SpragueBlog

Thursday, August 10, 2006

NEW HOME!

Hi!

I've moved blogs. Hopefully for the last time.

I needed a new space. So I chose a square one. ;)

Come check out my new digs at:

http://spraguelab.squarespace.com

Friday, August 04, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue #11}

Don't forget that I sneaked in another PS Friday on Monday, just trying to get caught up. So if you missed it, read back a couple of posts. :)

This week's PS Friday comes by special request from a few people, and most recently from Tara. So thanks for the request, and here goes:

Selective re-coloring of black-and-white photos.
Like this:

First, we need a color photo.
I'll use this one:

The first thing we need to do is duplicate our original image.

In the layers palette, right-click on the photo name, and choose Duplicate Layer from the popup menu.
Now target the new layer.
Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (PSE: Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove color.

Now we have a really crappy black and white conversion. In almost all cases, you'll want to do some tweaks to your photo, such as boosting the contrast. You could add a gradient map adjustment layer like in this PS Friday: http://photoshopfriday.blogspot.com/2006/06/ps-friday-issue-8.html
And you'll just need to merge that adjustment layer down before continuing on.

OR

You could open the Levels window, Image > Adjustments > Levels (PSE: Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels).

Drag the white slider toward the left, and adjust the middle (grey) slider to set the midtones (not too dark, not too light). When you're happy with the contrast boost, hit OK in that window and we're ready to add some color back in.

Adding Color back to the Photo
The key to this technique is that we duplicated the photo and converted the top copy to black and white, so we have an undisturbed copy below this layer. We'll use the eraser tool to erase through our black and white layer, showing the color layer down below. And after that I'll give a lecture about non-destructive editing. :)

The Eraser Method:

Grab the eraser tool from the toolbar, choose a small, hard-edged brush.
Zoom in on your image to get a nice view of it.
Now simply erase all the bits that you would like to be in color, and the bottom layer will begin to show through.

This works just fine as a quick-and-dirty method. When you make a mistake, you can simply Ctrl-z to undo.

Next opportunity I get, we'll talk about using layer masks instead of the eraser tool for non-destrctive editing. And won't that be fun? :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

Love me some Google.

So I couldn't resist Googling myself the other day, and apparently in addition to being myself, I'm a basketball player at Bible Baptist College, and that pretty much takes care of me.

So Jared decides to Google himself tonight, just on a whim.

First hit?

He gets this:

It's a link to a bumper sticker for sale at Cafe Press.
http://www.cafepress.com/2bw.56659052

So is there a backstory? Yep.

A couple months ago, Jared showed up at work, and spotted this bumper sticker on someone's car, that said, "I hate soccer moms". He thought that not only was this lame, but it was downright offensive.

So he started a thread on his company's internal message board, that escalated into legendary status. The owner of said "hate soccer moms" sticker even posted to say that he just thought it was funny.

He thought done was done, but apparently Mr. Soccer Mom Hater has decided to set up shop. And the first item up for sale is this sticker. :D. And check out the caption on the cafe press site! Bwaha!

But I think I might buy one of these stickers, though. They are keen. :D But if I put it on my OWN bumper... would that be too narcissistic? ...

Monday, July 31, 2006

Photoshop Friday... er... Monday! :D

Okay, as promised, here is how to make this cool 4-square photo:

I put one of these on a paper layout I did for my HOF entry this year. I think they are really cool, and a great way to add a little journalistic AND artistic flair at the same time.

For this PS Friday, we'll still be focusing on the marquee tool, but we're going to create a compound selection, rather than just a simple square or circle.

Open 4 photos.
Do the editing you want to them.
Open a new 12x12 blank document, and drag all of your photos onto it.
Turn on the rulers. (View > Rulers)
Use the Edit > Scale command (or in PSE, just drag the handles) until each photo is no larger than 4 inches in width. (this just determines how much of the photo you'll be able to see - you can go more or less here)

Let's make this a 6-inch accent.

Select the Elliptical marquee tool.
In the Options bar at the top of the screen, select Fixed Size from the Style dropdown box. Type in 6 and 6 in the size boxes to get a perfect 6-inch circle.
Click once anywhere in your document to see a perfect 6-inch circle.
With the marquee tool selected, move the selection up into the top corner, right next to the rulers. This will make the cutting easier. Let's turn on the Grid (View > Show > Grid), and also the Snap feature, which turns our ruler lines into little magnets. (Also, if you have CS or CS2, you can drag a guide line out to the 3-inch mark both horizontally and vertically, so you can line up your cutting marquee)

What we actually want is a quarer-circle pie shape. So let's make a compound selection.

Select the Rectangle marquee tool (while the circle selection is still active).
Now hold down the Alt key. You should see a little minus sign appear next to the cursor. This means that whatever you select now will actually erase from your current selection.
Click and drag while you hold the Alt key - a rectangle covering over half of your circle. When you release the mouse, you'll see that you've actually cut your selection in half.
Now let's do the horizontal cut. Hold down the Alt key, and drag a rectangle across the bottom half of your selection, right at the 3-inch grid line. Just before you release your mouse, you should see something like this: (See the minus-sign cursor?)

So now you have your quarter-pie selection.

With the marquee tool still selected, drag the selection over your photo, target it in the layers palette.
Now go to Select > Inverse, and hit Delete to delete the excess photo.

Congratulations! You have your first pie slice done! :)

Finishing up, for PSE:
If you have PSE, you'll need to re-draw the circle and create the compound selection for each of the pie shapes (top right, bottom right, bottom left). Then simply Select > Inverse, target the second photo layer, and hit Delete, and so on until you have each quadrant done.

Finishing up, for PSCS and above:
If you have PSCS or above, you have a cool feature in your selection tools: Transform selection. With your selection still active, go to Select > Inverse to return to your original pie-shaped selection. Now you can go to Select > Transform selection, and use the rotation handles to rotate your selection (hold Shift while you rotate to constrain to 45 or 90 degrees). Then Select > Inverse, target the second photo layer, and hit Delete.

So you can go through and cut each quadrant of your circle.

Final Touches

Let's target the bottom right photo in the Layers palette.
Now let's move the Opacity slider in the Layers palette to somthing like 40% (more or less depending on the original lightness of the photo).

Now we can add some text to this area. If you want to journal here, that would be fun, or you can simply put a subtitle or a date.

Here's how mine ended up:

I'll get this onto a layout now and post that, probably tomorrow. But I wanted you to have the instructions. This also looks GREAT printed out and cut in the circle shape with just a teeny bit of white photo paper showing around the edge. Hybrid scrapping at its best! :D

Have a great night!

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Home Again.

I arrived back home from Utah at 6pm yesterday, pretty tired.

I was originally supposed to be in Utah on Thursday night at 8:30 or so, but our flight from Raleigh was delayed.. and the short story is that in order to make it to Utah by Friday morning, I had them reroute me through Vegas late Thursday night.

So instead of a great and restful night in a hotel room, I got 2 hours of sleep on the plane from Chicago to Vegas (which arrived there at 2 a.m.), and another hour on the floor of the Vegas airport (while waiting to check my suitcase back in). The flight left Vegas at 6 a.m. and I arrived , headed for the hotel, showered and got ready, and went straight to the taping.

So let's just say I wasn't as fresh and bright-eyed as I could have been.

The actual taping was a lot of fun though. And I have fingers crossed that our film crew are editing geniuses. ;) And frankly, I don't remember that much of it...

One more bit of news.. on Friday I was officially made a Contributing Editor to Creating Keepsakes Magazine. In general, I'll be focused on digital and hybrid, and I think this is a HUGE step for a scrapbook magazine that has been focused almost entirely on paper scrapping for 10 years. I really can't wait for all that's in store for the digital and hybrid scrappers. And I can't wait to share more.

Oh, and speaking of sharing... Friday was so messed up. And I'm a little behind even still. But here is the sneakie of what the PS Friday will look like, that will go up tomorrow. 4 days late. Sorry about that.

But it's a good one. :) So stop back by tomorrow and learn how to make this cool 4-sided accent with photos. It uses some of the same principles as the 4-square layout we did a couple weeks ago, but using photos provides us a bit more challenge. :)

Thursday, July 27, 2006

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon to film my first digital scrapbooking class for CKU Homestudy. I'm terribly nervous. :\ If you have any good luck vibes to spare, I'd love some sent my way ok? :D I could use them.

But I'm going with (what are apparently) my lucky red shoes.

And huh. Apparently I can't post any images.

So I'll provide linkage.

They're called Naot Sea. SO SO comfy. They did me proud at CHA. Even after 14-16 (20?) hour days, they didn't kill me. So yay! :D

I've been busy hacking my way back into Photoshop Elements 4. It's a good program. Pretty solid, but lacking in surprising things that I went ahead and thought (assumed?) would be there.. and aren't.

Alignment tools? Whose idea was it to take those out? Shall we start a letter-writing campaign? Turning on the grid and zooming in to nudge things this way and that isn't necessarily a great time...

Unless you have some cool music playing, and a nice cold diet mt. dew by your side. Then almost anything is a great time.

But I digress.

PS Friday - will actually come to you from Utah this week. :D Can't wait!

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

One Quick Drive-by

I'll just post quickly and update for real later today.

All of the digital Hall of Famers from this year's CK contest will be hanging out tonight for a chat at the new store, Polkadot Potato. Come on by for some laughs and good times, and I'm sure there'll be a freebie involved at some point. :)

http://www.polkadotpotato.com/bb/chat

Oh, and this link is not working as of this writing, but I'm assured it'll be functional by this evening.

So come on by and join us at 10 p.m. EST.

Monday, July 24, 2006

A little more reminiscing..

I Picked up that sticker in the airport. That smile just makes me smile. :D

Now that I've had a day to relax (ha!) and put my thoughts together, I wanted to share a special photo from the show:

Remember how I said that I sucked at taking photos there? Well, that's still true. But I do have this one. Nisa had 7 layouts to do for the MME booth, and had shown me a few of them in email before the show.

But she didn't show me THAT one. So we went over to peek at her layouts in the booth, and I spotted this one in the album. I was caught off guard, and I just sat there in the MME booth and cried. Mainly I cried because I suddenly wished I lived back in MN and could go to the zoo and Comdey Sportz and the MOA with these guys all the time. But partly I cried because I'm so grateful to have found a hobby that has connected me with dozens of the greatest people I've ever met.

And so I've been thinking all weekend - about the marvel of this hobby, this craft, that brings us together in unpredictable ways. I met Nisa (and Kirsten Hegman, Michele Skinner, and Angie Barclay, among several others) at the 2peas crop last August. I had no idea at the time I went that I'd be making lifelong friends with those Minnesota ladies. I think it's partly just a pure love for paper and ink and photos and all scrappy goodness. But I think it's deeper than that, too. Scrappers train daily to notice things, to appreciate things, to learn things. They also train to express themselves in whatever their chosen medium is, but it's self-expression with a forward-thinking eye - an eye for making things meaningful to other people, too. That makes them just a different crowd of people. And that's the best.

Being around Nisa and Kirsten all weekend made me miss Minnesota pretty desperately too. But good friends can be friends forever, no matter how far away they live.

Right?

Do you feel like I've abandoned you?

If so, I'm sorry.

It's my goal now to update the blog daily. From here on out. So keep me to it, ok?

So I just spent the last 3 days at CHA in Chicago. I learned a lot of things over the weekend. Met a lot of really great, TRULY great people. Met a bunch of online friends for the first time, and reconnected with good friends I haven't seen in months. It was awesome.

I'm exhausted. It was three days of great fun and ups and downs, and of course, seeing peeks of some really fantastic new product.

The paper scrapper in me, loved the new lines from My Mind's Eye and from Fancy Pants. The trend toward this gritty elegance is really emerging, and it is awesome. My dear friend Nisa Fiin's new stamps from Fontwerks simply rock, as do the licensed brushes from Jason Gaylor that Fontwerks produced stamps from (more about this later). The canvas tabs from Scrapworks? Gotta have them. The new lines from A2Z and from Crate Paper caught my eye as well, and the fall line from KI memories could NOT be cuter. Chatterbox has some very awesome self-adhesive chipboard letters (called Box Letters) that come in all the classic CBX colors - AND they are embossed with a swirly texture that is delish.

