6 WordPress Themes Giveaway Worth $249 Comment To Win

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Competition Closed: Brought to you by: Rich Wp

THE WINNER IS:

Name: sedFEISArea 1

Thank you all for entering and your great comments about the themes, congrats to sedFEIS too.

You shall be emailed shortly by Felix from RichWp

SPECIAL 50% DISCOUNT

Plus you can now get 50% off any of the themes if you didnt win by using dicount code: designshard until 29th April 2009


The Themes

The themes are really elegant and clean, there are a few different varieties such as blog themes and photo themes.

themes

OTHER DETAILS

  • It seems ever body is a winner with the 50% discount code (designshard)
  • Competition ends Tuesday 28th 2009
  • The winner shall be chosen at random using a database query.

Space and Planet Photoshop Tutorials To Create Amazing Space Scenes

There a lot of space tutorials out there some are better than others, I have managed to try and select a few of what I think can allow you to get great effects that look like they belong and don’t look completely Photoshopped.

I tried to be as varied as possible so there are tutorials for creating planets, stars, nebulas and atmospheric type gasses. The great thing is that they lay down the building blocks to experiment and create you own stunning universe.

 

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Gas bursts and Atmosphere

This tutorial shows you how to create some great gas explosions coming from the planets atmosphere with some pretty simple tools, yet looks stunning

space-atmosphere

Realistic Star fields

Create realistic star fields, the trick with this one is to be totally random and keep building up your layers the end result will speak for it self, with an image that looks like its evolving.

realistic-starfield

Simple Star fields

Create simple yet affective star fields in 8 easy steps.

simple-starfield

Realistic Galaxy

I think if you have the time to do this tutorial it would be very worth while, the end result is very realistic and it seems is one of few great galaxy tutorials.

galaxy

Realistic Space Nebula

This is a much simpler way to create a Nebula with different techniques but with a similar stunning result.

realistic-space-nebula

Space Nebula

How to create a space nebula that looks like its bursting at the seems and full of life, you will need to download a brush pack for this tutorial, but the link is broken on the tutorial site to download them, but don’t worry I have managed to find them for you here: Rust-n-Grunge brushes

space-nebula

Make a Planet

One of my favourites as it is relatively easy to accomplish yet the planet can look totally realistic with its surface glow and texture effect.

make-a-planet

Planet Tutorial

This is a similar tutorial to the one above but will show you what other outcomes can be achieved with this method.

planet-tutorial

Create an Asteroid from scratch

A smart and simple way to create a realistic looking asteroids from nothing but photoshop. If you cant view the tutorial you can find it on this tutorial page instead

create-an-asteroid

Creating Planet Rings

An extremly fast and simple way to add rings around your planet like Saturn has.

planet-rings

Vivid Space Nebula

With this Nebula tutorial it shows a different technique using Photoshops preset brushes and filters to create a vivid result.

vivid-space-nebula

End Of The World

I think the end result could be better but i like the way the glowing crater and asteroids were created i think with some more motivation the end result could look truly amazing.

end-of-the-world

Space Explosion

Quite a lengthy tutorial but a few smart ideas as well such as using a garden rock as an asteroid, with a pleasant explosion to great affect

space-explosion

Fiery Photoshop Space Explosion

A very dramatic explosion with terrific light effects.

fiery-explosion

Creating a Brushed Nebula

This one is different again and is created by using a brushing technique which gives it a unique look, i would say this is quite an advanced technique and would take much longer than most of the others listed. If you cant view the tutorial you can find it on this tutorial page instead

brushed-nebula

Light Effects In Space

A modern take on lighting effects to create a spectrum of colour within space.

space-light-effects

 

That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind

 

Save

20 Free Original Hi-Res Grunge Stained Paper Textures

tea-stained-textures

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I’ve been experimenting with tea bags and water to create some custom grunge stained paper textures, I wanted to see how different they would be from water colours but there’s not a lot of difference to be fair, I am going to keep experimenting any way, so this is the first batch and hopefully the next batch can bring some more refinements.

These 20 textures are also at a high resolution to cover most working areas and are ideal to be edited, such as colour adjustmets and cropping

Dont forget to keep checking Texture Lovers for free textures.

See All The Textures On Flickr

You can see all the textures in the Flickr set before you download any of the files below or simply use them directly from Flickr, the choice is yours.

Rapidshare Download (26.8mb Zip File)

http://rapidshare.com/files/217853009/Grunge-Stained-Paper-Textures.zip

Mediafire Download (26.8mb Zip File)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jzdt3kjykxg/Grunge-Stained-Paper-Textures.zip

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Additional info:

  • Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ 18
  • Quantity: 19 Images
  • Resolution: 1600px x 2256px
  • Contains: Grunge Stained Paper

Usage Terms

Free to use for commercial and non commercial work no credit or link back needed, but please don’t redistribute or sell them.

A Closer Look

This image has had brightness and contrast adjusted.

stainedtexture

SHOW ME WHAT YOU MAKE

Post a link in the comments to your work where youve used the textures, you dont have to but it would be nice to see them being used somewhere. Also let me know if you like them !

Hash One – A premium wordpress theme giveaway by Obox Comment to Win

Im glad that Design Shard has got its hands on one of the great theme releases by the guys at from-the-couch who are also the same people at obox design , its pack with cool admin extras and a vibrant design. read below to see what its all about and how to win a copy.

WHAT MAKES THIS THEME SPECIAL

‘Hash One’ is the first theme to come out of the Obox Signature Series. This theme is aimed at those who want their personal blog to stand out well above the rest with a unique design which has a subtle, stylish impact on your visitors.

Sticking with the Obox Design style we have implemented all the elements which we have mentioned in our blog and video show. This includes the ‘Gina Effect’, The Ten Pixel Method, and correct margins & padding.

Along with an awesome design for your WordPress blog, Hash One also includes video features. The home page will incorporate your five latest videos which uses slick jQuery effects to switch between each show.

CUSTOM SITE FEATURES INCLUDE

  • Customizable homepage
  • Customizable Menu Structure
  • Custom and/or 3rd Party Advert Management
  • Threaded Comments
  • Featured Video Capabilities
  • Social links (Flickr and Twitter)
  • Social bookmarking and post promotion (digg, tweetmeme etc.)
  • Insert your Google analytics code
  • Widgetized Sidebar

COMPETITON DETAILS:

By entering this competition you will stand a chance to win 1 copy of the Hash One wordpress theme which is only limited to only 40 copies ( 35 given away on from-the-couch and 5 copies to be given away on selected blogs inc design shard ). Simply follow the steps below in order to participate:

  1. Leave a comment, ( express what you like about the theme , any thing you want )
  2. Remember to put a valid email address in the comment field so you can be contacted if you win
  3. Feel free to tweet and retweet about this great theme.

And there you have it, you have officially entered the competition! Good Luck! Winners will be selected through a random draw!!

Please note closing date of this competition is Friday, April the 3rd 2009

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SCREENSHOTS

Hash One Screen

If you want to see more of this theme then go over to from-the-couch blog and check out the screen shots.

DISCLAIMER

While this theme is free, we will not support any issues which arise due to code/design/css customization. The intention of this series is that it is a limited edition, premium WordPress theme which is exclusive to the winners of this competition, please do not replicate or redistribute this themes design. This theme does not support Internet Explorer 6 and does not come with the original PSD files.

Getting giddy with GoMedias hand drawn wings

Please excuse the title, Wings can be one of the hardest things to draw other than the human figure, well Go Media have been very busy and only yesterday released one part of set 14, these had to be hand drawn wing vectors as usual they also have a free sample

The Wing Vectors

You can take one look at this set and say “Awesome” because Go media have really out done themselves with this one, I can only imagine how many hours it has taken to perfect each and every feather ( there’s also some bat wings in there I notice! ). The pack costs only $10 / £6 and for the time it will save you and the quality that they are compared to many other vector products. These really are for professional looks, its crazy

wings

I was looking at their other vector wing sets and these simply blow them away in the detail and craftsman ship, I’m guessing these will be mainly used by the avid tee-shirt and apparel designer, and rightly so because they will definitely take a design to a new level.

Go Media

In my eyes Go media is one of the friendliest companies on the web that I know of (or at least in the design sector), they serve up free vectors from time to time to give you a taste of what they’ve been working hard on, They more often than not reply to your comments on their blog Go mediazine, they even tweet, these are all the signs of a great company doing everything right. Getting a response from a company can go along way especially when your treated like an individual. With blogs and social media platforms available to day this means companies can be one on one with its customers and like minded people.

They share their passion for design with tutorials, that are well received by the design community, they also blog about their experiences within business, now this can be very insightful for some one starting out in their own ventures and many will be able to relate to and learn from that, making Go media a great asset.

What I did with my Go media wings

I got my set of wings and was immediately excited to see 14 different types of wings, Angel, bat, eagle etc one for every occasion. I’m not an apparel designer so my brain got thinking because I knew I wanted to do a post about them but also wanted to create something with them as well (it had been snowing all day so there wasn’t much else to do!) so I came up with this…

Guardian of Design Shard

Using one of the angel type wings from Go media I also grabbed a picture of a knight, an ancient door and a little bit of creativity.

Go media

What do you think about it, it was quite rushed and completed in about 2 hours, the light source might be a little off but I think it turned out quite well,

The styling of the wings was already really slick so I wanted to carry this type of vector styling through the image so I made some swirls with the same thick border to act as appendages coming from the wings and wrapping around the knight, as if it is alive!

Source Files

The ancient door was found on Flickr by using the Creative Commons search and the knight was found on sxc free stock site, the wings are from Go medias hand drawn collection

buywings

Your Thoughts

So what do you think of Go Media? Have you used any of their vectors in you designs? If you have feel free to post links and share your comments below… what do you think of my creation, be nice!