I'm still here... and still freebie hunting

Phew! I've been amiss from this blog for a  good fortnight or so and I apologize - I had to impose a ban on myself.  Not from you so much lol, but from downloading any more freebies until I managed to wrestle down the 50 GIG zip archive I already had (and that's just on one computer, all up I have 130G to unzip) as it was making my computer very sluggish and blogging, not to mention ANYTHING else was exceptionally slow.  Mind you, I did happen to make a decent dent in the ominous "unzipped" folder which will now ensure I can open Photoshop at least, lol
 I didn't have any room for months to allocate to the scratch discs (whatever they are - I set mine to be 3 GB do you think this is enough, wisely designer peeps -who may read this?)


As you may recall, last week was IDSD  (International Digital Scrap-booking Day) and there was 14 pages of Craft Crave just to begin with, five worthwhile blog trains and of course the Goodie Train. I liked the novelty and prettiness of the theme, The Orient but I think overall some designers felt extremely inspired by the palette and theme but generally most designers most of felt a little flummoxed/stifled at how to create original pieces, for instance I now have fifteen geisha elements and twenty Asian coins, which I think I won't ever use, but I couldn't resist their cuteness. Fall Carnival remains my number one contender for best train of the year. Did you spend up big on the DSD weekend?  One of my biggest motivators for designing myself is so I can raise just a small amount of funds to spend on paid kits - they really are ten times better than freebies.
And you know that I love my freebies. It's nice to just have everything co-ordinate rather than attempting to disguise the fact you have created a layout from a hodge podge mix of different designers, kits and colour schemes. However, beggars must not be choosers and for now, I am extremely grateful that freebies exist, so I can partake in this excellent creative outlet - I find just the process of planning layouts and collecting freebies cathartic, so I can imagine actually using my collection will be an immensely rewarding task. I still have only made one measly layout. But I am going to change that this week, as I am ready to post some layouts here - not on any gallery yet (argh!) and we can all have a chuckle - I am sure that I will be my own best/worst critic!

I also really enjoy MScraps (but how could you not with all of those esteemed designers in one place!) and lately I have been really impressed with the generosity of CatScrap, and have some beautiful QP albums as a result.  What are your favorite blog trains?  Do you prefer PSP heavy trains such as The Brat Pack Train or prefer the minimal elegance of an Mscraps train?  I do love Jen Yurko's contributions every time along with many others (ok I will name names but my memory is flawed remember so excuse me if I spell you wrong or get the name muddled, I am recalling these from the top of one's head!)  Doodelle, Scrap Matters peeps, Pixel Perfect Designs, Flergs, Ellie Lash, Vicki - A Work In Progress, Fei-Fei's Stuff, Captivated Visions, Caged Bird Designs, Aprilsa Designs -- ooh I know I am missing some, so I might in fact put together a list of best blog train submissions and award a prize - maybe take a vote?  Yes, let's do that.
Let me know if you have a blog train favorite or perhaps you yourself are a designer, you are most welcome to nominate yourself (encouraged even!)

 and I was right back to the red zone, with only 96mb to run the pc on (I do not recommend this, weird things start happening, I have expected to open my case and see twenty mischievous goblins having a drunken party inside, such was the inoperability of my computer.
Even though I'm 31 and therefore still acceptably permitted in nightclubs without looking entirely desperado, I am a bona-fide geek-chic. Give me gigabytes over an ice cold G&T any day.  I've always been enchanted with the  border-less freedom and instantly teleporting to a million (billion) cultures and locations of the Internet.. In fact, I was rather hoping the enamourment  would subside into something less intoxicating, so I can return to the days of bone idle laziness occasionally.  "Whatever can I do with myself today?" that seemed reassuring rather than the frenetic nojob ever gets finished before another one starts pace of middle age.  Remember being bored?  Doesn't it seem like ions ago, much before kids, careers that will not wait and everyone wanting a little piece of you that you can't even find for yourself thesedays?  Yes, the internet is speedy time travel and my cultural passport with a click of the mouse.