Back to Fancy Pants - they have some incredible 12x12 chipboard shapes, including a set of large swirls (think 8+ inches tall) that are amazing. I pretty much hung out in their booth petting paper and chipboard for awhile... Memories Complete came out with great concentric circle stickers, and these great coasters that double as frames with a little pop-out piece. Beautiful artwork there.

And speaking of artwork! I was completely blown away by the number of digi designers who've licensed their designs for paper. Of course we know and love Rhonna Farrer's line of paper and acrylic stamps for Autumn Leaves. Gorgeous and perfect for boyish layouts. Katie Pertiet did a line, and also had her VERY popular snap frame alpha, date stamp, and journaling line brushes made into acrylic stamps! I squealed out loud! I love that the paper players can play with the identical stuff that the digis have been enjoying. And we also have digi designers doing paper lines for A2Z, My Mind's Eye, and Fontwerks (ahem. Jason Gaylor's foliage brushes made into acrylic stamps? Was that thud all the paper scrappers passing out from pure delight? Yes. I think so.) Gorgeous stuff translated for the paper world. I love that fusion. Love that I can play in both the paper and digi worlds and be one happy clam. :D

On the digi side, I met with the folks from Adobe, who had a booth at CHA for the very first time. They are just getting a handle on how many we are who use their Photoshop products, and how passionate we are about our craft. They were intrigued by the idea of how those of us who dabble in hybrid scrapping mix things up, and also asked a lot of questions. It was a fascinating conversation that will be continued. I can't wait for the digital scrappers, because we are a huge and untapped user base, to help them shape their Elements product to better meet our needs. But more on this later as well. I want to hear what your thoughts are, so I can pass them along (p.s. they already know that drop-shadow needs to be improved. ;)).

So all in all, I had a fantastic weekend. I will post some photos (although I admit I'm lame and didn't take that many.. schlepped the cam for 3 days and got MAYBE 30 photos. What kind of scrapper am I?) But more on the show and the upcoming stuff to come. :)

5 days til I go film the first online digi scrapping class for CK. I admit that I'm terribly nervous. Typing and preparing like mad to try to make something that is really good, and useful. I hope that happens. :)

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue #10}

Today's PS Friday comes to you courtesy of some work I've been doing this week - not necessarily in the tutorial side of Photoshop, but in the product-creation side.

And I've been having such a great time doing PS Friday, and I'm so thankful to all of you guys, who come and read and learn and get inspired and go MAKE THINGS. That's what this is all about to me. And I love ya.

So. In honor of that, I present to you this freebie, I made just for the PS Friday-ers (dang it! we need a new name). These are some of my first papers, and I hope you enjoy them. I called the kit LoveYa. :D

Download the zip file by clicking on the image or clicking here

And there is one other reason for celebration. Ali spilled the good word on her blog the other day, so I figure it's safe now. (Right? Safe?) And the newsletter has gone out announcing the web site and all.

So here goes.

Ready?

Set?

Ladies, start your software!

Vroom!

Okay. I'm a tease. But hey, it's my blog, right? I can do that.

Starting in August, I will be teaching a series of online digital scrapbooking classes for CKU Home Study, the new Creating Keepsakes online classroom. More details to come. But I'm so excited! The courses will be geared to anyone who has Photoshop Elements or PS7, CS, or CS2 and will be targeted toward different skill levels.

I will post more details as I'm able, but I just can't hold this secret in any more. :D

I will return next week with a tutorial, I promise. Have a wonderful weekend, and if you use the freebie, link me up ok? I would love to see.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Calling all PS Friday-ers. Help!

I need your help. Calling all PS Friday-ers. :) (we need a better name than this..)

I know several of you completed PS Friday already. You've shown me your layouts and they are totally GORGEOUS. I am so impressed by the work you do, and the choices you've made about papers and photos and subjects. You are all AWESOME!

I am trying to gauge how long it takes to complete a more complicated piece like this.

So.. if you have done this week's PS Friday (see below), would you mind posting here (or emailing me if you don't want to admit it publicly...) how LONG it took you? From start to finish. (Remember that there were 2 parts.)

I would appreciate this knowledge SO much. And in a couple of weeks.. maybe sooner.. you'll find out why.

;)

Have a wonderful day!

Friday, July 07, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue #9!}

This issue is a continuation of the one I started on Sunday the 25th. In that first exercise you learned how to draw a perfect square by holding the Shift key as you drag your marquee, and how to invert a selection.

So go here to read that part first. You'll set up the grid, and cut your papers into a 4-square design roughly like this:

Now you'll turn that 4-square into a single sheet of paper to keep working with it.

Merging Layers

With the Move tool selected, hold down the shift key and click on each of your four layers one by one. You should see them all select in your layers palette, either by highlighting or by the appearance of a little chain-link icon next to the thumbnail.
Go to Layer > Merge Linked (In PSCS and above, Layer > Merge Layers). In your layers palette you should see a single layer with the four squares, and the background layer.

Cutting spaces between the papers

Using the rectangle marquee, draw a 1/4 inch selection horizontally across your 4-square paper (this is where the grid comes in handy). Position the selection exactly over the line where the patterns meet:

Hit delete.
If you are using PSCS or above, you can use the Select>Transform Selection to rotate your selection 90 degrees. If you are using PSE, simply redraw the selection vertically.
Position the selection exactly over the line where the papers meet.
Hit delete.

Cutting with the Elliptical Marquee
In this next section, we will be cutting a large circle out of the middle of the 4-square paper, to use as a design element. We'll work on other options with the selection tool, including constraining a selection to exact dimensions, drawing a circle from the center point, and saving and loading a selection.

Select your Elliptical Marquee tool.
In the Options bar at the top of the screen, choose Fixed Size from the Mode drop-down box.
Type in 6in and 6in in the boxes. This will automatically draw you a perfect 6-inch circle.

Position your crosshair cursor in the exact center of your document (again, the grid comes in handy).
While holding the Alt key, click once. You should see a 6-inch circle with its centerpoint at the place you clicked.

Choose Select > Save Selection. Type an identifiable name in the box, such as CircleMarquee.
Hit OK.

Cut and Rotate a Selection

With your 4-square paper active, hit Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V to cut the circle selection and paste it into a new layer. (You may have to nudge your circle back into place with the Move tool selected using the arrow keys).

