Visit me at Papier Mouse Designs.

Hi there, 
Thanks for dropping by.  As you can see things have been a bit quiet around here for a while and that is because as of mid 2013 I am now operating my Graphic Artist and Creative Consultancy business over at Papier Mouse Designs.  

Please visit me at my new site, or jump over to my blog  and see what I have been getting up to. 

21st Birthday Party Invitations

How could I refuse the plea of one of my nieces when she requested an invitation for her 21st birthday? "Nothing too fancy, I'll leave the design up to you" she said.  Knowing that she loved pastel shades I jumped straight in and after not too many client alterations these were the final three I presented her with.  I can't wait to see which one she chooses.  
Which one do you prefer?

Three Options .... Which one do you prefer? 

Now to wait for my invitation to arrive in the post so I can photograph the printed version....

Visit my site at www.papiermousedesigns.com to view my full range of services. If you would like me to design a unique party invitation for you, please email me at gracekeogh@papiermousedesigns.com and I will get back to you. 

Business Cards Delivered

My first batch of client business cards arrived in the post today. I was so keen to open them and make sure that they looked just as good in real life as they did on my screen!  And they did, my client (Jenny from Practical Bookkeeping Solutions) loved her new cards and I am so pleased to have another happy customer. 

I had a great time working with Jenny to design her logo, website and business card. Once the cards were designed I uploaded them to Vistaprint  and organised hassle free printing at a very reasonable price. 

If you would like me to design some unique business cards for you, please send me a message and we can chat about your requirements.  Remember... I just love to create stuff :) 

Unique Business Cards Made To Order

If it makes my life simpler.... I like it!

OK, well today I have stumbled across a fantastic little tool called the Wufoo Form Creator and like all good freebies - it was just begging me to give it a try. 

After learning all about coding forms in HTML5 it seems only fair that I have stumbled across this tool after my web assessment items are completed!

Wufoo - The Online Form Builder

The great thing with the Wufoo forms are that you can personalise them so easily! Not only can you select the type of data fields you want (single line, text area, radio buttons, drop down options, etc, etc) but you can also incorporate css to 'fancy' the form up a bit.

From what I can see so far once you register on the Wufoo site, you are able to create 3 free forms. I haven't gone any further yet in regard to pricing... I am having too much fun playing with my form. 

The data and the admin interface remains on the Wufoo servers and you login in to Wufoo to manage everything, but the form looks like you're hosting it on your own site. Once you create your form you can link to it from your site or embed the form - as I have done below. Another option is to download the HTML file for the whole form and upload it with your site - allowing you to handle the server side stuff yourself.

So go ahead and use the form below for me and let me see how it works.  Check back here later in the week for my follow up opinion. 

So here we go:

Fill out my online form.

Shutterstock Infographic

I love this great infographic from Shutterstock.... Some great information here about how Graphic and Visual trends have altered over the past few years. Infographics are certainly the 'buzz' at the moment - and I think they will be around for a long time to come.

What do you think?

Digital Darling

Just Adorable

Here we are, 12 weeks after our darling Ellie was born and already she has such a personality!  I can see that this little lady is going to be such a blessing to her parents and our family in general.  She has certainly re-ignited my creativity - I haven't scrapped for ages, now I have a reason to start again.  This layout uses word art from Word Art World, papers and elements from Chelle’sCreations and the gorgeous little bugs are from   Ziggle-Designs-by-Kami.

Thanks for looking,

Creative Inspiration

What better way to get back into my passion for digi-scrapping than to create a layout of my gorgeous grand daughter. Studying my Diploma in Graphic Designer has left me very little time to create for fun lately, don't get me wrong I am enjoying myself studying, I love the challenge of learning new things, and boy have I learnt heaps over the past year! But sometimes I need to just 'make stuff' for the hell of it.
One of those times was this morning.  Whilst blog hopping I cam across the fantastic Krista Sahlin and her amazing Sahlin Studio site. Krista's designs just called to me, and I had to immediatley download some of her fantastic product and start creating.

Using her wonderful 'I'll Love you Forever" kit I created this layout of Miss Ellie....

Hello Sweet Baby - products from Sahlin Studio.

What do you think?

Droughts and Flooding Rains.

Not as high as 2011, but still this flood created havoc.

The Bremer River in flood. 

 Colleges Park was due to be reopened after a full reconstruction
 following  the 2011 floods.  I think the  opening might be
 delayed for a while.  

The month of January has been an exhausting start to the year.  One week we were sweltering in 40 degree heat, and the next we are isolated by floods!  

Personally we have been very fortunate to have gone through the whole flood issue completely unscathed.  Our house is on the highest point in town, and we didn't have any electricity outages at all.  Sure there were some minor inconveniences but nothing that couldn't be handled.

I feel so sorry for those people who experienced evacuation, water flooding their houses and businesses, loss of electricity for extremely long periods and other challenges thrown at them by mother nature.

Sadly to say there were also a number of lives lost as well.

A very big thank you must be said to all those tireless volunteers and professionals who are out there doing there best for their community.  SES, police, fireman, ambo's, council workers, electricity workers, even down to the those who baked items and donated them at the evacuation centres around town.

Thankfully this experience was no where near as bad as the 2011 floods for the people of Ipswich and Brisbane, but emotionally it brought back those memories to a lot of people and that in itself was bad enough.  

Love is in the Air....

Isn't this Valentine Cake, from Cocoa Bean Cakes, just adorable?  I just love how Renee incorporates so much chocolate into her cakes.  Chocolate cake, with chocolate icing and even chocolate hearts... yum!!

Valentine Cake

and this is just one of the amazing cakes that Cocoa Bean Cakes has created ! Here are a few more of her absolutely gorgeous, made to order, cakes.

Vintage Rose

Merry Chocolate Christmas

Playboy Delight
Even the bunnies are chocolate!

I don't know about you, but I am sure I could find the an occasion that needs a cake!  Especially one of these yummy chocolate delights.

Download this cute Reindeer for Christmas

It seems I just can't stop designing for Christmas! Here it is, New Years Day and I have spent the last few hours drawing this little fellow playing in the snow.
Feel free to follow the link to download him for FREE.  I have supplied the image as is, as well as the little reindeer and snowman on their own for you to use on your own Christmas creations in 2013.
Nothing like getting in early is there ?

Just follow the link to download this image as either a jpg or png (with a transparent background)
Download Link

Cultiver Goes Digital !

People from all over the globe can now have the wonderdful  Cultiver- Indie arts & design experience digitally,  via the store's delightful Cultiver Christmas app available for only $0.99 at iTunes. 

The lovely ladies at Cultiver, together with  Tangible Media,  have joined together to create the first I hope of many, delightfully interactive publications.  Cultiver is an eco-ethical, handmade fashion, accessories and homewares store located here in Ipswich, Queensland - which specialises in ethically sourced, handmade products from local and Australian artisans.  

The 2012 Christmas issue,  entices readers with creative design and beautiful photography, and includes innovative and interesting interactive elements. Content includes craft tutorials, a recipe, movie review, poetry, an interview with a craftisan, a developing photographic storyline to unfold in future issues, and a blend of hidden surprises.

Are you creatively-minded, inquisitive and have a sense of humour? If so, then this is the magazine for you.

Buy it once and receive their Christmas specials for free in the coming years!

Cultiver Xmas for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store


Hop on over to iTunes and check it out.... 

Having a Hoot!!

Hi there,
I don't know about where you are at the moment, but here in sunny Brisbane, Australia it is a very hot and humid day.  Great for sitting inside, in the airconditioning and working on some new designs to share with you.
My owls from last week have now taken pride of place on these Birthday Card graphics that I have made.  Suitable for both adults and children, these owls look so cute - especially Mr Owl in his tie!!
Feel free to download these images for use on your own cards, I would love to see the results!

Select the link below the picture to be taken to the download site.

cheers
Grace.

Download png file

Christmas Cards Ready to Send

Here are a few of the Christmas Cards I have created using the Free Christmas Downloads I am giving away.  If you haven't been over to collect your freebies please hop over to the Freebies page on my Website and check them out. Hope you like them :)

An Owl Family for you

The lovely Terri, over at Cocoa Mint has been assisting me with setting up my own little digi downloads.  I love the simplicity and clean lines of her work, it's really worth having a look at her store if you like cute and simple designs.
Here are a couple of owls, complete with fashion accessories, that I have created for you to download for FREE!! Just select the hyperlink below and off you go. If this is your first time downloading with 4shared, you will need to register - but it is a pretty simple once only task.  The download includes png and jpg files of all the items you see in the image below.

Please leave me a comment if you download the files. As I am pretty knew to all this I would really appreciate your feedback/suggestions regards the download process. If there are any issues with the files please leave a comment and I will get onto it straight away.

Owl Family digital images

Download here 

Enjoy these little cuties,
Cheers,
Grace

Frames for you

I have been chatting to the lovely Terri from the beautiful Cocoa Mint store.  She makes beautiful clip art and has been kindly sharing her creative process with me, which I truly appreciate.  Here are a couple of frames that I created today after watching a small video that Terri sent me.  I'm loving these frames, so simple to create in Illustrator, and great to use on cards, scrapbook layouts, and basically anywhere you need to place a label - I'm thinking I gotta go buy some home-made jam just to create a tag for the jar!

If you would like to download the png or ai file of these frames, please select your option below.  If this is your first time downloading from 4shared you will need to go through a quick registration process before you can download, but I promise it isn't too painful, and it is a once only job.

Hope you like the frames as much as I enjoyed creating them for you.

Frames for you to download. 

   PNG files : download
   Ai file: download

Tis the season...

A couple of days ago I posted some images that I had created using Illustrator here on my blog, as well as on the Papier Mouse Design website and offered them as freebies for you to download.  A couple of people asked me what to actually do with the images once they were downloaded .... well here is a sample of how I used them....

It is such a great feeling to see the end product of something that I totally made myself! Well everything except for the gorgeous vector doily I used on the red card. The doily was a free download from Shutterstock, I added the text and another little tree that I created.
I also included a personalise message on the inside of the card ... when you have 5 sons, 3 significant others and one grandchild to include...writing all those names can get quite tiresome after the first few cards.

The image files used on the two white cards in the above image have been saved as png files.  This allows for  transparency, just incase you wish to overlap the images or print on coloured card stock.  I used Adobe InDesign to create my cards - but realistically you could easily create them in Word if you feel more comfortable with that.

So go ahead and download the images ( free downloads ) ... I would love to see what you create.
cheers
Grace

BTW ... the Freebie page over at the Papier Mouse Designs website contains the baubles image, as well as  another Chrissy download as well :)

Free Download trial

Hi there,
I've been busy creating a number of Christmas images for you to use on cards, decorations, gift tags... basically whatever you like.  As this whole 'creating things for people to download' is new to me I would love it if you had a go at downloading the items and let me know if I have set things up correctly.
Here are my first two items... hope you like them

 

and here are the links: 

Merry Christmas (B/W) www.4shared.com

Season's Greetings (coloured) www.4shared.com

Critical Damage: Announcing "Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line"

Critical Damage: Announcing "Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line"
My son, Brendan, has written an amazing piece of writing that is soon to be his first published ebook.  Hop on over to his blog and check it out!

Pets and Fireworks do not mix!!

by Rom@in



OK people of Brisbane, Australia .... tonight the amazing fireworks spectacular that is  Riverfire  will be lighting up the sky over our beautiful city.  While we all 'ooohh and ahhh" at the millions of dollars going up in smoke, please PLEASE, please, don't forget about that member of your family who will probably absolutely freak out with all the noise.
Your dog, cat, guinea pig, bird .... whatever pets you have, need particular care and attention this evening - even more so if you are intending on leaving the poor little bugger alone at home to experience 'the end of the world' on his or her own.

Please take a look at  the RSPCA's Facebook page   which has some great ideas for how you can keep your pet calm and safe this evening.

 

Touching Base

Hi all,
Just thought I would pop on over to my blog and update you with my goings on.  My lil' Graphic Design business Papier Mouse is now up and running, hence my absence from my trusty blog  over the last few weeks.  
I hope to start a Papier Mouse Blog in the near future.  I really want to create a place for creative people to visit and share information about all aspects of creative design.  I'm planning on offering up to date industry relevant information,  as well as some FREE downloads for people.  
One thing that I have really valued in the past couple of years, as I have traveled on my creative journey, is the support and overwhelming positiveness that I have experienced from fellow crafters - both professionals and newbies alike.
I am so looking forward to being able to take a running leap into 'becoming creative' that I can't wait to have more time to spend actually making things and sharing them with you all.
At the moment my number one priority is my studies.  I am over half way through my Diploma of Graphic Design at BNIT, and I have learnt so much over the past year! I have some wonderful teachers, and a great bunch of fellow students to bounce ideas off.  My one regret is that my time management skills are not what they should be, and I tend to let myself get overwhelmed with assessment items.  I am a perfectionist, and I don't apologies for that, but it really saps the energy to 'do my best' in every subject all of the time.  I know I need to learn to prioritize, and this is a goal that I am working towards every day.

So thanks for hanging around, and visit my website (which will be overhauled in the near future, hopefully) and see what I have been up to.

I'd love to hear from anyone out there who can give me some pointers in free-lancing. I'm open to all suggestions :)

cheers
G