Recreating Old Tags

Posted on by ModGirl

Recreating an old tag can be difficult sometimes if you lost the original template you made when you were creating your tag. It can be done however and although it might not look like the original, it could look better in some cases. But you’ll never know until you try.

I made this tag many years ago and saved the template to a folder. And the previews for all my tags were saved to a cd years ago. The tag templates I created for these tags were also saved to a folder but before my old computer died, I didn’t have a chance to save those. So, this tag has been re-created from scratch and from memory. I think it turned out pretty well considering, lol.

Here’s the old tag:

 

And here’s the new tag:

You can’t let fear of doing things get the best of you. There are so many things that never get done because so many are in fear of either failing at what they do or are scared that they won’t like the outcome. Don’t live your life in fear. And don’t let others tell you that you can’t do something. The only way you’ll know for sure is to try. And trying is what makes us succeed in things that we wouldn’t  think we were capable of in the first place. You know, like re-creating an old tag that you made many years ago and wanting to see if you could do it.

New Forum!

Posted on by ModGirl

So if you know me, you’ll also know that when I get started on a new project, I seem to go a little overboard, lol. I tend to do that a lot because I want to have whatever it is that I create to be the best that it can be in my eyes. And I don’t like to half-ass do anything, lol.

Anyway, that forum I was telling you about has been created using one of my domain names that I wasn’t using for anything else. I had an online group called; TaggersWorld so after creating the group I purchased the domain so I could use it as the home page for the group. It wasn’t really needed at the time but something I wanted to do nonetheless.

Yesterday morning when I woke up I started working on the forum. Remember when I said it would just be for tag challenges? Well, I also added an area where forum members can request tags when they are offered and where taggers can offer tags whenever they like. I also added a download area for sharing tags. Tags like sets of tag extras, DOTW tags, forum tag sets and blank tags.

And while I was at it I also added an area for tag tutorials. I figured since I’m using the domain name “Taggers World” that I would make this forum all about tags. And that’s exactly what I hope to do. And hopefully, I can also get lots of taggers and others to join who love making, sharing and collecting tags as much as I do.

So, the forum is now open for anyone to join and I am already adding stuff to the forum. So far I’ve added a few sets of tag extras, a DOTW set and even some blank tags. And there are 5 categories for the tag tutorials; “Cluster Frame Tutorials”, “JPG Mask Tutorials”, “PNG Tutorials”, “PSP Tube Tutorials” and “Tag Kit Tutorials”.

Now, for the tag challenges. My original thought was to offer them on Monday of each week and close them on Friday of each week. Now there are a few problems with that idea. First, what if a member joins in the middle of the week and doesn’t have enough time to finish the tag challenge? And what if a member joins near the end of the week and misses the tag challenge altogether? Well, that’s too many “what if’s” for me so I don’t think I will add any time limits to the tag challenges to begin with. Well, not until the forum has a lot more members anyway.

So if you’d like to visit the forum or want to join here’s the link for you:

https://www.taggersworld.com

Thanks for stopping by and hugs, Mod Girl.

Tag Challenges?

Posted on by ModGirl

I’ve never been into doing tag tutorials but I don’t have a problem doing a tag challenge. Tag tutorials are very easy for me to do and that always seems to be the problem because half way through one I get bored and stop following it and then I end up completing the tag on my own. Now, tag challenges are different because you have many options in order to create a tag whereas a tag tutorial you do not.

Maybe that has something to do with the way I think about things. I grew up pretty rebellious and didn’t like anyone telling me what to do. It got me in some pretty sticky situations sometimes but I always managed to get myself out of them by using my own judgement.

Anyway, I have been thinking about offering tag challenges again in one of my groups or maybe just creating a new forum and hosting them there. I only have one online group where I could offer the tag challenges but I don’t really like the idea of using it for that. At the moment that group is pretty laid back and the members seem to like it that way so I don’t know if that would be a good idea or not.

Now, creating a forum would be different because I could focus the forum just on tag challenges and nothing else. And you know, since I have all these images I’ve been creating lately I could give some of those away as prizes to those who participated in the challenges. Oh and there’s also my scrap kits too. I could also give those away as prizes as well. It’s something to think about anyway. Let me know what you think about that idea by leaving a comment here. If I get enough comments I might actually do it, lol. But until then….