FOR PSE:

With the circle layer active, choose Image> Transform> Free transform.
In the options bar at the top of your screen, the third box from the left has a little angle next to it. This is the rotation. Type 90.

FOR PSCS and above:
With the circle layer active, choose Edit > Transform > Rotate 90 degrees.

You should now see an image like this:

Load Selection
One more step and we've prepped our image for a layout :) The circle would look better if it had some space cut around it. Let's do that next. We are going to use the same circle selection, but expand it just a bit.

First, we need to load up the selection we saved earlier.

Go to Select > Load Selection and choose CircleMarquee from the dropdown list. You'll see your saved selection activate.
Go to Select > Modify > Expand. Type 50 into the box to expand the selection by 50 pixels in every direction.
In the layers palette, make sure the 4-square paper layer (NOT the circle layer) is active. Hit Delete.

Now we are all set for making a layout with this great foundation. Here's what I came up with:

Product credits:
All of the papers except the diamond are from Summer Simmon's Citrus Grove Kit.
The diamond paper is from Jackie Eckles' Greeley Kit.
The alphabet strips are from Katie Pertiet.
The font I used for the journaling is TXT Stonewashed. (The date one is Impact)
And of course few layouts would be complete without Katie Pertiet's Sanded Overlay. (All that grunge for a buck fifty! Amazing!)

Have a wonderful and safe weekend. Link me up when you get finished with your 4-square layout design! :D

Thursday, July 06, 2006

I love the days of deep breaths. That's me today. Catching up, getting some of the mundane stuff done, and posting pictures.

My deep breath will be over in a couple hours and it's back to work, but right now, it's pretty nice. :)

We had such a cool time on the 4th. On Sunday we were trying to explain to Rowen that she'd see some fireworks. She promptly responded, "We're gonna see some firetrucks!" So then we tried to explain what fireworks are. And failed pretty miserably. So we just said wait and see!

First, we went swimming with some friends from church. Every neighborhood here has a pool. Pretty different from Minnesota. But having had near-100 temps for the past week has taught me the value of a good swim. And I'm getting brave - I've taken both kids out by myself a few times. Elliott rides in the "Crabby boat":

Rowen plays on the stairs:

And she got to hold her first sparkler (supervised).

Everyone was tired by 8:30, so we heard rather than saw the rest of the fireworks. But having a 4-day weekend to spend with my family was the best.

Stay tuned! PS Friday is tomorrow. ;)

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Changes (again)

You know how life is.

Always changing.

And there are always decisions to be made. Choices about what you're going to do and how you're going to spend your time.

I made a choice this week that was very difficult for me. Deciding to step down from the Garden at Two Peas was a hard thing. But it came into conflict with another opportunity that I've been given, one that I really feel strongly about, and really want to pursue. So the choice had to be made.

I sometimes feel like I'm plagued by bad timing. Lots of great things in the scrapbooking world have come in groups of twos and threes, and forced me to make decisions. But as my very wise friend Sherry said, sometimes you have to make the tough decisions in order to find out what you really want. Smart lady, that Sherry. She's right.

So I'm going to continue with my PS Fridays, and going to lurk at 2peas since it's my original scrapbook home and I will miss it too much if I don't. And I'm going to get ready for the big project I have coming up, which I'll talk more about when the talking's okay (should be just a couple more weeks, in fact).

Thanks everyone for your emails and kind wishes.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Photoshop Sneakie Peek :)

So.. I'll be doing a full-blown tutorial (launched on July 1) over at Two Peas in a Bucket on the coolness of the marquee tools. And my PS Fridays might start becoming more integrated there, so they can reach a wider audience. But I will always have a hint or sneakie here first. Deal?

For this creation, we're going to start with a 4-square configuration with patterned paper. To do this, we'll need some really specific measurements, so we'll be taking advantage of the Grid and Snap to Grid features in Photoshop. And then we'll throw a circle element into the mix. So here we go! :)

1. Open a new document, 12x12, 300 dpi, white background.
2. Drag 4 cool patterned papers onto your canvas. (Here's a great chance to mix and match kits for a fun look.)
3. For this, we'll need some accurate measurements, so turn on rulers (View > Rulers). If yours aren't showing measurements in inches, you can change this in the Preferences (Edit > Preferences).

Setting up the Grid

If you are using a full version of Photoshop, you can drag guide lines out from the rulers to help you. I love these for lining things up. Simply start dragging with your cursor over the ruler and drop the blue guide wherever you like. BUT, since Elements doesn't have guides, we'll be using the grid instead.

First we need to make sure that the grid is showing in inches.
1. Go to Edit > Preferences, and choose Grid from the flyout menu (in CS and CS2 it's called "Guides, Grid & Slices".
2. Set the measurement to 1 inch, and set the number of dividers to 4.
3. Hit OK.
4. In the View menu, make sure that Grid and Snap to Grid are both selected (in CS and CS2 the command is View > Show > Grid and View > Snap). Snap to Grid ensures that all our selections and elements line up nicely in quarter-inch increments. Very handy.

Alright! Now we are ready to do some selection.

Selecting using the Rectangle Marquee tool

1. Using the Rectangle marquee tool, select the top left quadrant on the first patterned paper. (a 6-inch square)
HINT: When you are dragging a selection with the marquee tools, hold down Shift to keep the proportions a perfect square or a perfect circle.
2. Now we need to delete all the paper EXCEPT the square we've selected. So we'll go to Select>Inverse.
You should see your selection change to a reverse L-shape.
3. Hit Delete.

Now you can repeat these steps by selecting the next patterned paper, using the marquee tool to select a 6-inch square, inverting the selection and deleting.

When you are finished with all 4 layers, you should have a 12x12 canvas that looks like this (I used papers from Rhonna Farrer's Split Pea kit over at Two Peas in a Bucket:

And in the tutorial that will arrive at 2peas on July 1, we'll go into much more detail on how to achieve cool results with the circle marquee, like this:

And I'll also show you the layout I made with the above image. Stay tuned. :)

Hope you have a wonderful week! :)

Saturday, June 24, 2006

And all of a sudden it's a week later.

I have been incredibly busy, what with Jared's mom in town, and getting a lot of assignments.

But TOMORROW. I will get a belated PS tip up okay?

Oh, and STAY TUNED to the Garden over at 2peas. Cool stuff coming July 1. :)

Thursday, June 15, 2006

GGG GGG GGG Garden Girl!!

Wahoo!

This one has been hard to keep under my hat. But now that it's up and public, I am so excited to say that I joined the Two Peas in a Bucket design team as a Digital Garden Girl! Wahoo! We are going to be providing inspiration, tips and tricks, mini-classes, all kinds of cool stuff for the digis and hybrid scrappers.

I can't wait to get started!!

Okay, and because of this awesome news, and because Jared and I are leaving town first thing in the morning for a weekend away for our 6th anniversary, there won't be any Photoshop Friday tomorrow.

Too much packing, picking up of MIL from airport, running around in circles in my office screaming "I'm a Garden Girl", you know, that kind of thing. So tune in next week ok? And I'll post pics when we get back.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue No. 9!}

Wow! Welcome to PS Friday week 9.

Today's week is just a little different, as it doesn't necessarily involve a step-by-step tutorial, but some inspiration and examples to get you started (or help you get further) down the road of one of my favorite Photoshop tools:

Blending modes.

Dum.Dum.Duuuuuuuuum.

(Darn, I wish this blog had real sound effects.)

So I thought about giving you a quick run-down of all the various blending modes before setting out to show examples, but I discovered (while looking at the Photoshop help), that they are intensely mathematical. And math + Jes has never been a good combo. So rather than copy and paste the schtuff from the help (which you are MORE than welcome to go read..), I'll just say that nainly the trick here is to know in GENERAL what is going to happen to your layer if you choose a specific blend mode, and then experiment. :) Happy accidents happen to me all the time this way. :)

Here is the example layout for blending modes:

(I saved this one larger on purpose, so you could enlarge it for detail. Just click on it to see it larger.)

You can see all the layer blending modes at the very top of the layer palette.

My favorites are: Multiply, Color Burn, Screen, Color Dodge, Overlay, and Soft Light. The others produce pretty specific results that I'm not necessarily looking for. So these are my first choices.

Multiply and Color Burn will both make the layer look darker.
Screen, Color Dodge, and Soft Light will make the layer look lighter, and Overlay will go dark or light depending on the color of the things inside the layer, as well as what is below it.

The beauty of blending is that you can experiment with multiple modes and really see what will work best.

Here is the run-down of all the blending modes (and opacities) I used in the layout above, to give you some examples and ideas:

I used a text paper over the enlarged photo, from Jen Wilson's Being kit.
Brushes are from the Designing With Digital CD, from Rhonna Farrer
Striped paper is from Kellie Mize's kit called Boogie Star over at DesignerDigitals.
Frame brushes are from Katie Pertiet's Edges kit (DesignerDigitals)
Sanded brushes are from the Digital Distressing Kit over at Scrap Artist
Sanded overlay around the outside is from Grunge Overlays by Katie Pertiet (DesignerDigitals)
Title font is Danette Outline, from Fonthead.

I can't wait to see your experiments with blending modes! Especially blending papers over one another or onto photos, or blending brushes! Some VERY cool stuff can happen if you just take the time to play.

Don't forget to post a link to what you create!

Have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend! :)

Monday, June 05, 2006

Have burning Photoshop questions? Trying to decide which version to get, whether to upgrade, or how to do a certain thing? Come chat with me. :)

I'll be chatting it up about Photoshop over at DesignerDigitals.com on June 7, 21, and 28 at 10 p.m. EST.

Here's the link directly to the chat page:

DesignerDigitals Chat Room

:)

Friday, June 02, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue #8}

Hello, and welcome to Photoshop Friday!

Today's PS Friday is useful, functional, foolproof, and easy.

How many things in life can you say THAT about, huh?

Adventures in Black and White (and sepia, too)

We are going to have an adventure in Black and White, as well as in Sepia. And basically this means you'll learn a great method for GREAT black and white conversion, and for changing that black and white to a sepia, and ALL without touching our original photo. The secret? Adjustment layers.

I should put a disclaimer here that there are a LOT of ways to get a great high-contrast black and white. Some people use curves. Some use levels, some use layer blending modes, some use the channel mixer, and they are all fantastic. Here is one more tool for your toolbelt. I think it creates a very smooth conversion without hotspots, and gives a good deal of control, too.

Let's get started.

First, I'll choose a photo that I think would look great in black and white.

Here's one of my sister at her wedding a few weeks ago. I just love the mill wheel, and her stepping delicately over the stones to get in photo position. She's beautiful. And this picture really needs to be black and white. And maybe we'll get crazy and do a sepia too. :)

This photo is pretty dark, so let's fix that in our black-and-white conversion as well.

Open your photo.
Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map
Click in the gradient itself to edit. (That's the big white or gradient bar inside the popup, like this).

Drag the bottom right slider (the white one) over to the left. You can see the white in your image brightening, bringing out detail and adding contrast. Slide this slider until you get a result you're happy with. It'll differ for every image, but it might look something like this:

(If your image started out too bright or you'd like to add some more dark hues, slide the black slider (bottom left) toward the right until you get enough shadow.
Click OK in the gradient editor.
Click OK in the gradient map dialog.

Here is what my image looked like after applying the gradient map adjustment layer.

The coolest part about this conversion, is that if you aren't happy, rather than throwing your image away and starting over, you can simply double-click on the gradient map thumbnail in the layers palette to edit the gradient. This is called non-destructive editing, and yay! It saves time and headaches.

(p.s. if you want to see some really funky colors, try applying a few of the other gradients in the editor, or making some of your own. Just for kicks, of course. :))

Okay, on to the next piece. I think Julie's photo could use the softness of a sepia tone. So we're going to add that next.

Adding a Sepia Tone

If you are working in Photoshop 7, CS, or CS2, you can change your image mode to Grayscale and then to Duotone and pick from a wide array of pre-made duotones and tritones. It's a great way to kill an hour or two, and they have some awesome combinations.

This, on the other hand, is the quick-and-easy way to add a sepia tone in any version of Photoshop.

Open the photo you'd like to add the sepia to. (You don't have to convert it to black and white first, but I recommend following the gradient map adjustment layer above to get really nice contrast in the tones.)

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation
Click the Colorize checkbox in the popup.
Set the top value to 25, the middle value to 15, and leave the bottom value where it is. You can adjust the middle value to anywhere between 4-17 and get a very nice sepia tone.

And that's it!
Here is my end result, side-by-side with the original.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

The ocean.

I know now why there are so many poems written about the ocean. There is music there that can't be heard anywhere else, if you are listening for it.

We took our little family to the beach in Wilmington, NC yesterday. The kids experienced the sea for the first time. Jared swam in the Atlantic for the first time, and I listened to the roar and crash of the waves, and spent some time behind my camera, discovering the scenery.

Rowen jumped in the waves, Elliott played in the sand, Jared floated in the waves for a bit, and I waded out into the water and watched the white foam race toward me, tasting the salt and feeling the sting in my eyes. It was exhilarating.

Elliott's favorite part was snuggling with daddy in the towel.

I've spent my whole life landlocked, and have had so few trips to see the ocean. We are rank amateurs at all things beachy. After three hours playing in the sun, we arrived safely back home with fully 1/2 of the beach, carried in our hair and suits and backseat and trunk. Jared arrived home with a nasty sunburn on his lower back because I suck at sunscreen.

We'll go again. Often. It was awesome.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue #7!}

MAN. I can't believe we're already here at 7 Photoshop Fridays. Feels like a day to celebrate, doesn't it? Yes. Let's celebrate your awesomeness at photoshop! Yeah YOU! :)

I hope you are enjoying the ideas here, and it's helping you make cool stuff. I love to look at what you make, so link me up, okay? :) Leave a comment, pass the word along, whatev. Thanks.

Today's PS Friday is, I think, really cool. So here we go.

Masking Out Text in Photoshop
or
Making it look like text is running behind objects in your photo.

The non-destructive way. ;)

(phew! How's that for a title?)

Basically it means this:

Looks like my text is tucked back in behind that leaf. Pretty cool effect. I used this effect on one of my Hall of Fame entry layouts, and it turned out great. All the people I showed it to were like, "Whoa! How'd you do that?" And that, my friend, is our goal in Photoshop. ;)

Okay. Today's instructions split off between Elements/All older versions of PS up to 7 on the one hand, and 7/CS/CS2 on the other. So go down the path for the version you have and we'll be great. :)

Here goes:

Open the photo you'd like to add the text to. Please note that hair and fur make this a little more difficult, so I recommend starting on something that has fairly solid edges. Up to you, though, if you're a glutton for punishment. :)
Add your text. Because part of the text is going to be invisible, people looking are going to have to decipher what your text says based on the visible parts. Because of this, I recommend a big fat font. I used Impact.

Select your layer mask thumbnail (the white rectangle) in the layers palette.
Choose a small round Brush tool, with the color black.
Zoom on in to your photo so you get some nice detail. This is the painstaking part. (tip: you might also want to reduce the opacity of your text layer, so you can see what's going on beneath it)
Paint over the text that you would like to mask out. You'll watch the text disappear. This is because in a layer mask, the color black works just like an eraser.

Remember that when you have the brush tool selected, the [ and ] keys will increase and decrease the size of your brush tip. That way you can have a small brush for accuracy and a larger brush for big swaths.

Really cool secret hints:
-Think you can use other cool brushes than a round one? You bet you can. And tons of cool effects can be produced by using brushes and layer masks. It's mind-blowing, really.
-Remember how black "erases" from a layer mask? White does exactly the opposite. It adds bits of the masked-out object back into view. So if you mess up and cut out too much text, just switch to a white brush and paint it back in. So cool.

To finish off this photo, I changed my text layer (which was black) to Soft Light blending mode, and added in a frame and a couple of brushes on another layer and set them to Soft Light as well.

So you might be asking what the benefit of this method is to simply rasterizing (simplifying) your text layer and erasing bits? Easy. With a layer mask, the entire text layer is still there, but hidden. So if you mess up, or decide to edit that layer, you don't have to throw anything away, just modify your mask and you're good to go.

I'll post a couple more examples later today, but just wanted to get this up there for you. Enjoy! :)

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

I promise! I'm not boring!

And anyone who should have to say that out loud.. is trying too hard to convince someone.

I think I've crossed a line somewhere. Into ruts and routines.

You know what I need? A good book.

So list me up some recommendations ok?

I just finished reading the DaVinci Code. Good.
Before that was Wicked. Pretty good.
Before that was The Brothers Karamazov. Always good.

So I kind of run the gamut, but I esp. love science fiction, fantasy, or classics.

Help a girl out, wouldya? :)

Friday, May 19, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue #6!}

Welcome to Photoshop Friday!

We're going to talk about photos today. And I'll share a little eye-popping secret. :)

I received portions of this information from a tutorial over at NOBS photo. Thanks to them. :)

But before we go on, let's sit down and have a chat okay? Photoshop.. is like a fine instrument. It's meant to be handled lightly. What I mean is, there are a lot of techniques in PS that are really easy to overdo, to make really obvious, and to basically ruin the effect by 'trying too hard'...

Drop-shadows are one of them. And this eye-pop technique is one of them, too.

So in sharing this information, I will also share this philosophy: use a light touch. If you have to do the action a couple times to make it even noticeable, so much the better. :)

*stepping down from soapbox*

On to the great info!

Making Eyes Pop.

*clearing throat* The eyes are the windows to the soul. :)

But wait! It's true. As humans, we're drawn to the lightest parts of a painting. And photographers can use the same technique in portraits. The lightest part of a portrait photograph? The catchlights in someone's eyes. So awesome.

But what if you have so-so catchlights and you want to really help them pop? Here are a few steps to try.

Open the photo you'd like to try the technique on. It has to be someone/thing where you can see eyes, and works better when the catchlights are clearly visible.

I'm going to use this photo of my neice, which I took a couple weeks ago at a park in Utah. I've already run Amber Ludlow's conversion on it to brighten up the whole thing. (BTW, this completely ROCKS and I recommend it to anyone who wants an easy way to really make an entire image pop - just send her an email for more info).

The pic looks pretty good, but I want to really make her eyes shine in this. So we are going to "dodge the catchlights", a pretty typical professional photographer technique. Dodge, in essence, lightens up specific parts of an image.

