HOME Family Pages Computer Help Story List Making Pictures All Pages
Questions or comments. obbyspage@gmail.com I’d love to hear from you.
Background Samples From here you can click the tile that interests you and see it as a background for text in various colours. This illustrates the need for a plain—or very nearly plain—text area on fancy stationery, and shows that some colours, although pretty in themselves, are tiring when you're trying to read.
Colour Cube This gives you a quick way to look up colour numbers and compare them with the rgb colours you find in graphics programs. Run your cursor over the cube. The background of the page changes, and so do the two sets of numbers.
Colour Numbers This explains how those weird number/letter combinations—like #ff33cc—work. Once you've read this you'll see that it actually does make sense—although if you can manage to write a colour without checking you'll be way ahead of me.
I've written this page in such a way that you can save it onto your own computer and edit the code to make the colours change.
If you want to print the colour numbers page as a reference, you'll need to go to Tools > Internet Options, click on the Advanced tab, scroll down to Printing and put a tick beside Print Background Colors and Pictures. Usually it's best not to have this option ticked, but in this case the background colours are part of the story.
Fancy Headings Most of us have met Word Art, and we've probably all seen fantastic headings made in big expensive programs, but it's dead easy to make attractive and original looking text right in Paint. Here's how to “colour in” a heading with an appropriate photograph, or with a pattern or picture you made yourself.
You can make a drop shadow behind your text, use a rainbow curve to colour it, or fill it with tiny flowers. There are step-by-step instructions to get you started, and tips and hints for making a page look slick and polished.
Full Page Printing Ever wanted to make an attractive cover page in Paint but found that you couldn't print the whole page? Here are a couple of templates you can use again and again, plus help in setting up your page for printing. There's an example border that you can copy or adapt.
Paint doesn't print fine text nicely, and this article shows you how to deal with that problem as well.
Free Graphics Programs Of all the free stuff offered on the Internet, graphics programs are the most interesting. There are single function programs that take a few seconds to download and there are at least two full featured programs that come with comprehensive tutorials and will do just about everything you'd expect from PhotoShop or PSP. I've listed some I've tried, including an amazingly good program for children.
GIF or JPG Which format is right for your picture? This page explains how the different formats work, and for what sort of picture one or the other should be chosen. Lots of example close-ups to demonstrate why some pictures look muddy or have colours bleeding around sharp edges. File sizes of different saves are included.
Gift Wrap You can make a tile with words or pictures of your choice, print it from Internet Explorer and use it as a wrapping for a small present—anything small enough to be enclosed by an A4 piece of paper!
This is considerably easier than a background tile for stationery.
Missing Pictures You've sent your friend a beautifully crafted email; flowers, birds, laughing children perhaps. Your friend receives a rather plain letter with red crosses where the pictures should be. Check this page for several known causes of this problem.
Paint Map This is a picture guide to the programs mentioned on this page. You may find it easier to negotiate.
Paint Make full use of the Paint program that comes with Windows. Each tool is described and its use is explained and illustrated. There are step by step instructions for one simple project to get you started. There are several different ways that you can print this article, according to your needs.
Publisher 3 This program is so old it should have long white whiskers. Nevertheless, you can use it to make folded greeting cards, posters, and even a properly paged booklet with double-sided printing. With Publisher you can place things exactly as you wish. It isn't PageMaker, but you can usually pick up a second-hand copy for a smile and sixpence.
Screen Shots It’s sometimes very useful to show exactly what you see on your screen. Here's how to make a picture, step-by-step.
Seamless Tiles You don’t need PhotoShop or even PSP; you can make seamless tiles right in the Windows Paint program, then test and enhance them with Harm’s sTile, a marvellous little free download.
This first page goes through the basics of making a tile from scratch, decorating it along the way and ensuring that it is seamless. The page includes examples of tiles which, while perhaps attractive enough in themselves, present problems when used behind text. More suitable examples are shown as well. You can, of course, right click on any tile shown and save it for your own use.
Seamless Background in Stationery This is an easy script to copy and paste. Incorporate your own background tile into the design.
Editing a Simple Script This line-by-line explanation of the script above will put you in charge of writing your own stationery. Once you're familiar with "tags" and the way they fit together, you're well on the way.
Seamless Birthday Tiles Birthday Balloons. This is seen as a suitable background for a birthday greeting email to a child. A bright—perhaps overbright—tile is made from scratch, then directions are given for making a second version, sufficiently subdued to be a background for text.
Birthday Script This script makes full use of the balloon background. It isn't the suitable for a first project, though. Make the simpler stationery first and then have a crack at this one.
Editing the Birthday Script This page includes a simple test whereby you can be fairly sure that your fancy email is working properly—or that it isn't.
Seamless Flower tiles Instructions for making a background tile from an existing picture; in this case a scanned sprig of tiny flowers. These take a little care, but can look quite beautiful.
Stationery Introduction Explains why I made some pages about stationery, outlines the things I've tried to cover, and mentions caution in buying expensive software too quickly.
Symbol Fonts Key Guide This page includes charts to copy so that you know which keystroke gives which symbol in four common pictograph fonts. For two of the fonts, there's an "extended character map", showing characters not directly produced by simple keystrokes. If you'd like to chart other fonts on your own computer, there's a downloadable file that makes it easy. In rtf format, I think it should be readable by most word processors.
To simplify printing just the one you want, I've now added a separate page for each font chart.
Tiles from Symbol Fonts Pictographic fonts are great if you want to add a flower or two to a background. Try making this tile with a couple of characters from the WingDings font.