The only reason for this post is to share some information. I have just demoed and then purchased (for a whopping $12) a little app called Easy Frame Creator (available at: http://www.easyimagetools.com/products/frame/). What this does is what you see:

it creates interesting frames around images without the need for an image editor. Not only that, but masks can be downloaded for free too, from this About.com site. The site also contains how-tos. An important point:

You must download the full image, not the template!

And if you look in the left bar, you will find links to a huge collection of multimedia resources. Not a bad find!!

I posted another image at my Phlog. You can follow that link or the RSS one in the sidebar of this page.

There is another really interesting thing out there: TK3, from a group called Night Kitchen. This may well be the "textbook of the future" format. Using the concept of "media objects", or assets, which TK3 calls "resources", you are able to build a fully hyperlinked and annotated "book" or manual or whatever. The only problems I have found with the fully-functioning demo are: