Scraps Of Pink - Free Quick Page

The sales from the Scraps Of Pink kit have been going well all week. The target is to raise at least $1,000 for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. We are about 3/4's there so far. As a thank you to those who purchased the kit and also to help promote further sales the design team have released a free quick page for download.You can read about it here http://digiscrapreview.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/scraps-of-pink-freebie/
Thank you for your support!

Scraps Of Pink

Hi everyone!
I realize you may not be a digital scrapbooker, but if you know somone who is please forward this posting to them. I am one of the members of the design team that put together this mega kit as a benefit for the "Susan G. Komen for the Cure" foundation.

The kit is huge and only costs $10. All proceeds go to the charity, you can look at it here.........
http://www.viovio.com/shop/14837

Thank you for checking this out and feel free to pass the links along to your friends!
Ann (aka jojo99)

INTERNATIONAL DESIGN TEAM SCRAPS FOR A CURE
Raleigh, NC (Oct 17, 2007) — Viovio, a custom photobook publishing company, has joined an international team of twenty-five digital scrapbook designers in a benefit for Susan B. Komen for the Cure foundation. “Scraps of Pink” is a 300+ item digital scrapbooking kit that will be on sale in the shop through November 7, 2007. All proceeds from the sale of this kit will be donated to the aforementioned charity.You can read the rest of the press release on my friend Jane's blog: http://digiscrapreview.wordpress.com

This is the charity's link http://ww5.komen.org/home/

The Newspaper Clipping Generator

Check out this link if you need a newspaper clipping to add to a scrapbook page:
http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

Quotes For Scrapbooking

Searching for quotes to use in a page I'm working on..........just thought it might be a good idea to list some interesting ones I might want to use later :-)
I'll add to this as I find some nice ones!

- A little girl is sugar and spice and everything nice - especially when she's taking a nap. ~Author Unknown

~There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. ~Elizabeth Lawrence

~Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within. - Franz Kafta

~Boys are meant for kisses and hugs,For watching rainbows and catching bugs,For sharing all of your favorite things,For books to read and songs to sing. -- Author:unknown

~"I'm rumbly in my tumbly" ~ Pooh Bear

--(Childs Name) ...You are such a grown up boy(girl). Beautiful (or other word) at the age of .........3 (or whatever)

~Time is:
Too Slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,too long for those who grieve
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love,
Time is not.

~“Oh, I love hugging. I wish I was an octopus, so I could hug 10 people at a time"
Drew Barrymore

Templates for Scrapbooking in Elements

After trying all day to figure out how to use a scrap-book template I happened across the following page Layered Template Tutorial
Mostly I couldn't figure out how to get my photos to replace the grey sections, I never heard of clipping the photo to the template shape!
Boy am I green :-(
Looks so easy with these insturctions, I can't wait to give it a try :-)

Creating a sketch in Elements

Found a link to a neat tutorial on creating a sketch in Elements (I'm working with PE4).
Creating a Sketched Image

I also downloaded some cool gradients following a link on that page. Click on the tutorial link after clicking this one and you will find the gradients about half way down the page.
Shanzcan.com

Week Six - Photo Collage

Wow, it's so hard to believe this is the last week of Launchpad A.
The last few weeks have flown by and with the help of Janee I am now a lot more confident using Photoshop. While I know there is still tons to learn I have progressed from knowing nothing about the program to being confidant enough to put together the collage you see on this page.

After creating a pink background I decided to base my collage on my daughter (Amanda) because the girl is just nuts about anything pink!!!!!!!Trawling through hundreds of photos, digital and 35mm prints to gather the pictures I needed was lots of fun.

Every picture was cropped, resized, moved and had an Inner Glow added to create the white boarder. The blue flowers were taken from the picture below which I had in my digital library (what can I say, I photograph flowers for fun).

I created 2 files from the photo, the bigger posy and the small single flower and then used the Dry Brush filter to get the subtle effect of painted flowers.

Because today is Mother's Day in Ireland we printed out the picture and gave it to Amanda's Grandmother!!!

Janee, thanks for everything! I admire your inner strength and your teaching skills. I hope we both have the patience to get me through Launchpad B and C.

Edit: 25th March 2007

Thanks to John's tip I have brightened the middle picture, I hadn't noticed it was so dark. The updated pic is below.

Week 5-Creating A Business Card

Week 5 at myjanee is all about using graphics and type to create a business card or letter head.

