I’m not any kind of a web whiz, so I figured a spot like Squarespace would work best for me. I now have one site that’ll showcase my work and host a blog.

Check it out. I’ve moved to Muntz.me.

I mentioned this masking method to a friend on Flickr the other day. Since Carrie mentioned it in her description of her design, I’ve decided to write it out. It’s pretty simply, but it works well for me.

It requires a good set of textures. I’m using these from Lost & Taken for the tutorial.

Here is my original art. The text layers are separate from the background texture.

Open up one of the textures and go to Select > Color Range.

You can click anywhere on the thumbnail, or on the image itself. Try to choose a nice balance even balance of black and white. You can add to or subtract from the selection by holding shift and alt (respectively) while selecting colors. The fuzziness allows you to select partial pixels for a more natural feel. Like typical masking, white reveals and black hides.

Once you’re happy with your balance, click OK and you’ll see the selection on your image. I’ll force the selection into a mask using a solid color layer. It makes it easier for me to move the mask between files.

Now we just have to move the layer to our original document. That’s just a click and drag.

I resized  and repositioned a bit to get as much of our cool mask as possible.

Now, in the Layers panel, drag the mask from the Color Layer to the Type Layer.

That’s it. Pretty simple, right?

Do you already do this? How does your process differ?

What do you think? How do you make crazy ideas happen? What about when the idea isn’t yours?

The job of communications is not to kill ideas (in order to safeguard the mission), but to facilitate ideas and align them with the vision.

What do you think? Should this be phrased differently?

So, I’m about a day late on this, but better late than never, right?

I’ve decided I’m going to disconnect from all of my online connections during the 40 days known as Lent (today, February 17 through Easter, April 4). I wanted to walk through my reasons here (more so I know them) and to fill you in on what you can expect if you’re inclined to follow my online exploits.

I won’t be blogging. This isn’t that big a deal for me. I can go months without blogging. Just look at the dates on my posts. I won’t be here to check comments or stats, but feel free to leave some if you’d like.

I won’t use Twitter or Facebook. I won’t be tweeting or checking tweets. I won’t update my status on Facebook, nor will I post cute photos of my kids.

I will stay away from Flickr. Besides Twitter and Facebook, I connect with the rest of my online friends through Flickr groups. I worked hard to bust out my final art for the Easter series this morning, so I don’t need the peer review.

I will still be producing my daily365s, but I won’t be posting them anywhere. It’s been a challenge to do these lately (and I’ve missed a few days lately), but I always find myself producing stuff for an audience. It’s the same issue with the iPhone Pic of the Day. I always consider what you will think when I make them. I need these project to be about me and what I want do and discover. This will give me the opportunity to produce for me. I haven’t decided if I’ll post the results or not.

This isn’t a knee-jerk, trendy reaction for me. I’ve been planning for over a month. This post is just a bit last minute. I’ve been considering and planning this break for some time, and the 40-days of Lent offers me a well-defined start and end point.

I’m hoping I can build some new real life relationships (an area that’s been severely lacking for a while). It will hopefully help me be more present with my family. It will cut down significantly on the voices in my life, even if just for a brief time. I’m sure that will allow me to discover something new about myself.

Though I’m not doing this as a spiritual exercise (Lent is a very spiritual time for some people), I’m sure I will see some spiritual benefits as I restrain myself from something I really enjoy. I need to do something with all the time I’m not spending with my online friends, so meditation and creation will be wonderful outlets.

My beautiful wife made shaped pancakes for the boys (breakfast for dinner is our Sunday night tradition), My roles as father means I get to enjoy the scraps. Not a big deal though; it’s still pancakes.

daily365:040 was processed in Mull Colour (Print filter).

daily365: Book Cover Design, originally uploaded by @muntz.

039 is a project a friend asked me to do. He’s producing a Kindle book and I got to build the cover for it. It’s not my first book cover design, but my first for the Kindle. Does it need anything?

The Kindle app for the iPhone is color, but I the standard Kindle is black and white, so I’ve dropped both options here.

daily365:038 is a quick digital painting. I really need to work on these during the day.

Found this icicle that was broken from a vehicle, but still frozen to the ice and still standing. This is 037 in my daily365. The photo was processed in Format126 and Photoshop Mobile.

Haha! That’s totally what my brother said when I told him that 036 would be the chili dog pic. Mmm…enjoy. The pic was processed in CameraBag and Photoshop Mobile.