Princess Party

     I was looking through Vivi's birthday pictures and thought it would be fun to scrap a series of pictures.  Since it was a princess theme party I used a kit called Fairytale.

Fairytale by Paislee Press & One Little Bird

JS Grunge Border; JS Edger

Fonts:  Gabriola, Guanine, JB Cursive-V3

I wish I could dance....

     I wanted to use a new kit I recently bought by Rebecca McMeen called Waverly. Since pink is one of my favorite colors it was a natural for me to like it.   I just layered up as much as I could from the kit for the background.  I built the bunny from the parts of the kit.  I dissected one of the bunnies to get another layer for the tutu.  I added one of the flowers to her head and a bow for a sash.   
     This bunny is so forlorn looking it made me think of this year in my teaching career.  The sentiment goes with some of the doubts I've had this year in teaching.  It seems odd, I know, to have doubt after SO MANY years of teaching, but this year has been filled with so much about so many different aspects.  Wish I could just have JOY instead -- wish I could just dance!
     Art journaling is all about expressing your feelings and creativity and there are NO RULES and this page represents that for me.

Waverly by Rebecca McMeen

Fonts: Janda Elegant Handwriting & Angelic War

Yikes ... talk about a bad hair day!

I woke up with the craziest hair one morning and thought it would be a hoot to document it.  I used my Canon point and shoot to capture it and then I decided to capture every crazy expression I could.  It may not be very flattering but it was fun.  These were taken by my front bedroom window, which had to best lighting.

Every[day]Life and Every[day]Life 2 by Cinzia L. Designs;

Botanical alpha by A Wolff;

Font_Legion Slab



A Notable Sunday with Ewan

I wanted to do a sketch type layout with a large photo.  I thought the one of Ewan would fit the bill nicely.  I tried a part picture, part sketch technique but it just didn't look good.  So then I tried some filters to make the original photo look like a sketch and it made his eyes look zombie like.  Next I adjusted the opacity and took the sketch photo and the black and white version of the photo and blended them together.  It looked pretty good.  I moved the photo half way off the layout for an interesting composition and that left a lot of white space so I needed a background paper.  I thought some light text would be nice.  When I added it to the layout, it somehow got into the blending of the photo too.  I really liked the effect.  I added that great lace sticker and some embellishments for added details.  I tried like the dickens to replace the text from the paper on his shirt with my own journaling and just could not figure how to do it, so I just added the date below the word art.  I think it has a definite art journal feel to it.

A Photo of Buddy

Another photography assignment was for lighting; taking a photo in fairly low lighting indoors.  I used a 50mm lens in manual mode with tungsten WB; 1/125s, f/1.4, ISO 640.  This was taken in the kitchen with just the overhead lights.  I got down on the floor in front of Buddy.  The photo was taken April 20, 2013.

Agnes Biro_Drowsy, paper; Cinzia L. Designs_Every[day]3, word art, camera, flair;

Awoff_Botanical, alpha; Carina Gardner_Photocuts_Filmstrips; Anita Designs_Favorite Moments, paper;

Design by Dani, staple; Sue Cummings_Inspirations, paint; Heather T_MyLife, word strip;

Font_Another Typewriter

     I thought the black and white color scheme would compliment the warm tones of Buddy's fur.  I used lots of bits and pieces of many kits which is unusual for me since I usually use one kit at a time.

 



Layouts from "Oh, Shoot" class

I took pictures of each of the flowers in my yard using the focal points and aperture setting I learned in my photography class.  I put them all in this layout copying a preview I have always loved.  I thought it suited the photos perfectly.

The kit is by Yoshiko Designs, "Photo Wall".  The font is Ask My Flashlight.

District Auction

I just finished my layouts for the district auction poster.  I decided to do two 12x12 layouts instead of a bunch of individual 4x6 photos.  I blurred out the students faces since this is going out on the world-wide web.  I'm not posting the second layout because it is a class picture and I don't want to publish their faces.
 

Supplies used:  SchoolDaze by Dani Mogstad

Font: Chunk Five

 

It took me a while to figure out how to blur the faces.  First, I tried the blur tool with different blending modes, but that didn't really hide the faces.  I discovered it's the smudge tool that does the trick.



Pixels and Company April Challenges

     I am trying my hand again at the scrapbook challenges over at P&C.  You get points (discounts on supplies) for completing various levels of difficulty.  I think I like the challenges because they force me to scrap in a new way and/or they give me a starting point.
     I notice that I used a lot of grey in the two layouts that I did.  I'm pretty happy with both of them.  The kit on the layout titled Diane was new, but the Race Day kit I've had for a long time and I've been meaning to use it on that particular race for over a year.

 

 

 

 

     Here's the March challenge layout:

 

 

New blog look is a disaster!
    Since I plan to post more frequently I thought I would update the look of my blog.  Ugh!!  I wanted to get rid of the hideous picture in the header and design my own.  I did design one but I couldn't get it to format into the blog so now I have inadvertently deleted things from the sidebar and nothing about this design is my taste.  Oh, well....

     WOW!  It has been a LONG time since I posted.  I plan to use this blog to document my scrapbooking and photography journey.  I am currently taking the "Oh,Shoot" class with Candice Stringham, the new "Up & Running" class with Jessica Sprague, and the Digital Journaling class at JS, too.  I happen to have the Beautiful Evidence, Brushabilities, Digi in Deep classes open and in progress, also.
     I've been scrapping a bunch of layouts about Vivi and Ewan and a few just about my feelings.  So I thought I would upload a few and make some comments about what I was trying to achieve.  So here goes...

     This is a photo Lexie sent me from their trip to Oregon.  I've been dying to try a technique I saw in a tutorial at Oscraps.com.  When I saw this picture with the long stairs it made me instantly think of the Part Photo, Part Sketch technique.  I thought it turned out great.  I wasn't completely happy with the watercolor brush strokes at the edge of the photo, but I'm still collecting good brushes.

   I saw another layout that used this kind of perspective with a frame, so I decided to do another layout with this same photo.  See what you think...

 

   I loved the colors of this kit, but it fought a bit with Vivi's bright pink sweatshirt, so I decided to make that part of the photo have sepia tones.  That turned out to be WAY harder than I thought it would be.  I'm limited by my ease with the photoshop tools and I don't always remember how the selection tool works.  But I fiddled around for a while and I got it.

   I scraplifted a layout of Vivi on the Beach (same trip as in the layouts above).  I didn't do any real blending, but the mask makes it look like I did.  I had real difficulty finding just the right place for the script and flower.  Brian thinks it looks totally out of place, but I like the artsy feel of it.  Check it out...

 

 

    In my photography class I've been working on aperture and shutter speed.  I took Ewan to my school's skating party and thought it would be a good place to practice my lessons.  There is one major problem--poor lighting.  But I shouldered on and got one particularly great shot that I put into a layout. 

 

 

 

   The composition was strictly an accident.  I was lucky to get a shot at all; he did not like holding still for the camera.  The aperture was about as wide open as I could get it and the boken effect is just spectacular.  I kept the layout super simple so the focus is totally on the photo.  I scraplifted the doodle border idea.

 

     These layouts have gotten some nice comments in the JS gallery.  Till next time....