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and hugs,

Frog Fishing tag by Mod Girl

Updates and more

Posted on by ModGirl

I have some updates to tell you about. I have removed my cu-graphics.com website and the paid membership area that I created with it. The reason for this is because I had uploaded so much that it was taking a toll on my web host because it was using too much web space. And a few days ago my cu-graphics.com website went down and I had to get help to get it back online. Now, it wasn’t clear WHY my site went down but I believe it had to do with the fact that it was using too many system resources.

Besides that website, I have also removed my scrap kit shop (sigtagkits.com) as well. Now, I was going to remove that website at the end of this month but because I never sold any of my kits, I decided I would just go ahead and remove it along with the others.

And btw, while I was removing those 2 websites I decided to also remove my junk journal supplies website as well and for the very same reason. I never sold anything there so I didn’t see any sense in keeping it online. I have been thinking about all the journals that I have made and I might setup a booth at a flea market and sell them like that. It makes more sense that way because people can pick up the journals and look them over before making a purchase.

And yippee, since I now have lots more room on my web hosting account (after removing all those websites) I can now bring back one of my other websites; “TagExtras.com” I removed it before because I was getting into doing other things with my other websites (which have all been removed). But, even though I’m going to start sharing my tag extras once again, it doesn’t mean that I will start making any new tag extras. Sorry, but I just don’t have the room on my computer anymore for storing them all and they do take up A LOT of room. Some people wouldn’t think that graphics like that would use a lot of storage space but when you have hundreds of folders full of tags that you have made over the years they do use an awful lot of space. Right now they are sitting on my computer and I should do something with them so that’s why I decided to reopen my tag extras website.

Anyway, I think that about does it with all my updates. Thanks for stopping by and hugs, Mod Girl.

Back In Time

Posted on by ModGirl

Does anyone else miss some of the things from the past like I do? Back in 1991 I started making web templates with matching web buttons. People loved my web templates and I even made a few bucks designing web pages for clients. These days when you do a search for web templates all you’ll get are some pretty boring looking web templates that all look like they can be used for wordpress or some blogging platform. How boring can you get? I mean really. Is boring the new norm these days where web design is concerned? I cringe to think that web design has lost it’s flavor of once rich flavorful looking designs to now boring, lack luster and ho-hum looking web pages.

I am so tempted to get back into creating web pages like I used to and show people what REAL web pages are supposed to look like. Web pages where the images were all interactive where when you hovered over a web button it would either make a cute little noise or it would jiggle a bit. You know, FUN web pages were you didn’t mind spending some time on them? And I’m not talking about images where they would be too over the top. I’m talking about images where you had to click on the image and it would make a noise or the button would change it’s color, get a little bigger or even change it’s shape.

And you know, I keep trying to remember WHY everyone went the same way with web design and why all the pages became so boring. And then I remember why. Everything became automated. You want a new web page? Here’s a brand new shiny tool that you can use to make one. Of course it won’t be as pretty as it used to be but at least it will be fast, it will save you time and it will get your website up much faster too. Yup, I even remember when google decided to change it’s search to showing a new and improved html for web pages. It was using the standard html4 at the time but now it uses html5. And somewhere in between when google decided that html5 was the new norm, all those webpages that used html4 were thrown to the back of the bus. That’s why now when you do a search for web page templates all the search engines will show you is the new boring html5 web templates. Sad isn’t it?

So, anyway. I could go on but I won’t. Instead, I think I might actually start making fun web templates again. You know, not only were they fun to make but they were also fun to use on a web page too. Hmm. I will think about that for a little while…

Thanks for stopping by and listening to me ramble on, lol. Hugs,

Remember The 80's tag by Mod Girl

Death In The Family

Posted on by ModGirl

A few days ago we got the call that my MIL passed away. Hubs took it very hard and he’ll be going to the funeral next week. His sisters and his late mom live in AZ and we live in NC so he will need to fly to get there. We can’t afford 2 plane tickets so he’ll be going on his own.

I know there are many women (and men too) who don’t get along or even like there MIL. I did. In fact, I loved that crazy old lady and I will miss her terribly.  Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t agree all the time on things but I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. You think one way and someone else thinks another way. And, you don’t stop caring about that person just because you don’t agree on something.

I don’t like talking about my personal life mainly because my early years were pretty devastating to think back on. And I didn’t have a close knit family upbringing like so many other families did. So, when I met my soon to be MIL years ago, she welcomed me with open arms. She didn’t judge someone by what they said or what they thought. She always looked at someone by the actions they took. And she always told you how she felt about something even if you didn’t want to hear about it. She put it out there and held nothing back. She was sweet, she was kind and one of the nicest persons I have ever met.

