I'm your hostess, Dianne :) I've been working online full time since 2002, have 2 great kids and a wonderful husband. My mission has always been to help my fellow Work At Homes build successful businesses. Through my own experiences, trials and tribulations I'm here to share my knowledge and help you along your path to home business success!
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Congratulations goes out to Lindsey from Art For Hair as the winner of our July eBook Cover contest winner!
I’ll be contacting Lindsey today about her new ebook cover design and will post the cover here as soon as it’s finished 
Thanks to all our participants!
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Do you have an ebook that needs a custom, professionally designed cover? Get one free! That’s right, this contest is perfect for you! Great for those PLR ebooks that you’ve got piling up on your hard drive, or for your own custom created ebook.
Here are a few samples of my work: (Click on the images to see the full size cover)
All you have to do to enter is fill in the form below. Leave me a comment telling me why you want to win an ebook cover and that’s it… you’re entered!
This contest will run through until July 31st, at which time I will use Random.org to select the winner.
Value of ebook cover is $25.00.
Not interested in waiting to see if you win? Need an ebook cover now? Order a cover now for just $15.00 (that’s a full $10.00 off!).
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I happen to have a copy of Adobe Photoshop, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t check out free software that’s out there. Following is a list of programs that I’ve either used myself, or have seen some decent discussion on:
GIMP, often touted as a Photoshop replacement by its fans, allows you to create and edit images and photos. It has the usual facilities found in many commercial paint programs such as a variety of paint tools (Brush, Airbrush, Pencil, Clone, custom brushes and patterns, etc), full alpha channel support, layers and channels, transformation tools (rotate, scale, sheer, flip), multiple undo and redo, selection tools (rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, intelligent, bezier, polygonal), animation support (including MNG), numerous file formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, MNG, PCX, PDF, PS, PSD, PNG, SVG, TIF, TGA, XPM, etc) including conversion between different file formats, and so on. Supported systems include Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD and Sun Solaris. This is an open source program.
- Picasa is a photo editing program that allows you to edit and organise your pictures on your computer. You can add visual effects to your digital pictures, write captions, pan, tilt, zoom, crop, eliminate red eyes, change the contrast, colour and enhance them. Other features include the ability to create slide shows, upload your photographs to your blog or website, burn them to CD or DVD, make a desktop image, create a screensaver, etc. The software is available for Windows and Linux.
Tux Paint is a drawing software designed for young children. It has cute looking buttons, sound effects and a mascot that encourages children as they use the program. Supported systems include Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation program that supports layers, unlimited undo and redo, special effects, drawing tools (tools for drawing shapes, splines, Bezier curves, etc), etc. It runs under Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework (hence its name).
Inkscape is a scalable vector graphics (SVG) editor. It is open source, and versions are available for Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and OS X.
DrawPlus 4 is a drawing and painting program. It supports the GIF, JPEG, BMP, PNG, WMF and EMF graphic file formats. The program is no longer maintained. It supports Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP. You have to register with your email address to use the program.
PhotoPlus 6 is the fun photo editing software that brings professional image editing to everyone with just a few clicks of the mouse. This free download enables beginners and professionals alike to produce incredible images for print, multimedia and the web.
For a long time, Serif has given away previous versions of their software to entice users to purchase the current version. Currently you can download a completely free, fully-functional version of PhotoPlus 6. PhotoPlus 6 features an export optimizer, editable text, image slicing and image maps, selection tools, smart shapes, third-party plug-in support, red-eye removal tool, and photo enhancement tools. PhotoPlus 6 works on Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, 2000, NT4, and XP.
Pixia is the English version of a popular free painting and retouching software that originated in Japan. It features custom brush tips, multiple layers, masking, vector- and bitmap-based drawing tools, color, tone, and lighting adjustments, and multiple undo/redo. Like many freeware editors, there is no support for saving GIF format. Pixia is also available for many other languages. Pixia works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, and XP.
This award-winning graphic editor offers a variety of painting and editing tools and features including a text tool, gradients, selections by color or region, color replacement, editing in any scale, special effects and so on.
PhotoFiltre offers a simple, but elegant user interface and a lot of one-click image adjustments, filters, and effects. There is a built in image explorer panel for visually navigating your file system, basic drawing, painting, retouching and selection tools, and batch processing capabilities. PhotoFiltre is free for private, non commercial or educational use (including non-profit organizations).
IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. Many supported file formats and features. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop, IPTC edit, capturing, lossless JPG operations, effects, ICC support, EXE/SCR creating, many hotkeys, command line options and plugins.
Photobie is image editing software that combines features amateurs can use with advanced tools professionals will appreciate. Photobie is free for personal use with no Pro upgrade to pay for — all features are free.
With this photo editing software, you can easily blend your digital photo onto another image (a beautiful landscape image etc) to create special effect. You can also add some pretty frames, flowers and cartoon pictures onto your photo with Magic Photo Editor.
Like it’s name, DreamLight Photo Editor is an image editing software to easily add many dream effects onto your digital photo. With DreamLight Photo Editor, just by simple mouse clicking, you can add many wonderful effects.
Pos Free Photo Editor is a free, simple and very user friendly photo editor, that lets you easily view, and enhance your photos. The photo editor supports the major graphic formats and is very intuitive to work with without any “headaches” - It was especially designed for novices as for the short learning curve.
If you know of any other software out there, let me know about it and I’ll add it to the list!
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First I would like to send out a HUGE Thank You to Courtney from Contests 4 Moms and A Mom Speaks. When I sent out a request for help for my blog theme, Courtney came through for me with flying colors and added the additional sidebar that I really wanted.
I first came across Courtney’s Contests 4 Moms site while browsing through blogs on Entrecard, and have since added her in as one of my favorites - in fact, it’s a site I visit as often as I can. She’s got some amazing contests posted, and updates them on a regular basis.
Here are some of her latest additions:
And many more…
Additionally, Courtney has another beautiful blog - A Mom Speaks.. Christian. Wife. Mom. A Christian, a wife, and stay at mom to two children (her son is 3, and her daughter is 1). Courtney enjoys cooking, reading, movies, photography, scrapbooking, keeping up with technology, and most of all spending time with her kids and family. Through A Mom Speaks, Courtney lets us know what God is doing in their lives, and how He is blessing them each and every day.
Thanks again for your help Courtney, and I’m truly glad to have met you in this vast world otherwise known as the internet lol
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Dianne