The first step in creating my business card is to use one of the graphics I created last week (using filters) for my background. To do this I have gone into image size and changed all settings to match my card size. Resample Image was also chosen to change the pixel dimensions, after the first attempt was too big to place on the card.

Using the move tool, the picture was dragged onto the card background layer. Opacity was lowered to 60% in the layers palatte. Later this would be lowered to 50% because it overpowered a later quilt graphic which was added.

Each section (sentence) of text was added on a new text layer. I had some trouble using the Align and Distribute features so I'm going to give this another try on a second card.

This is my first card, please note all information is fake :-).

My second card (also based on false information) is below, this time I created the background graphic using the custom shape tool. Yet again the "snap to" function did not appear to work, in the end I opted to place the text in different positions and not in a neat row as planned.

This week has been lots of fun and I can't believe tomorrow sees the arrival of the last lesson in Launchpad A :-(

Lunar Eclipse

I had great fun tonight taking photos of the Lunar Eclipse.
The last total eclipse was in 2004 and was mostly obliterated by cloud, tonight though we were blessed with a mostly clear sky.

Here are the links to my best photos (I took almost 50 over the space of an hour and a half).

Lunar Eclipse-Photo 1

Lunar Eclipse-Photo 2

Lunar Eclipse-Photo 3

Lunar Eclipse-Photo 4

Lunar Eclipse-Photo 5

The photos were taken in the following time order:
22.02, 22.22, 22.38, 22.46 and 22.50. After that the moon was still visible to the naked eye but not to the camera.

The camera I used is a Cannon PowerShot G5.

Week 4 - Editing Photos Using Layers

This week we returned to do some more editing on photos in week 4 of class at myJanee, this time concentrating on the following 3 aspects;
Filtering a photograph and ending up with an altered/different image.
Using the Magic Wand to change blocks of colour to a completely new colour.
Fixing Red Eye to rescue photos blighted with red-eye or pet yellow-eye.

I have the picture below as a screen-saver on my mobile, it was taken last summer in Gibraltar. I tried several filters and decided I liked the affect of the Plastic Wrap best.
The next picture was taken from my Nintendo DS. I used Stained Glass and Plastic Wrap to get the finished picture, which I think has lots of potential :-).

For red-eye I first tried a picture of my Grandson which I knew would not be too hard to fix. The method used was different to what I had been using and it worked very well :-).

For my next project I deliberatly looked for a picture that would be a bit more of a challange to fix. I often have trouble with my son's pics because he wears glasses and a lot are ruined because the refelection of the flash makes him look like he has no eyes.

This picture is pretty good except I was trying to fix a red eye that is behind the lens of his glasses. Perfect for painting new pupils!!!!!!!!!

I think you will agree the result is good. The small patches of glare will need to be fixed too, when I learn how :-).

Week 3 - Digital Painting

It's time to try digital painting in week 3 of class at myJanee.

I had mixed feelings at the start of this lesson because I hate drawing and was never much good at it.


I stuck with it though and enjoyed both parts, pictures are shown below.

First part of the lesson was painting a picture with different brushes. Using different layers for all the different parts I worked in the following order: sky, grass background, Dune Grass brush for actual grass, gradient tool for both the balloon and basket, lastly used a hard round brush to out-line the basket and add some birds.



Next up was Moving and Transforming. I had lots of fun with this one. This picture shows a shelf with 3 objects, each made up of at least 2 layers for each object.
Layers were linked so the objects could be moved/transformed and rotated as a whole unit. This was so amazing to do and really changed the layout of the origional picture.

Week 2 - Editing Photos

It's week 2 of Launchpad A at http://www.myjanee.com/.This week has been all about working with photos. In this lesson we looked at:
1). Fixing Levels using a photo that is too dark or too light that has poor contrast.
2). Curves - fixing a photo with poor contrast.
3). Colour Cast - fixing a photo that has yellowed with age or has a cast due to artificial lighting conditions.
The quick photo fixes are Auto Levels, Contrast and Colour. These may not work on all photos but you might be lucky like I was with this picture taken in the Autumn of 1976. Using just the Auto Colour on this has had a very dramatic affect on altering the colour.

Menu adjustments include Levels, Curves, Colour balance.
I used levels on the photo of my son below, it was taken in a museum on the Costa Brava, Spain. I was very disapointed at the time that the old cars and bikes in the background were so dark in the origional photo, using levels has brightened the background enough to see more detail on the
vehicles.

This picture below is of me with my father, I used a combination of Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Colour to achieve the results in the after picture.



