Sweet and Pretty...Not me!!

Over the weekend I was still snuffling and coughing like I was at least 100!! The difference to Friday was that I wasn't  like one little pig..I was like all three little pigs and the wolf too!! I was doing the snuffling and snorting of the little pigs like there was three of me...plus I was huffing and puffing like I was going to blow the house down!!

I tried Vick, Olbus Oil, steaming with menthol crystals.....sipping hot chai with honey, ginger and lemon...and so much more!! The result was zilch. By Monday I had well and truly got a wheeze and I felt like I was drowning. The only thing to do was to call the doctor.  I tried to breath and talk at the same time, not something I normally struggle with, lol.  All the huffing and puffing must have made me sound like an elderly frail lady and he told me I needed to come in so he could check me out. When I got there he took a listen ....with a very cold stethoscope.....and prescribed antibiotics for a chest infection. I hope these work, if not they'll need to put me down. I'm a hazard to the healthy!!

Today I'm still feeling rough but don't want to spend too much time lying in bed in case it makes my chest worse....hopefully tomorrow will bring results. Good ones that is!!

Enough of my woes...I need to say thank you for two lovely awards that were passed to me last week. I have been dreadful the last few months in keeping up with these and passing them on. For my past sins, I apologise. I have turned over a new leaf and will deal with these promptly in future, promise!!

Swapna at Crafts and Cooking passed me this extremely chic, very Parissien looking award. It is gorgeous, thank you! I love Crafts and Cooking, the recipes make my mouth water every time I visit...which is most days. Drop by and see for yourself.

 

The rules are

1. Add the logo to your blog
2. Link to the person who passed on the award
3. Nominate blogs of your choice
4. Leave a message on the nominee blogs

I pass the award on it these favourite blogs:

Digi Vickie's Word Art

Beettle's Memories 'n Ramblings

Linda's Lot

Chris at Bling_Kin_Eck

 

The second award was passed to me by the lovely Jackie (Shinade) at The Painted Veil. Her blog is full of colour as she shares the results of her wonderful photography, plus she is such a lovely lady. It's well worth a visit!!

I pass this award some more special blogs:

Will Oaks Studio

Kim's Scrappin'

PJ's Prose

From a Little Yellow House In England

My Gypsy Goods

And finally before I go a small gift, a mini kit. All I can say about it is; it's simple, bright and I think quite pretty. So Enjoy!!

You can download Sweet and Simple here

I have had so many problems uploading to 4shared this last few months that the download is via Media Fire. I am so sick of spending 20 or 30 attempts

 

Take care and see you soon.

Technorati Tags: sweet and pretty,mini kit,free download,scrapbooking,graphic design

Overlay Painting Tutorial

 

Okay..before I start...if you hear a loud snuffling and snorting..it's me. I sound like a pig searching for truffles, sniff, snort, sniff. I have a cold and sore throat, plus it doesn't help that my nose is glowing a very luminous red!! Too many tissues!! So imagine a pig with a clowns nose and you've got me in one!!

I nearly forgot to mention the cough..a sort of raw hacking noise.....that will not be suppressed..as my DH has found out. Other details I won't describe, I don't want to put you off completely!!

 

Anyway, on to business. Paint!!!!

I thought I'd share a little a tip about using overlays in a short tutorial. Not only can you stack overlays to make your background papers, you can also add extra layers and stick a little paint on them. If you play with the blending modes, then you can have some real fun. I use Photoshop CS2 but you can apply the principle in most software packages.

In the tutorial I will keep things simple but you'll get the basic idea and then it's up to you to experiment!! I haven't tried to be subtle with the blending modes, I've just tried to make it simple...the finer points are up to you!!

The overlay that I used  is included in the download with a PDF of the tutorial. You can use the overlay for Commercial or Personal use. If you already use this technic...I apologise....ignore me!! Lol!

Right let's get going.

1. Open up a new file 12x12, 300dpi, transparent and fill it with the colour of your choice.

I used a brown colour for my base layer bc7d5c, but feel free to use any you want. (I renamed this layer colour)

2. Now open the overlay file that came with the tutorial, jsch_pattern_example.png

3. With the overlay file as the active one, hold down the Shift Key and drag it into your new file with the colour.

(Holding down the Shift key will make sure that the overlay is central when it has been moved.)

4. When you've done this, change the blending mode of the overlay layer to: Overlay, 78%.

5. Now for the start of the fun part. Make new layer above the overlay.

(You can do this by Layer>New or by clicking the small icon, second from the right at the bottom of the Layers palette).

Rename the new layer to Paint 1

6. With the Paint 1 as the active one, select the paint brush you want to use. I choose a soft round brush, size 800. This size just covers the flower like centre of the pattern on the overlay.

The quick way to get the brush ready is select the brush icon in the left tool bar. Then change the size in the top tool bar by click the down arrow next to the brush shape.

 

Choose a soft brush from the drop down list and then at the top change the px size to 800.

This is what your top tool bar should look like when you've done.

7. We need to pick the colour we want the brush to paint with. I choose a bright turquoise blue, 5accd6. Again it's a matter of choice.

Make sure that the new layer is still your active on and then we can start to paint.

Hold the brush over the middle of the flower like shape and click once.

Continue doing this until you have all the shapes you want covered. (You can use different colours over each shape, but for now I'm just using this one to keep it simple.)

 

When you have finished painting the shapes and your happy with it, turn of the Paint 1 layer by clicking the little eye on the left of the layer. We can turn it on later when we've done the next stage.

8. Make an other new layer above Paint 1, exactly as we did before and rename it Paint 2.

We'll use the same soft round brush but we need to change the size of the brush so that it just covers the centre of the flower shape.

