The Big Picture Classes and Photo Editing

I'm taking another Photoshop class right now but from a different place. The one I'm taking is at The Big Picture Classes. I'm really enjoying it so far. It's just more of the basics but I'm learning different ways to do what I learned last summer. Here are a few of my pics.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After



Birthday Banner

So for Sophia's 3rd birthday coming up, I decided to make a birthday banner for her party.

I'm going with a black/white and pink color scheme so I picked scrapbooking paper that was black and white prints and use hot pink letters.

I cut pieces of 6 x 12 paper for the banner pieces. I used one of them as a template. I cut all my letters out on my new Cricut.

Next, I folded the 6 x 12 template piece in half and layed it on my cutting board at an angle (from the outside corner to the bottom inside edge).

Here's the template.

Next, I layed the template on top of a stack of 6 x 12 pieces (I did about 5 at a time) and traced it. Then I used my cutting board to cut along the lines (all 5 at a time).

YES! I'm watching the behind the scenes Oprah show on OWN. Catching up!

Next, I did the same process with black cardstock (but I did 7 x 12 pieces) because I wanted to make sure the thin scrapbooking paper had a good support to it. I glued the letters down to the patterned papers and then glued the patterned papers to the black papers.

I used a hole punch to punch holes on each side of the triangle. Next I cut 3 inch pieces of black ribbon to tie each piece together. I added ribbon on either end.

It's pretty long but I LOVE it!

And this is why my Facebook status update the other day read something about the perfect day. The right amount of work and play. I got to be creative, cross something off of my very long to-do list, got to watch Oprah Behind the Scenes, and I got to read. Oh! And I visited 2 craft stores plus Target. Why does buying the perfect lip gloss or lipstick make my day complete???

What's in the Name Wayne?

Here's my latest mini-book. Have you noticed that I love making them? I made this one as a gift for a friend who is retiring from teaching.

It's a little theory she has that more people with the middle name Wayne commit crimes than any other name. I googled it and found some articles to support her theory(http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/09/28/the-next-time-your-daughter-brings-home-a-new-boyfriend-be-sure-to-ask-his-middle-name/) and thought it would be fun to make a book where she could keep track of those Wayne's that show up in the news.

I bought a cheap baby name book at Half Price Books that I could rip up and use for embelishment.

Here's the title page.

The pages are actually 6 x 9 envelopes covered with scrapbook paper.

The cool thing is that because they're envelopes, she can store articles that she finds.

Here's the papers cut down to cover the envelopes.

I just covered peices of cardboard with scrapbook paper and painted the back side with acrylic paint. I used adhesive canvas (painted black) to reinforce the pages.

I punched three holes in each page and the cover and used binder rings from 7 Gypsies to put it all together.

I had taken this class at Anthologies before it closed that used this method.

March Sketch for Project 12



For some reason, Blogger isn't letting me center the above picture. Grrrf.... Anyways, that is the sketch for March.

And here's my interpretation. I did 2, 2 page layouts again.

I just have to go back and work on the journaling.

At first, I wasn't liking the sketch thing. But, after I started seeing other people's interpretations, I realize you don't have to do it exactly or even close to it. It's just a jumping off point, for inspiration.

February Sketch for Project 12

So here was the sketch for February from Project 12.

 

And here was my interpretation. I ended up doing 2, 2 page layouts. Also, I had this ordered paper on-line as a set. However, I failed to realize that it only had 1 of each paper. So I had to be a little more creative since I couldn't use the exact same paper on the 2nd page.

With this February layout, I was a little more comfortable working with a sketch.

Just FYI, when I found out about this Project 12 stuff, I decided to start with January and catch up to March. Then I would go back and get caught up July 2010-Dec. 2010.

January Sketch for Project 12

It seems like forever since I've posted on my creative blog but I promise, I have been creating. I just haven't been posting what I've made. I've been busy scrapbooking. I've been trying to get caught up using a new idea/method on scrapping. Instead of having pages and pages devoted to one month, I've decided to try to create 2, 2 page layouts. Sometimes I have 3 but I try to stick to 2 that basically summarize our month. I take way too many pics to condense it to just one  2 page layout. Way too hard. So here's where I got the idea from Project 12. My friend Kristy is the one who inspired me to go in this direction.

"Project 12 started out as a compromise to the yearly challenge of taking 365 photos. I know I am not organized enough to remember to do something like that on a daily basis, so the idea of that challenge was very overwhelming. I thought it would be much easier to summarize my life on a monthly basis, and that is the concept of Project 12".

 

"The Project 12 challenge is simple. The idea is to create a layout on a monthly basis which recaps what you’ve been doing. Whether you took 31 photos, no photos, or 100 photos, simply choose your favorites that best described what you were doing that month, and create a layout".

So they have these sketches on their website to help give you ideas. Here's their Jan. sketch.

Here's my interpretation.

 I made it look like a spiral notebook page by punch holes on a plain white paper. Then I inked it to kind of distress it.



I've really been trying to make each page a true work of art and not to speed through it just to try to get it done. I've been taking the time to ink edges and to use cutting tools that create unique edges like the scalloped edge above.

I've also been inspired by Kristy to only use papers and embellishments that I love.