Variations is another method of working with a picture with colour cast, here you get to see the affect of different changes and pick one with the best outcome.To improve the picture below I also used Auto Colour and Levels after tweeking with Variations.



The photo below of Patrick Senior and Patrick Junior was improved using a combination of Curves and Levels. The effect is to brighten a picture that looked pretty dull to begin with.

This week has been lots of fun and I've learned quite a lot about trying to rescue photos that would otherwise be deleted.

Charity Scarf

Check out this link if you are interested in helping create a huge scarf in aid of cancer research.
http://www.stitchandbitchlondon.co.uk:80/
Knitters from the UK, Ireland, the USA and other countries are taking part in this project organized by Stitch and Bitch London.
You have until the end of February to knit a piece 10 inches wide and as long or as short as you want your contribution to be.
The finished scarf will be 43.5 feet long and if enough people take part more than one scarf will be made and raffled to raise money for the charity.

Abstract 2 - Part 2

After some more great advice I've managed to move shapes on top of other shapes, really changes the picture compared to the one I posted yesterday.

Layers can be moved up and down the stack (in the Layers Palette) so that the object can be either placed above or below any object on another layer.
To achieve the effect I wanted I just needed to move the yellow layer to the top of the stack.

Abstract 2

Okay, I've had another shot at playing with Photoshop. This time I wanted to make a shape and then duplicate somewhere else on the page.
Thanks to the input of Joanne I created the pic below.
Just in case I forget this little gem.............in the "layers palette" drag the layer you are copying down to the "new layer" icon, hey presto, you have a new layer with your duplicate shape. Grab the "move" tool and move your shape to the spot you want.
Except in the case of my yellow circle.....................I wanted to put the yellow circle on the blue box, but it seemed to dissapear into the background, ah well, back to the drawing board.

Week 1- Abstract

Here it is at last my first weeks assignment for the Photoshop on-line course I'm doing at myjanee.com.

I was a little lost as to what to do with all my new techniques but the result is below..............meet Mr. Egg-Head.
This little guy is the outcome of shapes filled with colour, all set on their own layers, a technique (layers) which has always seemed to be mysterious and out of reach to me.

Janee has taught me in this first week the one thing I could not get to grips with on my own (even with at least 10 years experience of using graphics programs to work on photos.

I was glad the question was asked on the board about deleting one of the layers, when the picture was almost done I decided I was not happy with the mouth. What a gift to be able to drag the layer to the trash can.

Painting on the eyebrows was a nightmare, drawing with a mouse is soooooo awkward. Lucky for me
I've ordered a Wacom Graphire4, I'll be watching out for the postman all week :-).
Week 1 of Launchpad A has been lots of fun and I've learned quite a lot, can't wait to see what's in store for class next week.

Photos from Animal Crossing

Some photos from Animal Crossing Wild World.

My highest ever HRA points :-).

The Lovely Room - complete with phone.

The Snowman Room.

All Fall Down

Such a shame to see young trees on the ground like this.

The wind has been really strong in the last few weeks but sadly the wind may not be to blame, more than likely these young trees were felled by vandals.

Alone with myself

The trees bend to caress me

The shade hugs my heart

Candy Polgar

The Children Of Mana

Got a new game for my DS Lite today, The Children Of Mana.
Having played Animal Crossing Wild world almost exclusively for the past 9 months I'm on a desperate mission to find a game that will engross me in the same way.

Probably a mission doomed to failure but we shall see. So far I've read through the manual but not actually tried starting the game yet, tomorrow.

I want to play Harvest Moon DS but the powers that be in Nintendo have delayed it's release several times (as they seem to do with most games). Let's hope it will make it's debut in Febuary as planned.

Next week I'll buy Action Loop, another game that has been promised for months on end. In the beginning it was to be called Magnetica and should have been in the shops months ago, let's hope it will be worth the wait.

Based on the PC game Zuma (which I have completed on my PDA) it should be a fun puzzle game.

The Gong

A joke from an email doing the rounds.
Following a night out with a few friends, a man brought them back to show off his new flat.
After the grand tour, the visitors were rather perplexed by the large gong taking pride of place in the lounge.
"What's that big brass gong for?" one of the guests asked.
"Why, that's my Speaking Clock" the man replied.
"How does it work?"
"I'll show you", the man said, giving the gong an ear-shattering blow with an unpadded hammer.
Suddenly, a voice from the other side of the wall screamed, "For ****sake, you *****, it's twenty to two in the ****ing morning!!"