You may have noticed I left a particularly touching comment or feedback on your blog, and this is why you are now reading this, as I left a link - that is not self-promotion really, as I travel to hundreds of blogs in a week and have no way of ever finding out what the designer or writer said in response, it's quite sad really. But, it won't stop me from leaving these warm-fuzzies or customer feedback (which as I am qualified in Marketing Research and customer relations, I'm one of those  "can sell ice to eskimoes kind of girl" ).

 I have decided I will post my comments here, so I can remember them and also invite my readers to add their thoughts and opinions, besides I do wish to model " Freebie Fan Club Model Behaviour Code" which states that leaving contexual comments on posts that you feel you are taking something valuable from away from or you just feel implored to cheer that designer up who for baffling reasons seems to have no readers judging from the appalling lack of thanks or comments, despite having a downloaded tally in the hundreds for the hard work and talent they share.
I always like to make those designers feel heard - it can be very unnerving to be carrying on daily diatribes and conversations with oneself, in reality this is called insanity but online - it is called Blogging!

So, on that note,   Goodbye to myself - and to whomever may be reading along.
I'll be posting more regularly now, this was quite easy to type (as I love to write and talk - can you tell lol?)
and I will be sharing my commentary on what posts I have read and commented on, which will provide some interesting discussion and exploration of some excellent designing talent at very least.

Fondly,
Miss Renee

p.s Spread the word and my link, I would be eternally grateful - talking to oneself can get terribly mediocre!
I am now going to list the freebies via my side link - which I will update every day (if needed) This way I can also share discussion and freebie hunting tips and news in the main blog post for our beloved readers.
Always check the sidebars for great links to great freebies - all personally handchosen by myself and if you work down the list, you will be assured of getting the maximum hit of freebie goodness from all over the world. So get your google translate ready - because a good freebie hunter must be fluent in all languages freebie style!    Telecharger away!

Whoops!  My horribly flawed memory had a slight malfunction -  I forgot I had a blog almost - almost!

I have been on a unzipping blitz for the last four days and admit that I am now getting more of a feel of what my sorted scraps do and don't need.  It seems to me that a lot of elements are repeats of the same things namely flowers and epoxy! Flowers of all kinds - paper, beaded, ribbons, ceramic, felt - it seems flowers are popular scrapping items. Nothing against them personally, but I have enough of them now - ditto for butterflies, flairs, psp anything (honestly I really am done with those kind of elements, I almost crave real items - real buttons, real ribbons and real extractions. The artistic interpretations are best left to doodlers, as I can never have too many of them. I really enjoy designers who think outside the box when creating elements for themed kits. One of the goals I will have a designer is to be creative and constantly injecting personality and individuality into the design so my customer can tailor the layout to them specifically, through clever elements that allow maximum participation and interaction. I'm going to have a look around the shoppes and web to showcase some specialty elements and the designers here on the freebie fan club. It would be handy to know - especially if we can get some exclusive freebies for the blog to publish.  I am curious to hear about your freebie stashes - what folders are bulging?  What elements do you love receiving as freebies?  I love getting anything for my "specific date related" folder meaning date wheels, mini calenders, elements that you can show the date on the layout in an eye catching way.  

I also love anything memory keepsake related - camera elements, labels, cursive script minimal word art, neutral colours, journal spaces that are unique.. in fact, I have noticed that I am moving away from collecting glittery clustered items and now seek a cleaner, more sophisticated use of whitespace and a few themed elements to accent the story of the layout, rather than using elements to tell the story.  Posh indeed!

Running List of My Freebie Travels Tonight (list updates)

http://designbydani.com/girltalk/category/freebies/    Dani's Freebie Archive for Halloween Goodies.
http://suzee-q-stuff.blogspot.com/2010/10/wackadoo-wednesday-freebie-post_27.html Starting Here.

Help me and I will help you!

