Category: Teaching
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Practicing for Focus on Fiber Florida Style
Deb’s in India, so I thought I would take the opportunity to practice some of the upcycling skills Deb taught me. If you remember, Deb will be teaching at Focus on Fiber Florida Style in April. You can read about it by clicking here. She helped me with the dress shown above. While Deb was…
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Building A House Quilt To Share
Our friend and fellow artist, Jamie Fingal, is collecting 14″ x 14″ quilts that feature a house for people transitioning from homelessness and starting a home. Jamie has partnered with Furnishing Hope on this project. We decided to make our own house quilt to donate to this great cause, and we also love to take a…
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Teaching at Focus on Fiber Florida Style
Wanna get away? Why not join me at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida for Focus on Fiber? I’m going to be teaching a 2-day workshop on Improvisational Upcycling with T-shirts, April 7-8, 2019. What is Improvisational Upcycling? Improvise: to make or fabricate out of what is conveniently on…
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The Pixeladies Turn 15!
Has it really been fifteen years since we paddled around Deb’s pool, dreaming up a way to start a business? It seems like yesterday when we decided to call ourselves the Pixeladies, but now that we’ve taken stock of what we’ve done these past fifteen years, it really has been a long time. You can…
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Tech Tuesday: Photoshop Elements Organizer Advanced Search
One of the best parts about using Photoshop Elements Organizer is being able to find a particular photo without knowing a) the file name or b) where it is on your computer, DVD, external hard drive, etc. One of the menu items in Organizer is “Find.” Using that option, you can search for files based…
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Transparency In Fashion: Art That Makes You Think
Do you let your magazines pile up? You know–you have a whole stack that you haven’t read and then try to read them all at once when you want to clean your house. I usually do that. But yesterday I received my Surface Design Journal and while flipping through the pages, there seemed to be…
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Tech Tuesday: Group Layers in Photoshop Elements
There are lots of little differences between the professional Photoshop Creative Cloud and the consumer Photoshop Elements that we have always missed when teaching Photoshop Elements. For sure, Photoshop Elements is really all most of us need to do what we want to do, but yet . . . . One thing that we always…
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Photographs for Designing
I just returned from a fantastic SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) conference in San Antonio, Texas. Along with listening to lots of thought-provoking talks, catching up with old friends, and meeting new ones, I took lots of photographs. Some of these photos might look odd to you, but for me they’re textures that I might…
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Digital Designing Is Finally Here!
Several years ago we taught an “intermediate” online Photoshop Elements course. We enjoyed teaching it very much, but we knew that what we really wanted to do was to get our students to the point where they could unleash their creativity through Photoshop. Ever since we revamped our PSE 1 & 2 classes, our students…
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Classes At The Schweinfurth
There are so many quilting classes out there that it’s sometimes difficult to sort through them all to find one that is most suited to your needs and desires. We recently came upon the summer class schedule for the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY (near Syracuse). If you’re looking for serious artist teachers, you need look…
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Pixeladies Class Contest: We Have A Winner!
Last week we held a contest to give away a Pixeladies online class. We asked our readers to leave a comment on our blog post about inspiration and documentation. Well, today we randomly drew* a winner: Kit Vincent! Kit wins a Pixeladies online class. Now, Kit can enroll in any Pixeladies class she wants to,…
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Inspiration and Documentation
Kris and I are revamping our Digital Designing class. Sometimes it takes us quite a while to formulate a class, but this one came together in an afternoon. I just love it when that happens. So while Kris was fleshing out the outline, I was looking for inspiration for projects. I’d really love to have…
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The Power Of Word Of Mouth & Ohio
We’re in the middle of registration for our next series of Photoshop Elements classes, and we’ve noticed a curious thing. The last time we taught online, we had several Canadians enroll. This time around, 26% of the Elements 1 students are from Ohio. Ohio!! Over 1/4 of our students . . . so far .…
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Photoshop Essentials 3? Help Us With Our Next Online Photoshop Course
We’re taking a hiatus from online teaching until the new year so that we can work on revamping our design class. After a cursory review of the course, we realized that we had a bit of a dilemma, so we thought we would ask you for some help. Of course, we’ll intersperse our questions with…
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Tech Tuesday: Personalizing Keyword Tags in Photoshop Elements Organizer
Our students know how much we love to organize our photos with Photoshop Elements Organizer. It’s really handy for visual people like us, but it’s also very powerful. Take, for example, the keyword tags. You can create a keyword tag for anything you think you’ll want to search your images for. We once had a…
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Using Facial Recognition in Photoshop Elements Organizer
Someone once told us she didn’t want to organize her digital photos because it “takes too long.” What’s great about Photoshop Elements Organizer is that you can organize your photos in great or very little detail. Organizer’s use of facial recognition makes it easy for you to label your photos with people’s names. If you…
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Tech Tuesday: Facial Recognition Makes Digital Organizing a Snap
Now that we’ve all been snapping digital photos for several years now, it’s probably time to start organizing them. Deb has been organizing her 20,000 photos for years now, but as a relative newcomer to the game, I wanted to tell you how cool it is to go through and identify people for your records.…
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Road Trip!
