The Best of Foolish Fire Readers’ Chalkboards

In past chalkboard-related posts I’ve put it out there that I’d love to see what chalkboard background buyers/downloaders are making with these files. On occasion I hear back… So thanks, Marilyn Curtright. Great job, and I’m glad the backgrounds came in handy. With the popularity of chalkboards still on the rise there are more and more free fonts and resources for chalkboard artists who want to create a chalkboard effect […]

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A Foolish Fire Tutorial :: How to Make a Collage in Photoshop

I’ve been making collages in one form or another since I was old enough to wield scissors and paste, which turned into long hours during the summer and after school stuffed into a poorly ventilated darkroom combining cut-up Kodalith sheet negatives and printing large-scale BW contact prints, which turned into Photoshop 3.0 and a Mac FX, which turned into..well faster and better “scissors and paste” and a permanent “buh bye” to

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Chalkboards in Spaaaaaaace

One really nice perk of doing this blog is meeting really nice people like Dawn-Marie Dugan of Maison Rouge Creative, if only virtually. Her 1-year old Leo had his first birthday party back in March and she used one of Foolish Fire’s hi-res backgrounds as a base for the invitation design you see below. The typography is a combination of hand lettering and “chalkboard font” and the artwork is

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Rumi-nations

This quote hit me where I live, pun intended. A “guest house” is a perfect and profound metaphor for the daily experience of being human and standing at that threshold where we either invite in the “unexpected visitor” or send him packing along with his freaking “crowd of sorrows”. Rumi crushes it again.

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HiRes Chalkboard Background Files in PSD format

Bigger, more customizable chalkboard backgrounds for designers Challenge: Lately I’ve had several requests for backgrounds that have particular features, like more “chalk” blur, or fewer scratches and specks, etc. I’ve also been asked to provide backgrounds at larger sizes for posters and signs, especially for weddings, menus, etc. So… Solution: Rather than reinventing the wheel and creating multiple versions of the chalkboard background files, you get to do all

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Playing in Traffic

Traffic-Related Typography Thing #1 Sometimes life dishes out serendipitous moments like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. One moment you’re sitting at a stop light, idling both mechanically and mentally, and you notice out of the corner of your eye something slightly askew—a thing out of place, context, space and/or time. Or in this case just a weird-ass traffic sign. So it was on my way back from Costco, when this

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Trying not to try too hard

James Taylor’s Zen-like lyrics to “Secret O’ Life” wound up in my head one evening while my sketch pad was at arm’s length. The result is what’s above…which was easier said than drawn, which is sort of the point of the song. “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. Any fool can do it, there ain’t nothing to it. Nobody knows how we got to the

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