Awww, it's always a bit sad when designer's mojo takes an untimely hiatus and sometimes a vacation is simply the best way to reframe and reinvigorate the passion. Snowmoon's Designs (a regular freebie queen) is doing just that but not before she leaves on a high note by giving us an awesome 4 part kit via 4shared.
http://snowsmoon-myworld.blogspot.com/2010/10/woo-hoo-vacation-starts-tomorrow-and.html For the rest of the best freebies - http://www.suzee-q-stuff.blogspot.com/
Check out what Suzie found - she does pictures like a good blogger rofl! Today I am going to allocate my blog time towards talking about how to make 4shared and freebie hunting in general a less tedious and time consuming task. This means you can spend more time actually using the bloody things! I am still unzipping like a mad woman, I am starting to get a bit down actually, as I have been sorting and unzipping for about a month solid (10 hours a day) and I still have about 8000 files to go. I'm really proud of my filing system (my stepdaughter just went WOW!)
as I have everything tagged and sorted into themes or materials made of (elements) and papers are by colour, pattern, and style. It's an almighty file network of over 467 folders and so far, about 120 Gig. Is this considered large? I also have discs (about five) so that is another 20 gig. I also have to keep them in a way that I don't repeat any downloads ever, and this means folders within folders within folders. But it does work, I rarely double up.
The worst part is that I don't have any space to back this house of cards up, so if anything happens I will lose, oh, six months of solid sorting. I plan to be a designer, so that is why I am being so meticulous and it includes getting all those tools as well. Plus tutorial links and books - I really have the most diabolical bookmarks folder system too - over 1000 digi related links. Le sigh. I am hoping some other freebie hunters will eventually read my blog and maybe commiserate with me or tell me I am doing it all wrong! LOL I need a designer mentor.
I think I keep sorting and sorting cos I am afraid I won't have all the tools, but I should be scrapping me thinks? I think I obsess about order and having the best collection, because I don't like making amateur layouts. But... it's the only way forward.
So, get onto me soon ok, make sure I post a layout. If you don't make me, it probably won't happen hee hee! And I so want it too! Besides, if I did layouts - I could get posting bonuses lol, and more freebies!!!

It's an illness, I think!
Ok enough about me... back to the post.

Remember after every 4shared download(when the timer starts) clear your cookies. This way you never wait (and like I say to my regulars if you use Chrome browser then you only need to press ctrl +shift +delete) and the cookie cleaner dialogue box pops up.  Select clear all and press OK.  That's it! You are all done.
No more long wait times - ever.  Plus, you can use Rapidshare, Hotfile and those other awful sites a lot more than once, because the cookie they use to limit you has been removed by your sneaky self.  Good huh?

The chrome browser add on that is also my saviour, but you can use for free on any browser - Lastpass.  

Lastpass (link at end of post) is a built in password manager AND form filler. You only need to fill out your profile details ONCE and save it as a profile (ie: Renee's Deets) and you can record all your usual form information - date of birth, address, time, phone - you can even choose to have the form filler remember your credit card information or bank details.  I have used this extension for a year solid (would seriously die without it) and I am happy to recommend it for being totally encrypted, safe and reliable.

I personally do not leave credit card details on there, but more because if someone stole my computer they could have some serious fun.  Still, I have all my logins and passwords stored safely and it's online which means you can access all your usual sites and logins on whatever computer you need to.  I have mine running on Mr Mr laptop because he just hates logging in and Last pass does it all automatically.  You can tailor it to do whatever kind of login you want.  The freebies that are attached to forums and shops are no dramas with Last Pass. It actually makes you much more willing to participate in the community.
The essential reason I think you need to get both is because everytime you clear your cookies or temp files, you will notice any exsisting logins to any site (so be careful if banking)
will log you out. If you have lastpass, it's no worries, as it signs you back in - automagic!

What I really adore though, is the way you can use shortcuts to form fill with ease.
You just set a shortcut to press and it fills out the form.  My shortcut is CTRL+ALT+F (for form filling)
It is great, because it gets very tiresome filling out all the forms and you will find you can use it for newsletters, questionnaires - it really will become a favorite application.   It works with Chrome but also for Firefox and IE.
But I really think the Chrome combination with cookie clearing and Last pass is speedy and amazingly automatic. To be honest, I can be in and out of a shoppe with a freebie much quicker than 4shared, using this combo. Pretty cool huh! The good thing too is that you make your master form completely correct, with proper address and emails and you can update it at anytime.
This means you always join up to anything properly with no annoying errors - trust me it is so helpful just to press my shortcut, when the whole thing is in russian and I have no idea how to fill it out - Last pass does it all for me. It just knows what to do, and you just have to make sure you set it up for each site, to remember it, and I always make sure I check the details it saves to make sure it picked up the right username and password and I label that entry as you may have two entries for the one site (grrr, don't you hate having to have one login for the shop, one for the forum and one even for the gallery!) Well, this makes it all painless.
I should really get paid for this endorsement, ha ha. I just really dig it, because my memory is very poor due to some extensive medications, and I would be lost without it.