Pick the Dodge tool. It's over in the toolbar, hiding in the same menu as Burn and Sponge.
Set it to a small round brush. Depending on your image resolution, this might be 3-9 pixels.
Set it to Highlights and 100%. (If you want to start out with a subtler effect and build on it, you can set this to 50%)
Zoom in on the image (you can use the navigator palette or hit Z and click on the eyes a couple times).
(hit o to return to the Dodge tool if you used Zoom). Tap a few times on the very lightest parts of the catchlights. You should see them brighten. *Don't overdo this. Keep it subtle*

You can zoom back out to 100% to see what the overall effect is going to be, and do it in a cycle like that. You'll soon become comfortable with what effects you like.

You can stop here if you like, or you can take the additional sharpening step below:

Additional Sharpening for Eyes

While you're zoomed in on the eyes, choose the circular marquee tool (hit M).
Select the iris portion of the eye. Use the Shift key while you select to add portions to your selection, and also to select the second eye, like so (hint: the Shift key adds to any selection, and the Alt key subtracts from any selection):

When you're happy with your selection, hit Ctrl-J to copy the selection onto its own layer.
Run an Unsharp Mask on the eyes layer. I use Scott Kelby's default settings to start with: 85%, Radius 1, Threshold 4. *Don't overdo this. Keep it subtle.*
When you're happy with the sharpness of the eyes, merge the eye layer back onto the photo layer, run an unsharp mask on the whole image, and you're ready to go!

Here are the two images side-by-side:

Here's a quick layout I did with the photo:

Supplies:
Katie Pertiet's Cabana White
Kate Teague's Boogie Star stripes (love this kit!)
Katie Pertiet's Sun Print Stamp
Katie Pertiet's Snap Frame Brush
Rhonna Farrer's Peachy Keen Brush
Rhonna Farrer's Chick Peas Brush

Have fun! Link 'em up when you're done!!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Come chat tonight! :)

I'm hosting a Photoshop chat tonight over at DesignerDigitals!

Here's the link: http://www.designerdigitals.com/ecom/chat2.php

Click on Designer's Studio when you get there.

Everyone is welcome, and of course there's a freebie!

9pm EST.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Photoshop Friday {Issue #5}!

Yeah! Welcome to PS Friday! I hope you like this week's edition.

Today you'll add a cool dream-i-fied/handtinted look to a photo, like this:

Cool, huh? But wait, here was my original, totally unedited except scaling and saving for web:

And I need to mention that I adapted these instructions from a tutorial over at PSDTuts.com, and I owe them some thanks for this. :)

Ready? Here we go:

Creating a Dreamy/Handtinted effect on a Photo

Open your photo.
Duplicate your photo onto a new layer and hide the original.
Click on the layer with the duplicated photo, and change the blending mode to Soft Light (this is located in a dropdown at the very top of the layers palette).
Duplicate the photo again.
Click on the lower of the two photo copies. Desaturate this layer (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate OR in Elements - Enhance > Color > Remove Color).
Copy the desaturated layer two more times.

Your layer stack should now look like this:

From top to bottom, the layers are:

Color photo, soft light blend

Desaturated copy, soft light blend

Okay, a couple more steps to really dream-i-fy the photo.

Change the second layer to Screen blend
Now, choose layer 2 and do a Gaussian blur (start out with 10 px and see where that takes you – go more or less depending on whether you’re working with a 300 dpi photo)
Choose layer 3 and do a Gaussian blur of slightly more than you did in layer 2. (Just play with the slider until you get an effect you like)
If you want to create a layout from here, simply link all your layers together and drag them onto your layout.
OR
If you want to add the grunge mask, flatten all the visible layers (Layer > Merge Visible).

Now you can open up my grunge mask from Photoshop Friday #3 and apply it to the photo. I also filled in a bottom layer with black before saving.

Here's another example:

Okay, little birdies! Fly free! Make dreaminess! Link me up when you create something! I can't wait to see. :)

Oh, and let's seeee.... freebie freebie freebie..

Here's a great one, from the Dover 1500 Decorative Ornaments book/CD again.

Remember, when you have your brush tool selected you can choose the [ and ] keys to make your brush larger or smaller before you stamp it down.

Have fun!

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Back. Tired.

We got back at midnight last night from Julie and Jordan's wedding. It was wonderful.

Julie has never been happier. I am so, so happy that she has found the love of her life. The trip was great. As good as can possibly be expected for traveling with a 2-year-old and an almost 1-year-old. But that doesn't mean we're doing it again anytime soon. ;)

I shot over 1000 photos in 5 days. But it's the first time my family has been all together in 9 years. I had a neice, a sister-in-law, and a new brother-in-law that I had never met. So of course the camera was out pretty much the whole time.

Here are a couple of my older brother Mike and his sweet family. Allison is his wife, and Amanda and Lindsey are his beautiful girls.

And here is Jason, with his lovely (scrapper!) wife, Jessica. We had such a great time talking about digital scrapping, and they celebrated their first anniversary while we were out there.

Got a few of my own cuties too.

Tomorrow is PS Friday. Looking forward to it? I am. :)

Friday, May 05, 2006

Photoshop Friday {Issue #4}

Welcome to Photoshop Friday!

This week I've been working on assignments, so my PS Friday stuff has had to get pushed back. And we're leaving tomorrow to attend my sister's wedding in Utah, so I'm running right down to the wire here. :)

But I have noticed that a lot of digital scrappers have questions about the best way to resize their layouts for web display. So I would like to share with you my method for preparing your layout to post online.

To Prepare a Layout to Post Online

Make sure you have saved your final .psd. You'll have to go through all these steps again every time you save for the web. Oh, and make SURE you have this original saved in a safe place. :)
Change the image size from 300 to 72 dpi (Image>Image Size). Be sure to uncheck the resample image box. Your layout dimensions will change to something like 50 x 50 inches, but we'll take care of that in a second.
Flatten the image. (Layer>Flatten Image)
Hit Ctrl-A to select all.
Go to Edit > Transform > Scale. Choose 25% for height and width. Always use the scale rather than just changing the image size using Image Size. The algorithm Adobe uses for scaling is just a lot better. A lot clearer. A lot more accurate.
Run an unsharp mask to sharpen. I usually use 85%, radius 1, threshold 4 (this is the "All-purpose sharpening" recommended by Scott Kelby). You can run this twice if you need a little extra sharpening boost.
Save for Web. (File > Save for Web) There is a slider that allows you to determine the compression level, and thus affect your file size. I can usually get a 12x12 layout in the 150-250K range at about 60% quality. If you have a file size requirement that is smaller than this, go back and scale your layout down a bit and try it again.
Hit OK. Now back at your layout, go back in the History palette and click on the step just BEFORE the Image Size step to keep working. Or if you're all done with this layout, close it without saving (assuming you remembered to save right before the web-prep steps). DO NOT save your flattened layout, or you will be very sad later on. Trust me on that one.

