Ztampfilicious

About a couple of weeks ago, while watching a DVD on my 5 year-old MacBook Pro, my husband spilled his red wine on it. Pretty badly too. Fortunately the hard drive is not affected. However, the incident rendered the keyboard useless: only about 5% of the keys worked! The battery has stopped charging too – but this doesn’t worry me much since the battery has been quite bad for the past couple of years anyway. Now, a laptop without a working keyboard is useless! We tried to clean and dry my MBP as best we could, but the damage was done. So, what to do?

It would be a shameful waste to throw the MBP away just because of the defunct keyboard. Besides, I don’t have any fund to get a new one. So I decided to try and fix it! And I am so glad to find ifixit.com! There they have a selection of very comprehensive step-by-step how to for electronics DIY. They also sell the spare parts and the tools necessary to perform the DIY electronic repair! Their website is very easy to use too. I quickly found out which model my MBP is (it’s the A1211) and which keyboard replacement I needed, along with the tools required. I made the purchase and my order arrived in just 4 days! What an excellent service!

However, because I got sick the next day, I couldn’t do the operation until yesterday Sat, 22 October. Below is the complete run down:

12:18

This is my operating table (usually it is our dining table). I have printed out the step-by-step instructions from ifixit.com and prepared a container to keep the screws well organized; I numbered the compartments according to the steps requiring screws removal. I also have the tool I got from ifixit.com ready.

12:24

The easiest part is done: removing the battery and the memory cover.

12:59

The gate is open. Removing the top case was quite difficult, especially the front side. Now I have also disconnected the ribbon cable from the logic board.

13:07

Uncovering the keyboard connector cover. The plastic ‘spudger’, a special tool invented by the good guys at ifixit.com is very useful here!

13:20

Disconnected all the cables and unscrewed the keyboard.

13:27

Pushing the keyboard out using the ‘spudger’. Took me a while to figure out how to do this! See traces of the wine spill there? It’s the bottom part of the keyboard!

13:33

The back of the old keyboard (left) and the new one (right). Now I have to reverse the steps to install the new one! (Well, it’s a refurbished one – not 100% new, but it has been tested and it has 6-month guarantee from ifixit.com).

13:45

Being a good housekeeper, I cleaned the case first before installing the new keyboard. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

14:06

Couldn’t get the last screw back in. The opening is the wrong shape, not a circle like the rest. There’s a faint circle-shaped dent there – probably the screw was forced in with electric screw driver which I don’t have. Fortunately it is the one under the black protecting sticker, so I left the screw under there. Hope it won’t affect negatively on the keyboard!

14:28

Reconnected (almost) all cables back on…

14:31

Connected the main cable back to the logic board!

14:39

Now screwing everything back in! I noticed that they had the tip of each screw painted blue – I wonder why?

14:58

The keyboard has been replaced! Plugged the MBP to the power. With trepidation, I am pressing the power button… Will it work? Wish me luck!

15:00

Yay!!! Success!!! The top of the keyboard is a bit wavy (not flat) on the left and right sides, but it doesn’t affect its function so it’s okay laaa… Thanks to ifixit.com – they provide very clear instructions along with the spare parts and tools necessary for this! They rock!!!

15:31

Out of curiosity – after tidying up my ‘operating table’ – I decided to look inside the old, broken keyboard. Peeled off the white cover, and discovered yet another traces of the spilled wine!

15:55

This is how the inner back of your MBP keyboard looks like! (It was quite dirty so I cleaned it first). There are layers of thin plastic with embedded electronic paths sandwiched between the keys and the aluminum base. I decided to leave them be. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this defunct keyboard – but I would like to create something with it for sure!

16:42

Finally… A cup of coffee after the successful operation! Woohooo…!!!

So there! If you have problems with your gadget’s hardware and it’s out of warranty, do visit ifixit.com first before throwing your gadget away just because the cost to fix it is too costly. Their instructions are so clear it is easier to repair things yourself than you might have thought it would be! Seriously! Repairing is good for the environment too :).

Blowin’ Baubbles has just arrived at Studio Ztampf! in SBG:

I’ve made a layout with it! The AlphaSet used in the layout comes from the GelloGlass AlphaSet, which has also just been made available at Studio Ztampf!!

Now the layout:

There are two things to point out in the layout:
1. How to make the bubbles look more realistic on the photo itself
2. How to make the bubble spray appear so seamlessly floating out from the photo

Now, the keyword to question No.1 is ‘blending mode’. I use Photoshop, but I am sure that many other software have similar feature. For the bubbles that I placed on the photo, I just set the blending mode of the bubble spray layer to ‘Pin Light’: voila! The bubbles now look like an original part of the photo!

