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Saturday, April 30, 2011

One Little Word check in

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Journaling reads:

Coffee by the beach every Sunday morning, rain or shine, was one of my favourite patterns when I lived in Wellington (NZ). Now that I am settled in Edinburgh I have started the habit again.

Different beach, different hemisphere, same coffee order, same pleasure.

I loved using this layered template from Paislee Press and having all those boxes to fill in or leave blank – this one is CP No 3; papers and outline rectangles from the Helping Hand collab kit from Sweete Shoppe.

My One Little Word this year is RHYTHM as in patterns and routines and seasonality.  I was prompted to get creative about one of my patterns by Rinda’s monthly reminder about getting arty to record intentions.  Check out her amazing art journal page and what others are doing to record their intention on her blog Gallo Organico.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

My day in photos

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see more days here

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

How digi are we?–survey results

 

Thanks to all of you who answered my survey question.  Here are the results – couldn’t resist applying some PSE magic to the graph. 

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Interesting that nearly half want to use digi more.  I’ve been thinking about some of the gaps in the existing ‘learn to be creative with PSE’ offerings for a while and have decided to have a go at filling some of those gaps.  Busy working on it at the moment – more details soon.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

 

Enjoying the 5 item challenge during the week – just the right number to be interesting but not burdensome.

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To enjoy other takes on the 5 prompts for this week and to get the list for next week visit Ramblings and Photos

And if you are wondering what the ‘guess what this is’ photo was – its lettuce leaves

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Exploring digital creativity

 

Yesterday when my Mum was visiting me she was asking about how textures work on photos, after seeing my texture Tuesday posts of her garden and of Kathmandu.  So I chose a couple of photos and textures and showed her the blending mode menu on Photoshop Elements so that she could play. 

Here is what she created from a photo of tulips in my garden

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One of the things that I found really interesting was they way that Mum talked about the image and what she wanted to do with it.  She thinks like a painter – she has taken classes in oils and watercolour and loves to paint and look at paintings.  All of her comments about how she wanted to build up the image were related to how she would approach a painting.

After adding two textures she asked me how she could add some more colour back to the tulips.  First I showed her how to remove the top texture from the tulips.  Then she wanted to add more colour so I showed her how to paint colour onto the image and select a colour from the original photo.  Mum had a copy of the original photo on the screen while doing the painting on of the pink.

I found her painting eye and approach really interesting.  I don’t have any painting background so this is not how I think about images. Mum was using the same tools within PSE that I use but in a different way and with different results.  A real reminder of the vast range of creativity that is possible in the digi world.

Which led me to think about how digi tools are used on blogs that I visit.  And then I wondered about my lovely readers – my lovely band of regular commenters and my valued pool of silent readers.  So I set up a survey with one question about how you use digi (if at all) – please take the survey, it is anonymous and won’t take long.

And if you have the energy and time for comments today I’d love to know if you are aware of the way that you think about creating images and if it has been impacted by painting or other classes.

 

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Alphanumeric Blog Hop

Hello, hi. How are you? How was your journey from Heather’s Scraps? 
How many blogs have you visited on your way round Mel’s magnificent blog hop?
Have you got a nice cup of tea to help you on your way?
Having fun?
Honestly,  it’s my heartfelt hope that you are having a hassle free hop. Hearing me loud and clear?

Hard to tell but I’m not the ?  but I have noticed that my letter starts a lot of questions. Helpfully my  letter cropped up all over my house.

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Have you got it now?  Hope you have.  Hurrah, now you can head on over to Holaday's Happy Hearts

Hopelessly lost and in need of a helping hand?  Here is the full list of hop hosts.

