Cairo. Our quilting friends have perhaps heard of the tentmakers of Cairo or even been fortunate enough to see one of…