By the time you read this, Kris will have landed in Frankfurt where Deb is picking her up at the rental car counter. Deb has been in Germany on a much-deserved visit with her host family from her time as an exchange student in Hamburg. Once we reunite, it’s off to view the 6th Annual…
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Registration For Photoshop Essentials Starts Sep 5!
It’s that time again – registration for Photoshop Essentials 1 and 2 starts on September 5. Photoshop Essentials 1 starts on October 5, while Essentials 2 starts on November 2. We have so much fun teaching these online classes because we get to meet people from all over the US, Canada, and the world. Our…
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#internkelly, Signing Off
Hello friends and followers! Today will be my last day as an intern here at Pixeladies Studio. Although I will certainly miss “working” (if that’s what you call sitting around, laughing, and having fun) with the wonderful Deb and Kris, I look forward to taking everything I have learned here with me as I continue…
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Introducing #internkelly
Hello all! My name is Kelly and I am very excited to introduce myself as the newest Pixeladies intern. I currently study Fashion Design at the local City College, and when the opportunity to work with the Pixeladies came up, I knew I had to take it! I spent the majority of my first day…
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Pixeladies Update
This is a very busy time at the Pixeladies’ studio. Well not really at the studio, but on the computers. We’re in the final two weeks of teaching our Photoshop Essentials II class (we love teaching), creating videos (Deb hates listening to her voice) and a handbook (auditioning legible fonts) for our upcoming Photoshop Organizer…
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Intern Update
Has it really been two years since Intern Kelsi was finishing up her internship with the Pixeladies and finding her first job at Target? We still laugh about how it was the fabric folding, a chore we tossed at her near the end of her internship, that really impressed the folks at Target. Well, today…
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Tech Tuesday: Our Students Are Better Than We Are!
We don’t think there is anything more gratifying as teachers than when our students not only “get it,” but they use what they’ve learned in such creative ways. Our latest example is Kathleen Loomis. Read her blog post about how she helped a friend break through a creative block and go from this: to this…
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Tech Tuesday: What Our Students Learn
We just ended our Photoshop Elements Essentials I and II classes. Wow! What amazing students. Their creativity never ceases to amaze us. We’ve rescheduled the series again in June (please see our classes page for more information). We’d normally want to tell you ourselves how great the class is, but we’d rather you heard from…
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Tech Tuesday: PSE Essentials II Starts Feb 9
We’ve been engrossed in teaching Photoshop Elements Essentials I, which started a couple of weeks ago. We are having so much fun. The students are great and are learning so much. It’s wonderful to witness the “aha” moments. We’re answering students questions at all hours of the day (okay, so we have yet to answer…
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Tech Tuesday: We Heart Online Teaching
We love teaching, and we love technology, but teaching and technology don’t always work together. So why do the Pixeladies bother teaching online? It’s convenient–for both the student and the teacher. We have students from all over the world, and we don’t have to be up 24 hours a day. We post our class materials, and students…
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Tech Tuesday: Reminder for Photoshop Classes
This is a friendly reminder that our next Photoshop Elements class starts Monday, January 12. This first class is really suited for beginners and for those who want a refresher or need help finding their way around the Photoshop Elements 13 workspace. Both three-week classes come with videos, handbooks, and three live webinars. Students tell…
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Tech Tuesday: Online Photoshop Classes Start January 12!
The new year will bring with it new Pixeladies classes. We’re starting out with two beginning classes on Photoshop Elements. These three-week classes come with videos, handbooks, and three live webinars. Students tell us they really appreciate the individualized feedback. We hope you can join us starting January 12! Click here for more information and…
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TechLESS Tuesday: What To Do When Your Printer Is Kaputt (Again)
Yes, we bought a new (used) computer, an Epson 9880 wide-format printer. Yes, our tech guru sold it to us and made sure it worked well. Yes, we had a bad cyan chip, but the cartridge supplier quickly sent us a replacement and we were back in business. Yes, we made all the color corrections…