The new vector packs are:

Crests vector pack

Floral vector pack 65

Wings vector pack 14

Wings vector pack 15

The t-shirt designs are:

T-shirt design 227

T-shirt design 228

T-shirt design 229

T-shirt design 230

T-shirt design 231

T-shirt design 232

We also have some Plus t-shirt designs available.

Plus t-shirt design 36

Plus t-shirt design 37

A very cool thing about what I’m about to share with you are some special pavement drawings called anamorphic illusions: distorted 2D artwork  to give the illusion of a 3D one, but only from a certain angle.

The artist that does this kind of stuff is Julian Beever. Enough said, let’s dig in and have a look.

And here is how the drawings look from the wrong view.

For more awesome drawings, please visit Julian Reever’s website.

Well, just for this matter, the online free photo editor websites come to our help! Quick and easy to use, they have some basic tools and presets. You can re-size, crop, rotate, adjust noise, luminosity, correct red-eye effect, distorts, different filters, frames, doodles, text and many more great stuff.

Thus said, let’s dig in!

One of my favorite sites of this kind is Picnik. And I’m going to tell you why. First of all, it has a very appealing, fresh design and very user-friendly. Simple and attractive.

In the “Library” section, you can upload practically from  anywhere, whether is from your computer or on the web. The “Edit” section contains quick manipulation tools like exposure, sharpening, colors and red-eye effect. And for the users unfamiliar yet with photo editing, in each tab there’s a auto-fix button.

In the “Create” tab you’ll find frames, quick photo effects that usually would take a while to do manually: frames, masks, slide shows,  focus changes and more. The “Advanced” tab contains Levels, Curves, Dodge and Burn, similar to the ones in Photoshop.

Here is are some portraits edited with the quick autofixes.

The original image.

Autocolors preset. It takes the dominant color and turns it into a filter.

Autofix preset.

8% Sharpen.

I’ve played around with more photos, with a larger variety of colors and I still get pretty good results.Also, the advanced tools similar to the Photoshop ones are satisfying; they are a bit more simple, but they get the job done.

It’s a very enjoyable site, practical, useful and fun to play with.

Another cool photo editing site is Fotoflexer. It’s similar to Picnik, but with a different user interface. It provides similar sets of filters, but in a more compact way.

The best section of the site is in the “Geek” tab, where the goodies are: smart resizing, curves, levels, morphing and smart cutouts.

I edited the same image and i got the same results as in Picnik, so I wont post them. I can’t wait till they finalize the Curves tool (it’s in Beta at the moment), I want to see how it works. I mean, a replica of Curves from Photoshop free and online? Count me in!

A third site that does online photo editing is Lunapic. It has a large gallery of effects in very compact lists. This site is not useful for your casual user or site visitors, for it does not provide interactive previews of what you are about to do. In return, advanced users of photo editing software would find this a meadow of heaven: lots of details and parameters in which an average user would drown. Visit this site if you like to play around with numbers.

A great tool for advanced users only!

Pixlr is your basic Photoshop in a web page. And a very cool thing about it is not only the familiar UI from Photoshop, but it also provides the menus in 13 different languages! It’s a very useful tool if you  want to do a quick photo editing when you’re not in front of a computer that has Photoshop installed or just want to play around with effects.

A great website! Awesome looks, user friendly, easy to use!

Phixr is another site where you can edit photos quickly. It’s effective if you want to do a very quick and simple operation, such as resizing, cropping, adding fun stuff or adding other photos in it. A simple site for simple editing. It has a UI similar to MSPaint, but each button will expand to a whole new menu. What I like about it is the compression of all photo adjustment tools into a single menu. It has Temperature, Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue in a single tab, which makes it very useful when you need a quick adjustment.

Freeonlinephotoeditor works as well for a quick editing. The site has a simple, yet cool look and user-friendly. It has the basic photo manipulation tools and some presets of special effects, but only a few are adjustable. The simple menu lets you learn its structure very quick and finish your job fast and easy. A site made for its practicability and not for eye-candy, just the way a visitor likes.

These are all great tools when it comes to quick effects and adjustments, feel free to use the one that suits you most.

The only disadvantage of all these sites is that they allow limited dimensions of a picture (about 1600×1600 px).

I found about it about a year ago and got absorbed by what I was calling “a new current”; so I started looking for more info about it. I found some really cool concepts and ideas, which I’m about to share with you.

One of the websites that turn Steampunk literally into a way of life is www.steampunklab.com with their motto “Inventions of a curious sort”. They actually turn modern technology into old-style, bronze-plated pieces of art! Here are some of their products:

A laptop turned into a type-writer looking gadget. I sure want one of these!

A very cool night-lamp. Wouldn’t be great to have these lighting your evening lecture?

A brass clockwork spider. I bet you’d want to see it crawl, eh?