I keep remembering the funny times we used to have and that always brings a smile to my face. Before she moved to AZ to be near her daughters she lived here in NC right down the road from us. It was a wonderful time. We would have a family gathering every weekend where we would visit and talk about things that were important to us while eating a really good home cooked meal and as soon as dinner was over we would bring out the dominoes or cards to play. Mom usually did the cooking but there were times I would bring dinner over and give her a break from cooking. FYI, I’m not the best cook in the world and I do my best but she didn’t care in the least because she knew it was something I did from the heart and she always gave me a big smile and told me how I was such a good cook.

Mom had a little cleaning business at the beach which is about an hour from us. In the summer time on the weekends, hubs and I would go help her clean condo’s. The work wasn’t always that hard and we would end up having something funny happen on the way to work or on the way back home almost every day, lol. One time in particular we were on our way home and it was raining really hard and I kept hearing a weird noise so I looked out the rear window and saw sparks were flying like crazy. I started to scream and told mom the car was on fire. She started to laugh and said it was nothing. It was just the exhaust pipe had been jiggly for awhile and now it was scraping the ground. And then she said she could still drive without the exhaust pipe so there was nothing to worry about.

Her car was really old and it was huge with 4 doors and the paint was peeling off and there was rust all over it and she said it was the best car she ever had. I remember lifting the back seat floor mat one day and seeing the ground below, lol. The hole wasn’t big enough to fall through and was at a place where you didn’t have to worry too much about it. And when I would tell her that she was driving a rust bucket of bolts she would just laugh.

That’s the type of person mom was. Hubs used to tell me stories about his mom growing up and how she hit him over the head one time with an iron skillet. lol. He was in his teens and was getting snarky and talking back to his mom one day after dinner and she kept telling him to be quiet but he wouldn’t listen and then he said the next thing he knew she picked up her iron skillet and hit him up side the head with it, lol. Well, he was out like a light and mom was screaming and crying thinking she had killed him. He came too and looked at her and said damn, Mom! why’d you do that for? So she hit him again for swearing, lol.

And you know, I think when you lose someone you love, in order to get through the pain you need to remember all those things that made you love that person to begin with. It won’t make the pain completely go away but it’s sometimes better to laugh about life then to cry about it all the time.

Name Tags Group

Posted on by ModGirl

For those who don’t know, I have an online group called “Tags” where taggers use a name tag list to create tags for members. I try to make up tags ahead of time and then send them out every other day or so. Besides myself, there are other taggers in the group too so members will receive an assortment of tags whenever they make them.

Now, I told you about this because I like to go through my tube folder to find images I can use to make tags with. And recently I found this image that I thought was so cute and reminded me of a tv show that was on awhile back called; Mad TV.

There was a woman in that show called Miss Swan and she was so funny and I just loved her. It was one of the high points of watching that show each week just to see her. Anyway, below is the tag I made and I am working on tags for my members at the moment but wanted to stop so I could come here and leave this post.

And while I’m sitting here making these tags for the members it came to me that some people might be offended by this tag,  which was NOT my intention. And that got me thinking about how people don’t seem to be able to relax and laugh about stuff like they used to. I’m not sure when that happened. Recently I’ve been going through youtube videos and sometime I’ll see a stand up comic doing his thing and there is always some one in the audience who gets offended by what the comic said.

I thought the whole point of going to a comedy club was to laugh and have a good time. Have people forgotten how to do that? It just seems like some people have lost the gift of being able to laugh at others and sometimes even at themselves. So, the tag below is what I made because it reminds me of a character I love. I just hope my members will feel the same way as I do! Thanks for stopping by and hugs,

Attitude tag by Mod Girl

I Get Asked This A Lot

Posted on by ModGirl

I get asked this a lot; “How do you make tags so fast?” Well, there is no secret behind my making of tags. Usually when I’m offering a tag (either in my own group or someone else’s) I open my psp graphic program and open the tag template of the tag I just offered. That way, I can just add names to all the tags and send them back (very quickly) to the member who requested them.

Now, there are many times where I won’t make the tags as fast as that for a number of reasons. One because I’m busy making new tags or Two, because there is always a time limit on the tag and most of time it’s anywhere from a few days to a week.  That’s when I wait until I have more tag requests come in and then I’ll make them all at once to save time.

But, on quick tag offers, I ALWAYS have the tag open in psp so I can add names to them very quickly. I think members appreciate it more when they can get they’re tag back as soon as possible. Plus, I think it takes the anxiety away from members who might wonder if there tag request ever went through or not. And the way that online groups are sometimes ,you’re not always sure of that.

Reopen PSP Sharing Group!

Posted on by ModGirl

I just wanted to let you all know that I reopened my paintshop pro sharing group. Also, I have changed the rules for this group where all members can share but we no longer allow forwarding emails from other groups to this one. The reason for this is because when you’re a member of many psp related groups, members tend to send the same exact stuff to ALL the other groups. So, you end up getting doubles and sometimes triples of the same emails in your inbox.

And with the new rules for the group you won’t have to worry about that anymore. And although sharing is required once a week, you don’t have to share anything if you don’t have anything to share. HOWEVER, sending an email through the group and saying; “Thank You” will be acceptable as a “share” from you each week.

Besides reopening my online groups at google groups I also opened up back up groups at Groups.io just in case. You never know what will happen in the future so having some sort of backup plan is always a good idea. Anyway, enough of the gab, lol. Here’s the link to the group if anyone is interested:

https://groups.google.com/g/paintshopproworld

Oh the woes of hard drives

Posted on by ModGirl

Don’t you just love it when you get the latest update from Windows 10 and then all of a sudden nothing seems to work like it’s supposed to? Yup. I am blaming all my external hard drive woes on Window’s latest update. Because it was working just fine before I got updated. We did have what I thought was a power surge here a few weeks ago but come to find out that it was our hot water tank that needed the breaker re-flipped, lol. That’s what hubs told me anyway so I’m sticking to that story, lol.

So, the good news is; I was able to get all the important stuff I needed off my external before I decided to reformat it. More good news is that the reformat also did a scan and found nothing wrong with the hard drive. So, last night and all of today I have been busy moving back some of my files onto my external. So, I stopped long enough to run to town to do some grocery shopping. And when I got back can you guess what I found? The external drive now isn’t showing up in my list of hard drives. The light is off and not blinking or anything either. It’s like it got tuckered out and decided to fall asleep. Can you believe that?

Well, lucky me. At least I do now know what to do to get it back showing up in my list of hard drives again. Here’s the gist of it just in case you were wondering, lol.

#1. I go into my control panel and click on; “Administrative Tools”.

#2. Next, I double click on the icon which reads; “Computer Management”.

#3. On the left hand side of that page I click on; “Device Manager”.

#4. On the right hand side I find the link that reads; “Universal Serial Bus controllers” and click on it.

#5. Then I right click on the item that reads; “USB Mass Storage Device” and choose to uninstall it.

The next thing I do is close out all those windows and shut down my computer. After my computer has shut down completely, I unplug my external hard drive from the USB port.

Next thing is to restart my computer. And, after my computer has been on for a little while (I usually check my email because that takes me a few minutes) I will then plug the external hard drive back into the USB port.

That’s right. I have to do this crazy setup EVERY stinking time. Fun huh? And before you even ask, yup, I have tried every setting known to man with this external hard drive. And NOTHING works except this stupid process I just explained to you.

And you know the funny thing about all of this is that all my tags WERE on that external hard drive. But I finally got all those files now sitting in My Documents folder on my computer. But you know silly me, I didn’t think about saving all the fonts I used to make all those tags first, lol.  Years ago (when I started making tags) I kept a tag journal and used it to keep records of all the tags I created and type of tools I used to make them with. It was pretty informative and quite helpful for making tags. But then I had the great idea of just dropping any fonts and gradients I used to write the name on each tag in the same folder as the blank tag I made. It was a pretty good idea for awhile but one day I got cocky and decided I mainly used the same fonts over and over again so there was no need to save all those fonts to the tag folder any longer. So new tags I made don’t have any fonts added to each folder I made.

Well, can you imagine how stupid I must have felt the first time I went to make a tag for someone and could not for the life of me remember what font I used in making that tag? Well, I’ll tell you, pretty darned stupid! So, from now on the fonts go back into the tag folder with the tags. I won’t make that mistake again. lol.

So, anyway back to the external hard drive. It finally came back on and I was able to move the fonts off of the external and onto my desktop computer so now I can actually make some tags again. Woohoo!!

Well, that’s the good news. The bad news is that all the png tubes I had created from psp tubes were all removed during the reformat of the external. I also figured that since I have so many tubes already on cd’s laying around that I could just restart that process of formatting them into png image files all over again. So, that’s going to take some time right there. My online group; “PaintShop Pro Love” will have to sit around for a little while with no activity until I can get some stuff ready to send. Sorry guys.

thanks for stopping by and hugs,