I Speak Melsh
BE Glorious
Captured On Film
Chatty Crafty Arty Pig
Creating Room
Curiouser and Curiouser
Daily Life - Bits and Pieces
Deb's World
Den's Crafty Diary
From High In The Sky
Gallo Organico
Ginger's Life Of Spice
Handmade By Kirsty
Havoc and Mayhem
Heather's Scraps
Helena's Creative Maven
Holaday's Happy Hearts
Jeant-Jinnag
Just Jimjams
K's Crafty Corner
Life...As I See It
{Life Behind The Purple Door}
Lisa E Design Blog
Living Life One Blessing At A Time
Mary's Musings
Michelle Loves...
Obstinate Pursuit
Over At Our Place
Paper Turtle
Peonies and Pennies
Random Reflections
Rosalind Revival
Scrap Dreams
Scrappyjacky
Scrapworthy Lives
Staring At The Sea
Surefiredaisy Says
This Kalil Life
This Little Life Of Mine
Xnomads' Blog

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Texture magic–through a nutmeg lens

 

Texture loving Tuesday again.  I wanted to see how the nice soft textures worked on some urban photos.  I was looking through some photos from 2009 and came upon a set that I took out of the moving minibus window driving through Kathmandu, so I decided to use them for my urban experiment.

 

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I love the impact. 

I did the same thing to each of the photos – Nutmeg texture, once 100% overlay and then 35% opacity of Multiply blend mode.

Seriously, I’m bowled over by how the texture turned some ho-hum, blurred photos into images that I want to print and put on my wall. Pure magic.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Sunday Scavenger Hunt

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font is Boring Shower and the frames are by One Little Bird from the Hands Across the Gulf kit.

See what others have found and find the list for next week at Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Friday, April 8, 2011

March crafting projects

 

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I decided to focus on my crafting projects for my details collection page in The Monthly for March.

From top left, clockwise

Knitting jumpers for a charity helping AIDS orphans in S Africa, thanks to Sian for the link to this charity.

My beading stash was one of the things I took out of storage in February, having packed it away in May 2009.  I was glad to find that I remembered all the techniques when I started using the stuff again.  Top creating a tassel on a large bead for Mother’s Day.  below making necklace and earrings for my sister after we saw one in the shop.

Applying texture to photos in PSE

The flowers are from a digi scrap page that I was playing with

The bunting I made for my Mum’s birthday – 10 meters of blue bunting for the garden.  My sewing machine is another thing that came out of the storage.

I really enjoyed doing a range of crafts in March, especially those that I haven’t done since I packed up all my stuff in 2009.

 

 

The paper, tag and the flowers in the digi page are all from the Brighter Days Ahead kit.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

seasonal eating

I was talking to a friend from New Zealand last week and he asked about my Fejoa chutney recipe.  I was transported back to the taste of fejoas which are abundant for about a month each year.  They have a wonderful fragrant but sharp taste and make good jam and chutney.  The fejoa bruises easily so the fruit is not exported or stored.  I looked back at my 2009 April photos, when I was living in New Zealand and sure enough I had a photo of fejoa and apples in my fruit bowl.
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Looking at that fruitbowl I know that it is from April because those red apples and fejoa are only available in the southern hemisphere autumn.
By contrast my fruit bowl now could have been taken at any time during the northern hemisphere winter and spring – satsuma and pears and pretty constant for months and don’t shout spring at me.  In fact one of my photo a day photos from April last year, when I was in Australia shows oranges and pears in the supermarket
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I like the seasonality of fruit and vegetables. I like to mark the seasons through all of my senses, including taste. I don’t buy out of season fruit even though there are lots of strawberries in the supermarket at the moment.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

playing with blending modes

visiting my parents in the country at the weekend I (of course) snapped a fair number of shots.  Back at my computer I decided to play with adding texture and the different effects of the same texture when applying different blend modes in PSE.  I used the warm sun texture from Kim Klassen.  If you want to see lots of other uses of this texture then visit her new texture Tuesday link up
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colour burn blending mode





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multiply then linear blending mode and then erased linear from the green leaves in focus



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linear burn blending mode





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colour burn blending mode twice then soft light blending mode



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Do you have a favourite?