A sample of Steampunk clothing: lady’s artisan apron.

Steampunk isn’t all work and no play. Here is some nice artwork. The heart has functional mechanics!

Creative jewelry: a Steampunk pipe ring.

An old watch! Imagine going places with one of these on your hand!

Here are some more sites where you can find equally exceptional goodies.

www.steampunkworkshop.com

www.steampunkmagazine.com, a dedicated magazine, currently at issue #6. I’m not going to throw in spoilers about the content, check it out yourself. I can tell you this much: it’s a pretty good lecture. You can download it for free in .pdf format from the website.

http://thesteampunkhome.blogspot.com/

I also looked into digital art and found some really cool concepts. Here is some stuff I stumbled upon.

A Steampunk gunman, found here. “The name’s Punk… Steampunk.”

A mechanical woman concept, found here.

Alice in Wonderland Steampunk digital painting concept I found here. Great work!

A Steampunk dragon I found here.

More Steampunk awesomeness from here. A 3D work.

Brain Tower, found here. Also a 3D work.

Automation, found here. 3D work. Again.

Pixel art, found here.

Another pixel art, from here.

A Steampunk Gothic cuff watch found here. It’s a real thing and can be purchased from here.

The really disappointing thing about it is that it’s not yet known to the masses. I asked lots of people, drawing teachers and even designers about it and all I got was: “Steampunk? What’s that?”, “Never heard of it. What is it about?”. Very few knew about it, but they only checked it out just for pure knowledge.

I wish I’d see more of this, for it has much resources and inspiration to offer. Wouldn’t you?

Well, Vectorious.net comes to you armed to the teeth with tons of awesome vector artwork just for that matter: an arsenal of 10587 vector images(at the moment). Whether it’s about business, vintage, music, buildings, abstract, backgrounds, people, seasonal, they have it!

A unique feature that can put them on the top of a designer’s favorite vector sources is the extra paid attention to the line art, a small detail that apparently can make a huge difference between an average and an excellent vector.

Download some of the free samples and take a closer look. The level of detail even at high zoom-in is simply stunning! The line art is basically close to perfection!

About pricing?

Up to 3.8 cents/vector. That’s how low their prices go!

Subscription plans for tons of images are:

• 600 downloads –$ 30 – 1 Month – Basic Membership
• 1800 downloads – $80 – 3 Months – Plus Membership
• 3600 downloads – $140 – 6 Months – Max Membership

An amazing deal for some amazing artwork!

Weekly fresh vectors are added every week, so there’s always a good reason to go back.

Also FREE vectors await for everyone to try out.

The new packs are:

Skulls vector pack 18

You get 12 skulls with this pack and they all amazing. These are some serious scary and grungy skulls.

Silhouettes vector pack 2

Everyone will love these silhouettes, lots of people dancing, jumping and kind of stuff.

Sports skaters vector pack 1

This pack has 6 skaters in different positions doing all kind of stunts.

Sports winter vector pack

This winter sports pack some snowboarders doing stunts and other 3 other specific elements.

Mascots vector pack 1

If you are designing for a sports club you need some cool mascots, chose from our amazing packs. No matter if you are choosing the dog, or the rhino, bull, shark or bird you made the right decision.

Mascots vector pack 2

You have cool tough team, than this mascots will sure represent you.

Mascots vector pack 3

You play ball, well choose from one of this awesome mascots.

Cartoon characters vector pack 1

8 characters cooking different stuff.

Cartoon characters vector pack 2

These lovely piglets fit on your food, restaurant or other related design.

Cartoon characters vector pack 3

Cute girls and boys serving cocktails or food.

I’ve used and tested all the software included in this article and bellow is my personal opinion about each one of them.

Magento

Magento is a very powerful free open-source shopping cart that becomes really popular due to is  capabilities. Magento  is really extraordinary and it comes with some amazing features. Its flexibility and features makes it one of the best shopping carts at this moment. But because its really a complex software and somehow difficult to customize I wouldn’t recommend it for small shops that sell only a couple of products. The other thing is that it requires a lot of resources and if you don’t host with a company that is “magento friendly” you would need to spend extra on a vps or dedicated server. Supports downloadable products very well and gives you a lot of options. We use it in our online shop Desigious.com for more than 6000 products.

Cubecart

Cubecart is a cool shopping cart with lots of features. It has a paid and a free version. What makes Cubecart great is the community behind it, you will find a lot of free and paid extensions and templates. It’s easier to customize than Magento but it doesn’t have so many features. On the forums you can easily find any problem you may have. The free version lacks a few features but you will find free mods to add. This feature makes it almost as good as the paid version. Cubecart does a good job when it comes to downloadable items and you can have an unlimited number of products. A nice cubecart store is Estelle’s Cubecart mods.

WP e-Commerce

WP e-Commerce is a cool Wordpress plugin that transforms your blog into a full online shop. There are a few other plugins that do the same thing and maybe better but this is definitely the most common. It integrates in your blog very well and has a bunch of cool features. If you want to expand its capabilities you have a few cool extensions that you can buy and create an awesome shop. If you have a blog and want to sell a few digital products this is what you need. Icondock.com is a good example of a really cool shop that uses the plugin.

CS-Cart

CS-Cart is a professional shopping cart with a lot…, I mean A LOT of  features in it. Its has and ajax admin interface, is SEO friendly, has an affiliate program in it, gift certificates and more. This is not a free shopping cart, it costs $265 per license but for some it may worth every cent, you get a really good cart with lots of features. Go Media has a really cool implementation of the cart for their Arsenal.

Ubercart

Ubercart is an open source ecommerce package that integrates with Drupal. It comes with a lot of features and settings and of course with the community support behind this cool module. It can be enhanced with other modules that integrate seamless in Drupal. If you are used to the Drupal CMS this may be the ideal setup for you but if you are not, well… it may take a while to get used to it.

Virtuemart

Virtuemart is a free plugin that turns your website into a full ecommerce solution that integrates in Joomla and Mambo CMS. With over 1,5 million downloads this extension really rocks! It has a huge community and it can be extended with the help of other extensions made specially for Virtuemart. If you want a powerful CMS with ecommerce capabilities that supports digital downloads you need to use Joomla+Virtuemart. A good example for digital downloads is Tshirt-factory.com.

Prestashop

This is one professional shopping cart packed with lots of features and best of all is open source. Very easy to use and with a friendly admin interface makes Prestashop one of best shopping carts. The community for this software is very active and you get answers for your questions/problems really fast. The developers worked really hard to make this shopping cart a really fast, reliable and intuitive software.

There are a lot of factors that influence the decision in choosing the right cart to sell your products. There are many options to consider and you need to do it carefully.
That’s about it, there were a few more that I’ve tested but they were either very expensive and wasn’t worth it or really bad. If you know other that must be mentioned please do tell.

At the moment we have 17 designs girlish or fitted for children with some really cute monsters (at least we think so).

Why are these different, well because our designers spent a lot more time on the drawing board for these designs and the the outcome is really amazing. I hope you will enjoy them as much as we do.

We have a collection set for half the price, a really good bargain for all of the designs.

Every once in a while is hard to find work or maybe business is a bit slow so is good to have an extra income, a passive income. If you are a designer and you want to have a passive income here are few things that can help you achieve that.

1. Use the designs that that were rejected by your clients and sell them on Graphic leftovers or a similar marketplace.
2. Sell email services to your clients under your name with Campaignmonitor.
3. Sell templates, a handy list of 10 places to sell templates.
4. Sell photos or vectors on Shutterstock.com, Istockphoto.com, Fotolia.com or Graphicriver.
5. Design and sell products on Cafepress or Zazzle, not only t-shirts you can sell a bunch of other stuff.
6. Create a blog and add some affiliate banners to earn commissions or sell advertising if you have enough visitors.
7. Write an ebook and sell it.
8. Write articles or tutorials for blogs and magazines.

These are only a few things you can do, of course this takes time and the profit from this does not come over night. You can work on some of this stuff when you are between projects and spend your time more effectively and why not maybe even profitably.

More links about passive income:

http://www.outlawdesignblog.com/2009/my-secrets-about-passive-income/

http://freelanceswitch.com/money/turn-your-unused-client-work-into-passive-income/

http://notbythehour.com/

http://www.adrianpelletier.com/2009/03/08/creating-passive-income-on-the-side/

Do you have a passive income?

You often hear clients that don’t have a big budget and they also want something fast but needs to look good. You have two options here, either refuse the client or create the design with stock vector images/elements. Creating a design with stock elements has the advantage that you don’t have to spend a lot of your time in creating a design from scratch.

There are a lot of websites that offers royalty free design elements that allows you to use them in commercial works. No matter if you are a professional designer or just a beginner, the trend of stock images and vectors is rising.

So how do we start creating a design on a budget with stock vector images?

• The first step is to know what the client wants.
• Get an idea of how you want the design to look like.
• Search for the design elements you need on websites like designious.com or similar, that allows you to use the elements in your commercial projects.
• Combine the elements you got with creativity and make a few variations (2-3 the most).
• Present the variations to the client.
• Polish the final design a bit and that’s it, your design is ready.

This should not take more than 2-3 hours of work if you have a bit of imagination and the right tools.

Stock elements can be used in your regular design work not necessarily when doing “budget design work “.  They can improve and add a new flavor to your designs also make it more appealing.

Of course you don’t have to abuse of these graphic elements and use your talent as well, after all you are creating art that must have your designer signature.