To change the size make sure you still have the paintbrush icon selected and then in the top tool bar click the down arrow next to the brush shape and change the brush size to 150px. (You can also change the brush size by pressing the ] key to make it larger or the [ key to make it smaller.)

We also need to change the colour. I have used a green, 3ed895.

We're ready to paint . So line up your brush and click once on centre of the first flower shape.

Continue doing this until you have covered all the centres of the shapes. Again you can change colour for each one if you want. If stuck to this one colour.

9. When you have complete all click on the Paint 1 layer to make it active again. Change the blending mode to Overlay, 90%.

10. Click on the Paint 2 layer and change the blending layer to Colour Burn, 64%.

(Okay, this is not very subtle but the subtle bit is for you to do later!Lol.)

This is what you should have.

I have kept the tutorial to the basics, but you can add texture to the painted layers via the Layers Style Palette, change the blending modes, use different shaped brushes...the list is endless!! Just play and experiment!! But most of all have fun.

You can download the tutorial in PDF format with the overlay here

Have a great weekend!!

Technorati Tags: photoshop tutorial,overlays,pdf,free download,paint and overlays

Should the Photograph Be Bigger?

Autumn has arrived in my neck of the world. The last of our flowers are wilting and the sunshine is starting to loose it's warmth. I have to admit it wasn't a particularly warm summer here in England anyway, but now in the morning and evening there is a decided nip in the air. Soon the leaves will turn and the descent towards Winter will have started in earnest. The wonderful colours of Autumn will be my compensation for the colder days to come.

One of my last garden blooms

About now most of us find we have stacks of photographs from summer piling up to add to our album pages. With this backlog in mind, I had some of my layouts printed to clear my PC for the new ones to come. I was proudly showing them to one of my friends when a chance remark made me stop and examine my pages more closely. It made me think...yes, I do occasionally indulge in thought, lol.

Irene doesn't scrapbook herself, but she was really interested to take look at mine. Imagine my surprise to hear her ask why scrapbook pages gave so little prominence to the actual photograph!!

Being artistic and crafty herself, she's looked before at scrapbooking on the Internet but decided that she preferred her photos as they come. Whilst she agreed many of the layouts she had seen were beautiful and extremely artistic, she did feel that they were more a showcase for the persons skills or artistic expression than for photographs.

Okay, by now she had my FULL attention!! What..she thought I was not giving centre stage to the lovely Lilly in my pages!!!

As an illustration of what she meant, she mentioned pages with one small photo with cluster/s behind or around it, the rest of the page using lots of white space. I have to admit, I for one, love these sorts of pages. I tried to explain that those really can have a dramatic impact because of the space the eye was led to the photo and made it the star.

She was not convinced!! Rubbish..was her loud rely!!! It merely meant in years to come when fashion and fads had moved on, people would peer at our pages and wonder why we had made the gorgeous photograph so small and left so much blank space.

I have to admit, by now my feathers were extremely ruffled. Then the realisation of how she saw things started to dawn. I stepped back and thought about what she had said...she was in some ways right. Some of my pages didn't have journaling and the photo was a very small part of the overall layout. At first glance they do appear to be more artist expression pieces than memory pages for the future. Eeek!! What have I done!!

It raised the question in my mind should the photograph be bigger or more prominent on our pages? I know that we all have our own style but if you look around many, not all, layouts don't give prominence to the photo or journaling. Often they tell us more about the scrapper and their skills than they do about the person or event in the photograph. Many...like me...are guilty of no journaling at all on some pages, to note the event, date or person.

Bettina sent me this beautiful page of her granddaughter Lili and perhaps she has got the right idea...photo prominent at a good size, plus an indication of who and when. The fun wordart conveys the emotion behind it. I love it, for me it ticks all the boxes!! A great example of an album page with loads of style.

Credits: Lilly's Quilt Freebie Cens Stuff, Wordart by Bethanie

No the example below of one of my pages is just the opposite!! Loads of fun but not good!! No name or date just a sentiment that I felt about the lovely lady in the layout....oops!! Rethink needed!!

Credits: Cens Stuff, Kite by SammyD at Scrappin Digi Kreations 

 

The next layout was for my brothers 50th birthday album this summer. It' s got names and dates plus it says in the park, but I should have put where the park was perhaps and little journaling. I should also have put the names in the top picture in the order the people appear on the photo!! It would help!! I know who they are and where but others won't, so perhaps a few more facts on this heritage one.

(Yes, the child standing up on the swing is me!! The boy is my brother and the dark haired girl is my youngest aunt.)

 

But that still left me begging the questions.....

Should the elements and white space play a less prominent part in our pages? Should the photograph and journaling be the stars? Have we lost the plot on this and we can't see the wood for the trees? Are we more concerned with showing off our own skills than preserving the memories? I am guilty of at least some of the above!!

So many questions..so little answers!! This needs some more thought!!

As a family historian I can imagine the frustration of future generations at the lack of journaling and questioning why we choose to utilise the space the way we did. But....the albums will pass on something else to them as well, they'll let people see the scrapbooking style and fashions over a period in time. They'll show the talent and skill of the person who made the album and illustrate the technics available at the time. So, perhaps our album pages will end up conveying  different or incomplete information about us and our memories but they will still be marvelous records to pass on.

That chance remark has certainly made me think and look at my layouts differently. I've looked and reexamined what I'm doing and why. I'm not saying I'll change the way I do everything but I certainly will think more about how I preserve my memories.

What are your thoughts on this? Should the photograph be bigger or the journaling always present?

Check back tomorrow I have a little something for you!! Until then take care have fun!!

Technorati Tags: scrapbooking,layouts,white space