Design Spotlight: Kimberly McGuiness
Our Design Spotlight falls today on Kimberly McGuiness, a new GCU artist who joined in February 2015. We really like her unique style. Thanks, Kimberly!
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I have always had a love for art since I was in elementary school. My artwork received a Certificate of Achievement from the Florida Winter Park Sidewalk Arts Festival in 1976-1977. I went through the grades exploring art and developing my creativity through my high school graduation.
My life took a different turn when I was blessed with my daughter Julia in 1988. She is a ray of sunshine surrounded by an infectious loving spirit who is living with deaf autism. After her birth my art was on hold for many years until 2010 when I started back with my journaling which then lead me to where I am today with my work.
I’m in the group of self-taught artists and my inspiration can come from anywhere at any time. My style of work is very organic. I like to create an eclectic blend of illustrations, mixed media and original digital art pieces. I’m most influenced by patterns and textures in nature and cultures from around the world.
‘Let Your Desires Blossom’ is an example of my work I enjoy creating the most. The card represents the journey of my work and growth, just as in flower transformed into a flower from the tiniest of seed.
When you display a piece of my art in your home or office, you are displaying and receiving a part of my soul. The passion I put into each piece of work, no matter the size, is an emotional one. Each piece you purchase represents your delight for fine art pieces that speak to your own soul wrapping you in emotional comfort and bringing daily sunshine and vibrancy to your space. My wish is for you enjoy my artwork as much as I do creating it.
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Community Shout Out: Promote Your New Cards!
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR DESIGN SPOTLIGHT!
Some nice holidays are coming up and we’re looking for artists who’d like to promote a new card in a Design Spotlight.
The card can be for any holiday, we just ask that it’s a fairly recent design. To participate, just send me an e-mail (there’s a link on the right hand side at the top of this page) with your store URL, a link to the card you want to promote, plus anything you want to tell us about the card, yourself, your art, etc. Be as long as you like and yes, you can include links to your other stores or your website/blog.
Doesn’t matter if you’ve had a Spotlight before. We’re taking all comers.
Please do not post your information in the comments section of this post.
The Spotlights will be posted on the Community blog in the order in which they were received and as time permits. So get moving, folks, and start sending in those Spotlights!
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Dash of Inspiration: April Design Challenge
A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen APRIL Design Challenge 
WINNER ANNOUNCEMENT:
Congratulations to our Winners and to all who participated in our April Design Challenge! So many wonderful new designs that kids all over the world will love to receive. Great job everyone!
1st Place WINNER is:
Christie Black
2nd Place and 3rd place were only 1 point apart and it goes to:
Betsy Bush
Congratulations WINNERS and everyone remember to tune in on Monday May 4th for the next Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge!
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Congratulations to our March participants and winners for creating some marvelous cards that GCU is really proud to promote! The hope is that April’s challenge will inspire some of our wonderful cartoonists and illustrators to join in the fun, as this month’s challenge should awaken your imagination. For those of you digital artists, like me, challenge yourself to improve those digital composition and blending skills to create something wonderful purely from your imagination. Now let’s get ready for this month’s Dash of Inspiration Design Challenge!
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APRIL Design Challenge – Theme: KID’S IMAGINATION
Requirements: Create a New ‘Animal’ – either by combining two or more other animals (as in my example), or create something completely unique! The only restriction is that the animal must be child-appropriate. Create a fun card for children for any “Kids” category. IMAGINATION rules this challenge. Let your inner-child come out to play!
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Entry Deadline: APRIL 27th, 2015
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How to Enter:
- Post the PID (card number) and the URL (public storefront link, please DO NOT post a link to your Manage Cards area) as a post in the challenge blog. We’ll forward your entry to the jury.
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Category: ANY Category for Children
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Rules:
- Submission must meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and be Approved through the usual Review Cycle – Fast Track your submission with this in the Notes to Reviewer: April Design Challenge Submission here is the link to the blog post: (include THIS blog post URL)
- Only ONE card per artist per challenge.
- Submissions must be NEW, no existing designs.
- Your entry must meet the Challenge Requirements and Theme or it will not be included in the challenge.
- Stock Card Creations entries will not be accepted.
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Judging: Entries will be judged by the GCU Challenge Jury with results posting on the Community Blog the week of May 1st. The jury will judge the entries on the following criteria:
- How well the card meets the Challenge Requirements and Theme.
- How well the card speaks to the Category the artist chooses for the card submission.
- Creativity, Execution and Marketability.
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Winners: 1st Place:
- The winning designer’s card and store will be featured on the GCU Public Blog – the blog which customers view and follow.
- As well as featured on the GCU Public Facebook Page – nearly 15,000 followers, now THAT’S exposure!
- The winning card will be Design of the Day following the announcement of the winners (within 48-hours).
EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards can not be DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.
- The winning card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board – currently over 800 followers.
- The winning card, should the artist choose, may be referenced in a new series by the winning artist and he/she may Fast Track all cards in the new series (being sure to give the Challenge URL and winning card PID in your Notes to Reviewer for each card in this series).
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
2nd Place:
- Your submission will be Design of the Day the following week of announcing the Challenge winners (within 7-days).
EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards can not be DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.
- Your card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board.
