The Official Blog of Illustration Store PicsForDesign.com

"A Winter Morning" text tutorial

Hello! Have you missed our Saskia's tutorials? We sure did!
In this one she used a tube by Ellie_Milk and a kit by BellaCaribena. Go to her resourse to view the full version!

If you like our tutorials and find them useful, please, share them on your social media

Black Friday+Cyber Monday Sale

Black Friday + Cyber Monday SALE 20% off: get 20% off everything on our catalogue! No need to enter discount codes!

Exclusive Club -35% on all subscriptions.

Both deals available until November 29 (please mind the countdown timer on the main page).

TERMS:

- You get 20% off the items on the catalogue, the discount applied automatically, except for items already being offered as part of a promotion or with a discount set by the seller.

- When buying Exclusive Club membership for 3 months/6 months/1 year - get a 35% discount.

- The sale + EC promotional offers are valid for the period of the countdown timer active on the main page.

GO TO CATALOGUE

CU Basic License

Hey there!
We made a video about our CU Basic License. If you prefer reading, this text is for you If you are new to our project, we recommend reading about our produts and the PU license first.

So, what's a CU Basic license? It's a standard royalty free license suitable for commercial use in the digital realm. Examples include custom PFD documents, websites, slide shows, newsletters, web banners, video presentations, and other digital materials, Once you have purchased this type of license, you can create an unlimited number of digital products for commercial gain. It's just the right fit for designers, small business owners, marketing experts, or online newspaper editors. We allow slightly altering the tubes which may include recoloring, using them as a closeup or full-body image.

Under this license, you are not allowed to create any printed products, for personal or commercial purposes. You are also not allowed to resell the original PSD file or share it in any way known to humanity.

If you wish to use any of our tubes for printing, including to create merchandise for others, please consider CU Extended or CU Unlimited licenses — or get an exclusive commission from the artist of your choosing through our website.

Should you have any questions about the CU Basic license — please ask away through our support email support@picsfordesign.com or in the comments below. We'll be happy to help.

"Coffee" text tutorial

Hello! Can you wake up without coffee? Are you addicted to it? Tell us in the comments!
A new coffee-themed text tutorial by Saskia awaits you here on her blog. She used an exlusive tube "Issa" by Misticheskaya. Follow this link to learn more about our exclusive club.

If you like our tutorials and find them useful, please, share them on your social media

"Indian Autumn" text tutorial

A new tut by our fantastic Saskia awaits you here on her blog! She used "With the wind" tube by Alehandra_Vanhek and "Indian Autumn" scrap kit by Hania.

If you enjoy Saskia's tutorials, please, share them on your social media

A full guide to the PU license

Hey there!

We released a video about Personal use (PU) license the other day. You can watch it on our YouTube channel. If you’re more of a reader, then this text is for you.

A PU license is intended strictly for digital personal use. It’s also the cheapest type of license you can get – it usually costs around 1-1,85$. It can be applied both to PSP tubes and scrap kits.

A PSP tube is a character drawn originally by artist that can be opened and edited in PaintShop Pro (or other graphic editor, such as Adobe Photoshop).

A scrap kit is a set of elements that may be drawn originally or digitally rendered for the purpose of digital design. Scrap kits may contain backgrounds, characters in PNG format, cluster frames, etc.

If you buy a product under this license, you can use it to create an unlimited number of virtual materials that come with no purpose of commercial gain for you, real or potential.

For example, you can use it to:

• Create digital greeting cards, banners and collages

• Decorate your personal blog, social media account or a personal non-profit website

• Showcase your creations in special contests

• Decorate your digital planner (as one of our customers does, what a creative lady!)

We also allow slightly altering our tubes: recoloring, using close up or a full body version. However, you cannot make any significant changes. For example, you can change a character’s skin tone, but not their body shape.

You’re also not allowed to barter the product, sell it to a third party or share it in any way.

When using our tubes, it’s very important to add proper copyright information. Every tube has an artist behind it and that artist owns the copyrights. Your creations, therefore, must bear the artists’ name as shown on our website. Preceded by the copyright symbol, your license and our website address www.picsfordesign.com, well visible and easy to read on the final creation. Please note that you may not place a copyright symbol with your name on creation as it’s considered derivative work and the artists still owns the copyrights. However, you are totally free to write something like “Tagged by…” on it.

If you want to use our pictures for profit or print them, please, consider purchasing a commercial type of license, such as CU Basic, Extended or Unlimited. You can also request a personal commissioned drawing from an artist of your choice through our website.

Should you have any questions about the personal use license, please ask away through our support email support@picsfordesign.com or in comments below. We’ll gladly help you.

In case you’re a new kid on the block, PU type license is most frequently used for PSP tagging. It’s a fun and peculiar hobby somehow similar to digital scrapbooking. PSP taggers use ready-made scrap kits and PSP tubes to create beautiful digital collages in graphic editors (usually PaintShop Pro or Photoshop).

If you want to try this hobby, but don’t know where to start, follow the tutorials in our blog and on our YouTube channel.

Everything nice: The taste of autumn

Hello!

While everyone is preparing for winter, it's still fall outdoors. We prepared a list of everything that will help you savor this autumn to the last drop - including foods, drinks, movies, TV series and books. Hope you enjoy!

Foods:

Cinnamon rolls

Pumpkin pies and cupcakes

Stir-fry

Pear & hazelnut clafoutis

Curry

Creamy pastas with vegetables

Plums, mushrooms, zucchini and figs

Lasagna

Apple jam

Cream soups

Drinks:

Pumpkin spice latte

Green tea with ginger and honey

Indian chai (masala)

Hot cocoa with marshmallows

Linden blossom black tea

Earl Grey

Sweetened coffee with milk

Movies and cartoons:

Hocus Pocus (1993)

Matilda (1996)

Coco (2017)

Knives out (2019)

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Legally Blonde (2001)

Rushmore (1998)

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

TV series:

Daria

Only Murders In The Building

Poirot

Over the Garden Wall

Sabrina The Teenage Witch

Hey Arnold!

Gilmore Girls

Anne With An E

This Is Us

Boy Meets World

Books:

“Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr

“Apples and Pumpkins” by Anne Rockwell

“We Have Always Lived In The Castle” by Shirley Jackson

“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt

“The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern

“The Magician” by Colm Toibin

“Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn” by Kenard Pak

“Small Favors” by Erin A. Craig

“The October Country” by Ray Bradbury

“Oh William!” by Elizabeth Strout

What would you add to our list? Share your favorite autumn things in the comments!

Interview with Julia (customer support)

- Hi Julia. Tell us how you started out at PicsForDesign.com?

- Many years ago, when PicsForDesign was a baby, my friend, and mentor, a co-owner of PFD at the time, got in touch and offered the job. I had the time and the skills, so I said yes right there. It was the perfect fit and an exciting niche to be a part of.

- How many languages do you speak and how did you learn them?

- Belarusian and Russian are my native tongues, I'm fluent in English and Spanish and won't get lost/ bored, or go starving in Italy. I learned both English in Spanish in school, but of course, that's only part of the story.

Following a selection process within a student exchange program for high school, I spent a year in the United States living in a host family, and before that would come to a family of friends in Spain to spend summers.

My mom was a school teacher but then got into the travel industry and organized guided tours across Europe all by herself. She was amazing - loving, resourceful, relentless… We did not have much financially, but she made sure I had traveled more by the time I was 16 than any well-off kid in town.

She was also the one to talk me into applying for the exchange program in the States at 15 - which now I realize took a lot of moral strength on her part, as sending your teen daughter across the ocean for a year at this age is tough for a mother. Sometimes parents do need to have that strength to give their kids more opportunities. The US experience had a powerful impact on my character, linguistic skills, and subsequently - my career as a translator slash interpreter.

- Any advice for those eager to learn English?

- I did spend a few years teaching English, during my University years and a couple of years after. Just like with pretty much anything, there is no magic bullet here, it all comes down to motivation and hard work. For professional purposes, spending a good chunk of time in the country whose language you are learning is key - that's the best way to sort things out in your head and think the way native speakers do.

- Your children are bilingual (speak Engish and Russian). Are there any peculiarities to raising bilingual kids? Any insights to share?