Here are the links to the secret tools for ultimate freebie hunting.  Feel free to share my link and get people to come and I can teach you many things about computer shortcuts for freebie getting and even collecting all kinds of freebies and resources.


http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/landing_chrome.html?hl=en   THE CHROME BROWSER

https://lastpass.com/       THE ULTIMATE FREE FORM FILLER AND PASSWORD MANAGER

Golly Gosh !

I just realised that I did have comments/readers/a voice in the blogosphere calling back to me.
I knew I wasn't just hearing voices :P  Thank you to my very first visitors and comments (how delightful some of them are our designers that give us some of the best freebies on the web and they are totally supportive of the
blog - this is a good sign and a huge relief. I don't know, I feel a little shameful having freebies sometimes, but
I know it is only temporary, until I can make something I can handle selling (and whilst Paislee Press has nothing to worry about - ever, I do have taste and style, my dear friends and I will not sell rubbish - I am all about quality and polish!)  It's quite a thorn in my side, as I have a sneaky feeling (and designers and scrappers reading feel free to confirm my suspicions) that yes, your first few layouts and designs are quite basic and perhaps cringeworthy after a year or so, Ellie Lash has hers on a completely different blog with very apologetic notes about not judging her on her earlier designs - which are still totally sellable and nothing to be ashamed about.

I am not a design snob about designers, because to me you should create what you are proud of, so I would never want a designer to feel that their best was another designer's worst, but I am a touch particular about my taste of materials I like to create with - again, personal taste. So, my taste may be different to yours but I am sure that is the truly exciting thing about the digitial format - you can have a wide variety of styles and reuse them and make them to your own for your own private pleasure or fridge face. It's just great, paper based scrapbooking would just not be achieveable or really enjoyable to me, as I would be very limited with materials and the costs with processing and we haven't even mentioned actual "craft" nouse - to which I am not really endowed with. I cannot sew and struggle to cut in a straight line - but I can certainly crop. *wink*

 Oh my, look at me jabbering on - It is 5.40am and tonight I have done only about seven freebies
because I have been talking to you, imaginary blog friends of mine.  I have had a blog before which was about my mental health, it got a little bit too popular and people I loved started to go to the blog to see how I felt without asking me anymore or putting their own spin on what I said or more often what I didn't write about them! It is nice to have an outlet that is not so heavy hearted and demanding of my real life.  I am an open person and it's not always a good thing - especially as the Internet is here for a long time and so is my words.
I am sure you will get to know me, I just tend to touch people (not physically, that would be a tad weird!) and things just come out - kind of like I have already stated about my mental illness. So, if you just want the freebie information, you may be a little frustrated until I find out a way and a level of balance.
You can trust that I am real, I am genuine and that I have a huge heart. I may only keep my identity and direct access closed because somehow it ends up controlling what I then write, as not everyone likes the truth or I should say, my feelings about things.   Tell me if I you think I am giving a little too much identifying things away because I am hopeless at it.  No really, I am.  I am just not a secretive, planning type.  But, I also want to have freedom here too, to be able to just have a fun blog and be silly sometimes - and yes to take freebie hunting a little seriously but for the sake of fun, of sportmanship and comradeship with other freebie hunters (I know you are out there, I see your names!!!) The moment this blog or idea stops being fun, I will have to reconsider, but I am really hoping it will be a fun place, a little bit kooky and a whole lot of warm fuzzies and intelligent discussion too.  That's still pretty much a description of who I am - and I am so pleased to meet you.

Miss Behaving
xo