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
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Tips:
Check out these tips, tricks, freebies, and tutorials from our own GCU Community Blog which would all be helpful in this month’s Challenge.
- Selecting Digital Backgrounds
- Finding CU Elements
- Marketability – Occasion/Gender/Age Specific
- Birthdays for Kids
- Blending of Elements
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This month is all about bringing to life a child’s imagination and expressing that ‘world’ in a card just for them. Your new animal species can be earthbound or roam the skies of any planet of your choosing. Let your creativity take you away. Be sure to tie your imagery into an equally fun verse suitable for kids. When all else fails, LEARN SOMETHING NEW! Let the creativity flow and good luck!
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Here is my example for the challenge – a silly cat head on top of a dinosaur body and named Rex, therefore my new animal is a “Catasaurus Rex”. This is completely done via digital composition. There are over 60 elements used to create this design.
Participants in the April Design Challenge:
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Every Friday, we showcase a GCU category that has few or no cards. We’d like you to create at least one card for this category using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers – cards submitted for underused categories are much more likely to be approved provided they follow the Submission Guidelines. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Good luck!
Today’s category with 2 cards is:
Holidays – Mother’s Day – For Daughter’s Mother-in-Law
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Font Frenzy: My Underwood
Typewriter fonts make a handy addition to any artist’s design toolbox. My Underwood is a free for commercial use, vintage typewriter font with style. A bit irregular, a bit splattered and blurred here and there – just like the manual typewriters with the ink ribbons some of us old-timers learned to use in school. Example below. Have fun!
![FireShot Screen Capture #189 - 'Free Font My Underwood by Tension Type I Font Squirrel' - www_fontsquirrel_com_fonts_My-Underwood_filter[classifications][0]=typewriter&sort=recent](https://gcucommunity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/fireshot-screen-capture-189-free-font-my-underwood-by-tension-type-i-font-squirrel-www_fontsquirrel_com_fonts_my-underwood_filterclassifications0typewritersortrecent.jpg)
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Tips and Tricks: Improve Your Photography Skills
To take photographs to a professional level – and of a quality acceptable by GCU’s Submission Guidelines – artists whose designs are photo-based must have a grounding in the basics (and practice, practice, practice). This article by Cooperative Photography, Improve Your Photography Skills, uses photos taken by a professional photographer to illustrate and explain 9 essentials. There’s also a video version. And for more on this subject and information regarding the Submission Guidelines, check out our Artist Resources. Have fun!
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Dash of Inspiration: Illustrator Freebies
A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen Illustrator Freebies
For all of you who use Illustrator, here are some great finds! For those of you who use Photoshop CS-5, you can also open vector files, so you can use the great Fireworks vector sets included too. As always, I do my best to ensure my finds are okay for Commercial Use, however it’s up to you to read the TOU and to make sure you provide attribution when required and to provide the TOU to the review team in your Notes to Reviewer.
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Here are some Illustrator Presets for you, some free, some really affordable.
Creative Couture AI: Glitter Styles+ for Illustrator
90 Sharpie Marker Vector Brushes by Graphic Boutique
50 Free Herringbone Illustrator Pattern Swatches by WebGraphics.net
Free Illustrator Brushes and Vectors: Foliage by Jay Hilgert
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If you happen to be new to Illustrator or still learning to use this magnificent tool, you might want to bookmark this next link so you have quick access to some great tutorials!
50 Illustrator Tutorials Every Designer Should See
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Here are those great free firework vector sets I mentioned – remember CS-5 will open both eps and ai files, CS-3 will open eps files. So even if you don’t have Illustrator, you might still be able to take advantage of these great firework finds.
Colorful fireworks holiday illustration vector set by FreeDesignFile.com
Set of holiday Fireworks Vectors by FreeDesignFile.com
Colorful Festive fireworks design Vector Set by FreeDesignFile.com
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So until next week … Learn … Create … Inspire!
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Tips and Tricks: Working 3D Effect in Photoshop
Photo copyright Spoon Graphics
Spoon Graphics has posted an awesome step by step tutorial How to Create Anaglyph 3D Images in Photoshop with 2 methods the seem to produce an actual effect you can view with the standard red/cyan 3D glasses available in many places. One method creates an entire 3D image (for a photo), the other a single element in an image. Looks pretty cool. Anybody interested in trying out the technique and producing a 3D greeting card?
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Wanted: New Cards – Sympathy, From All of Us/Group
Every Friday from now on, we’ll be showcasing a GCU category that has few or no cards. We’d like you to create at least one card for this category using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers – cards submitted for underused categories are much more likely to be approved provided they follow the Submission Guidelines. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Good luck!
Today’s category with 9 cards is:
Occasions – Sympathy – From All of Us/Group
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Tips and Tricks: Make Your Own Photoshop Actions
Do you use Photoshop for your graphics editing? How about Photoshop Actions – a series of recorded automated steps that you can repeat over and over for a particular effect? We’ve talked about Actions before and where you can get them free, but now we’re letting you know how to create your own custom Actions. Check out these articles:
Create Your Own Photoshop Actions in 5 Simple Steps
Photoshop Help – Creating Actions (more in depth)
Photoshop Actions – Recording an Action
How to Create Your Own Photoshop Action (video)
GCU Community 