Hello teachers and scrapbook enthusiasts

School starts tomorrow for us, so I wanted to pass this along. Picnik has some great ideas for teachers. It really is fun to play with their frames and collages. Almost enough fun to make me want to start scrapbooking. If you already love scrapbooking, you will probably flip over all of the easy page options on Picnik. If you have been wanting an easier way than physical cutting and pasting to create great mementos for your students, here is your answer. They show the new back to school features, like my blog banner sample below, and student desk name tags, on the Picnik blog. Imagine your kindergarten teacher in the photo above holding a book and introducing herself to you in her first newsletter... all I did was add the Polaroid frame to my photo and then added the text, all in Picnik.

Luggage tags for instrument cases! The fifth grade parents don't even know about band yet, so it is not too late to promote these - cool! My J-I-T marketing plan is so crazy, it just might work!

Valentine Idea Number 2

A few years ago, I made a small collection of cards that I sent out, using definitions out of our dictionary published in 1927 (yes, it is pretty cool, and yes, we use it.) I thought about making some PDFs of these great dictionary pages, and making them available for my blog readers to download. Before distributing someone else's work, I thought I better check the copyright, so I spent an inordinate amount of time on Friday researching it. I found some very interesting information. John Grant, a copyright attorney in Seattle, gave me this link. It's a pretty cool way to check if something is still covered under copyright. I had researched through copyright library records and found that the original copyright on this dictionary was in 1927 and it was subsequently renewed in 1957, so the rights run until 2022. Sorry, I can't let you upload it.

digital collage sheet by Piddix

Then today the Storque ran a "quit your day job" article on Piddix, and in reading about her, I found a link to a great blog post she did about copyrights. So if you are interested in this stuff like I am, you will enjoy finding Piddix, reading her blog and browsing her shop.

I am still working on something you can upload because I am the copyright holder. It will probably be an image or two that you can use to make your own valentines. As for myself, this year I'll probably spend $3.00 for that sheet at Piddix and make 25 cute valentines out of that.