- Bilingualism is a fun phenomenon, and I truly savor this experience with my children - it's a whole world of challenging, funny and endearing, but mostly they are kids just like any other, only plus one language they speak without thinking much about it.

I speak exclusively English to my kids and their father in their presence, my husband is responsible for Russian, it's the classic one-parent-one-language approach. As a parent, I owe it to my kids to give them everything I possibly can - and being bilingual opens a whole new level of opportunities in our quickly changing and fast-paced world. As one song goes "our kids shall be better than us".

I find it cute that they use it as their language of choice to communicate amongst themselves, rather than Russian, which is technically the "majority language".

- You run the customer support, raise three kids and try to live your life to the fullest. Got any advice on time management? How do you make things work and manage your time?

- Time is the most precious thing. I noticed that the less free time I have during the day, the more I manage to squeeze in. It's just the constant challenge of fitting the impossible into your day and having time for everything - keeps you on your toes and makes you more efficient.

I am a heavy planner - writing out the things I want and need to do is a handy habit but also a form of meditation. I aim to work at peak intensity while the kids are asleep or in school to spend more time with them when they aren't. So I'm very motivated to be highly efficient.

- What's your favorite and least favorite part of the job as a support specialist?

- Favorite part - all problems solved, customers notified, inbox empty. I love helping people and making sure their issues are resolved as soon as humanly possible. Sometimes customers write upset, confused, even angry - I love when I can help in a way that makes them pleased and raises their mood, even just a little bit.

Over the years I cultivated many great relationships with customers and artists, and it's great to exchange a few words with some of them from time to time, ask how they are doing, share things of your own. It's nice - and something not every support service can offer, I like to think.

My least favorite part is making people wait - which may happen if the issue comes with some technical aspects to be sorted out first, or when things are simply out of our hands as a store.

- What's the best way to relax for you?

- They say the best way to relax is to change the type of activity, and I could not agree more. We live in a house and there is a bit of land around, so there is always something to do. Sewing, woodworking, gardening, bike rides (we have beautiful hilly countryside), board game nights with friends - you name it. Typically it's anything but screen time - there are too many screens in our life already, so we aim to keep our kids - and ourselves - away from devices as much as possible.

Even if you catch me relaxing in the classical definition of the word (like watching a movie), I will still be sewing something, cutting out the fabric on the floor in front of the TV, or planning my next day.

Our cat Octavia (named after Octavia Blake from "The Hundred"), elegant Russian blue, has real trouble catching me on the couch, so the moment I land on it, she's right there curling up in my lap - in most cases, the poor thing does not have too long before I get up and keep at it. Our other cat, ginger-and-white Dexter (named after Dexter Morgan, the murderous blood spatter analyst) knows better and just prefers one of the kids.

And our dog Nyssa just follows me around and lies at my feet no matter where I am, and she can do that all day.

- Anything to say to those reading this interview?

- I'm very grateful to our valued customers and artists for their immense patience whenever they get in touch and we have to go through some standard motions to diagnose the issue correctly. I appreciate your understanding and I'm always happy to be there for you - whether it's to sort something out, put your mind at ease, or listen to some exciting news. Stay safe and healthy and stop by when you got some time - PicsFordesign is only going to get better!

Christmas is not far away!

Do the people in your country start to prepare for X-mas right after the Halloween? And you, when do you get your festive X-mas mood? Answer in the comments below!
This tutorial by Saskia is called "Christmas Cheer". It features a scrap kit by Hania (tube by Atilla included).

If you enjoy Saskia's tutorials, please, don't forget to share them on your social media

"Winter dreams" text tutorial by Saskia

Can you feel the air getting colder? We can for sure!
Let's continue mentally preparing for upcoming winter with Saskia's wonderful tutorials. You can view the full version on this tut here on her blog.

She used an exclusive tube by Misticheskaya. Do you want to find out more about exclusive tubes? Follow this link!
This tut also features "Good Night" scrap kit by BellaCaribena.

Did you like this tutorial? Leave your opinion in the comments and suggest themes for new tuts!
If this tut was useful for you, please, share it with your friens on social media