Next, but then the part of the bubbles spray outside the photo now looks funny! There is a very easy trick to fix this:
- Copy the bubbles spray layer
- Change the blending mode to ‘Normal’
- Crop the part that is overlaid on the photo (use your Lasso Tool)
Now the bubbles spray pop up even more!
Easy peasy :)

Actually, I have another version of this layout done with a different background paper! Which one you like best? The peach one above or the aqua one below?

For complete credit list of other products used in the layouts above, just click on each of the layouts above.

Well, I hope you will find this little trick useful!

With the arrival of ROBOKIT @ Scrapbookgraphics, it is only fitting to base my blog post around it.   Hello, I am Tracy one of Fhungs Z!Girls.

ROBOKIT is the perfect kit for those boys in your lives, I should know I have four of them!   I played with the kit when Fhung first released it at Ztampf and created these layouts…

but today I found I wanted more,  I wanted to show you the versatility of this kit and that it isn’t all masculine..

so I created this art with a couple of pictures of my daughter.

Then I got to thinking,  one of my favourite things about Ztampf products is how perfect the papers are for blending photos onto them.   I love to be able to utilise those not so fantastic photos and the best way I have found to do this is through blending.   Here is how I created the above art using the Hard Light Blending mode which was perfect for this picture.

In Photoshop CS4,  After opening a new 12 x 12 document,   I selected my paper, then dragged my photo onto it.

With My Photo Layer highlighted in the layers palette, I then went into Image – Adjustments  and clicked on Black & White.  ( I find it easier to blend when my photo is Black and White).  A pop up will appear Click OK.

Go to your Layers Palette and highlight the photo layer,  I selected Hard Light as I am blending into a dark background.

Using a large soft eraser – erase the areas not required from the photo

then continue and finish your art.  Once you have erased the unnecessary bits,  Try duplicating the photo layer and using different blending modes on each layer, try using dark and light background or even blending in a couple of photos,   you can get some amazing effects and have lots of fun.

Have A Great Day!

((HUGS)) Tracy

Did you know that you could subscribe to any album or even to the Ztampfest Gallery as a whole with the RSS Feed or the ‘Watch’ features? You’ll be effortlessly keep updated whenever a new layout is uploaded to the gallery! A very convenient way to see any new ztampfilicious layouts. You can choose to subscribe just to the Creative Team Gallery, for example. Now, how to do this?

Easy! Just take a look at << Album Actions >> or << Item Actions >> on the left navigation menu on any given page in the gallery and you’ll see in the drop down menu there an option for RSS Feed:

Click on the ‘RSS Feed for… ‘; a new page will show up and you can choose your preferred method from the drop down menu there:

With RSS Feed, you have the options to keep updated through browser or email.

Don’t like RSS? There is another method to keep updated with Ztampfest Gallery by using the ‘Watch’ feature. When you use this method, you will be notified by email.

Under each Album or Item/Photo, you’ll see ‘Watch’ – just click it to choose what you want to be notified about: whenever there is a new layout uploaded to that particular album (say, the Creative Team Album) or whenever there is a new comment added to a particular layout (say, your layout!). You can choose both if you want.

You can also access the ‘Watch’ feature from the left navigation menu on any given page under the << Album Actions >> or << Item Actions >> dropdown menu:

That’s it! Easy peasy :). Enjoy browsing the Ztampfest Gallery! Lots of new layouts added recently!

Edited to add: with RSS Feed, you don’t have to logged in nor registered to receive updates while with ‘Watch’ you have to be a registered user and logged in.

Natural, Realistic Looking Use of Digital PaperClips

Ever wonder how to apply the paperclips so they look realistic? Especially pretty tough when using on say, a short piece of tag, or a ribbon – anywhere when the lower bit would show. And how about on a sheer ribbon or a piece of vellum paper?

Well, Ztampf! makes it easy for you. In most cases, I would provide the paper clips in 2 versions:
• Full Version, showing the entire clip.
• Clipped Version, showing how it would appear when ‘clipped’ to a paper/tag/picture with the ‘back’ section partially erased.

Now, to use a paper clip in the most common way, you would just drop the Clipped Version where you want it, align it well with the edge of the paper and you’re done! It even has the natural looking shadow where it should have! Convenient!

For other type of usage as described at the top, you would need to use both versions:
- Place both version on your file, each on its own layer.
- Align them well, so they would look like there is just 1 paper clip. Use the top as the base to align them precisely.
- Next, adjust the layers order: place the Full Version layer to be BEHIND/underneath the layer of paper/tag/picture to be clipped.
- Now, while making sure that they are still linked together, drag them to where you want the paper clip to be.
- Voila! See the result for yourself!

On the left is the common way of using just the ‘Clipped Version’. On the right made use of both versions to create a complete paper clip being clipped through a short material, with the bottom part of the paper clip peeks out.

The samples above were taken from these layouts below. Click the thumbnails to see them larger: