I’ll

be out on vacation the week of June 30 ~ July 6.

If you have any questions about any of the Graffishop things, I probably won’t get right back to you as fast as usual, since I’ll have limited email access, but I’ll respond as soon as I get back next Sunday.

In the meantime, I put Glam Photo and B&W Lab on sale for 25% off each - enjoy!

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I got
into RealDraw again today and made a quick little splash for the front of the main site. I haven’t created specifically in RealDraw in a while, so it was like seeing an old friend again.  (Of course, after hanging out for awhile, you start to remember why you don’t see that old friend so much anymore, but that’s another post….)

The links are a little misleading (and I’m probably losing visitors because of it) but heck, it’s summertime and there’s cold beer & bikini girls and tiki bars a-plenty.

So I hope your summer is off to as good a start as mine is. We had 5 straight days of 100+ degree temperatures, and I survived it - bring it on, summer heat! Just make sure there’s enough ice in the cooler and water in the pool.  And don’t forget little umbrellas for your drinks.

(*By the way, I’ve been wearing a lot of the clothes from Daddy-Os.com lately - reeeeaally way far out fun groovy threads can be had there - check ‘em out!)

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I haven’t been doing much illustration for fun lately. My new duties at work really keep me busy.

That’s why, when I got the new newsletter from Xara, I was pretty excited to see that Xtreme has been upgraded to v4.0 (I currently have 3.2, and it really rocks).

Xarais a bit more robust than RealDraw Pro (which sadly hasn’t been upgraded in a few years…) and quite a bit more affordable than Adobe Illustrator. Try the demo and play around with some of the features. If you’re an illustrator or are looking for a tool to help create web, print, or multimedia graphics (web buttons, video playbars, DVD menu graphics…) Xara is the tool you want.

I’m off to get my upgrade for $38 - - hopefully (with the holiday weekend here in the States and all) some new graphics will show up here soon!

Some Xara propaganda follows below:

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One poster for the men:

and one for the ladies:

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The Birthday - Gazebo warming - Tiki party last night was huge fun. Lots of people at my house helping me celebrate turning ** years old, break in my brand new gazebo (I’m just happy that it didn’t tip over) and wear cool tiki-inspired fashion.

I got some nice gifts - they were pretty much all alcohol-related, though (hmm?) - beer, wine, and a nice bottle of Grey Goose - except for one thoughtful soul who knew I’d really appreciate a Starbuck’s gift card this morning. Thanks, everyone!

Here’s the main theme of the party. He’s Tiki man, who had a nice place of honor among the food things. I think I’ll make a T-shirt of him, just to wear around the house. By the way, if you want to use these name cards at your next tiki-themed party, just make some crab dip, some Mexican dip, some lemonade & some bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, then print these, cut into quarters, and fold. Viola - you’re all set!

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Yup - it’s my birthday on Friday! I’m greater-than-or-equal-to 24 years old.

And that’s all I have to say about that. Sign my card, and look for a special birthday something in the shops!

I made the birthday graphic over there with RealDraw - and I haven’t busted that app outta dustballs in months!  It’s still a cool little graphics package, especially with all the add-ons I made for it awhile back-

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Scanning

through the newest catalogs that wind up in my mailbox, I tend to notice things like colors and styles.

This year, I’ve noticed a lot of the same colors repeating themselves in furniture, clothes and accessory catalogs. I went and checked out a bunch of online shops and created a Summer 2007 Color Swatch with 10 of the most frequent colors especially for Photoshop and RealDraw Pro:

Adding the swatch to RealDraw Pro is simple: just unzip and put the RetroSummer.png file in your C:\Program Files\RealDRAW\Swatches directory.

Restart RDP, and it’ll be in the colors palette:

Photoshop users can load the swatch from the Swatches palette, like normal.

Store it in your Presets\Color Swatches directory for quick loading. If you use Elements 1-5, you can save it in the same place.

Add-O-Matic users: I realized when trying to load this myself that I never coded for color swatches! Shame on me, especially when I use my own color creator frequently.

Look for an upgrade to Add-O soon which remedies this oversight. I’ll try and find a way to sneak in some other things for you, too!

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