And there it is. A lot of steps, but your layouts that look awesome at full resolution can now be shared online and look just as awesome. :)

If I can grab some more time tonight I'll post a little freebie. If not, then you'll know we are off to Utah! :)

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Remember what I said?

About being in between assignments a little bit ago? No more. :P So I didn't get my mid-week PS tip done, since I was swimming in my layout backlog today. We'll push it out to PS Friday ok?

I bought some AWESOME shoes today. So funk-a-licious. And I got them home and I was like, uh.. I don't own anything to go with shoes that have rhinestones on them. (Yeah, you read that right.. rhinestones). So back to the store they go. Jared was teasing me that I only bought them because they look like a scrapbook page. They are wedge espadrilles with canvas that looks like patterned paper, ribbon ties, and rhinestones. Just need a couple photos and I could submit them to Creating Keepsakes. :P And he's right. I think I only did buy them because they look like a scrapbook page.

Here's a layout I did last night with the May kit from Those Were the Days. I LOVE the Sassafrass Lass papers paired with the 7Gypsies stickers. Kirsten is a genius at kit construction. And it doesn't hurt that my perennial favorite colors are brown, green, blue, and orange. :)

The photo is of Rowen at the park the day after a huge rainstorm. Surrounded by her favorite playground equipment, she spent our whole visit there gathering these pinecones and putting them in the puddle. Like a moth to the flame.

The frame is a Heidi Swapp transparency, which I attached with Diamond Glaze (great tip there, got it off a message board), and then I drew the lines with my white Uni-ball.

We got our temple recommends tonight, and we're all set to attend my sister Julie's wedding next Tuesday. So looking forward to seeing my parents, and having my family all together for the first time in almost 10 years.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Good photo day.

Not every day is a good photo day. In fact, a lot of days aren't. But today, I caught a few of my cutie outside on the porch. He's got these great liquidy eyes that you can just sink into for a few minutes. And then stay there and swim around. AHH. Love my boy.

He turns 11 months old tomorrow. I can't believe it's May already. Whoa.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Ah Sunday.

Just love being with my family on the weekends. We went to a great little fair yesterday in Bond Park. Art fair, food, cool music, and all in the woods. Fabulous. There were even pirates having a sword fight. It was an awesome way to spend Saturday.

Here are some cool links.
Have you seen Delicious? It's actually del.icio.us, so clever. But it's a way to save and tag cool web sites you come across, for easy finding again. Doesn't matter what browser you're using, since they're stored online. You can also see how many other people tagged sites you like, view popular sites, and all kinds of stuff. Really cool.

My ONLY beef is that they only take single-word tags, so I have three items tagged with the word funky. Huh. Funky..

So here is my list of stuff that I considered funky at some point:
-DishyDuds - some really cool (and funky) clothes for kids. And they sell great kids' backpacks.
-Crafters For Critters - These guys donate their proceeds to greyhound rescue. So helpful and FUN-KAY! (some really cool handmade jewelry and whatnot)
-Skinny Fat Book - This amazing (and... dare I say.. funky?) altered book, organized by Shauna Palmer and in which 35 altered artists contributed, WOW. This knocked my socks off.

So there you have it. So del.icio.us.

Maybe I'll crack open some of my other illuminating tags sometime. (Shall we see what goodies lie in "trees"? Or how about "decor"?...)

Friday, April 28, 2006

Corrections, Additions, Addenda..

Hey..

I've gotten some emails and comments. Let's see...

1. Save the file by right-clicking it and choosing Save Image As. It should save the .png file. From there you'll open it in Photoshop, and keep going with the instructions.

2. I made an error in the PSCS2 instructions. The Create Layer Mask key combination is Ctrl-Alt-G. I changed it in the orginal as well.

3. I made an error in the resize instructions. The resize command is under the Edit menu, rather than under the Image menu. Thanks for catching that! I changed it in the original as well.

If you have questions, or can't get something to work, feel free to email me. Link is in the sidebar.

Enjoy! :)

Photoshop Friday! {Issue No. 3}

Welcome to Photoshop Friday!

Today's inspiration will be fun, I think. :) I had a great time making it, anyway.

After you complete today's tutorial, you'll be able to give any photo a cool grungy border that bleeds into the background, like this one:

Or with a small change, you can give it a strong black (or any color) border, like this one:

(I did some fun layer styling to the photo to make it look handtinted-keep reading).

This is actually somewhat of a carryover from last week's Photoshop Friday, because this technique simulates a layer mask just like last week's did. I say simulates, because Photoshop Elements doesn't have true layer masks. Luckily this technique works in ALL versions of Photoshop.

Okay, ready?

You'll need to download this file by right-clicking it and choosing Save As:

The grunge mask is sized for a 4x6 photo, but it's easy to re-size before applying it.

Here are your steps:

1. Open your mask and the photo you'd like to grunge-i-fy in Photoshop.
2. Duplicate the photo onto a separate layer (right-click on the photo background layer and choose Duplicate Layer). It's always better to work in a copy of the photo.
3. Turn off the original photo layer.
4. Drag the mask onto the photo.
5. Resize the mask to fit the photo (Edit>Transform>Resize).
6. In the Layers palette, drag the mask layer BELOW the photo layer.
7. Select the photo layer in the layers palette.
8. Hit Ctrl-G (Ctrl-Alt-G in PSCS2) to create the mask.
You should see the edges of your photo masked out by the layer below them.

If you like your photo to bleed into the edges of the background, simply link the layers together and drag them onto your layout.
If you'd like to add a black (or any other color) border:

1. Create a new layer and position it at the bottom of the stack in the Layers Palette.
2. Use the paintbucket tool to fill the blank layer with the color of your choice.

Here's an inspiration layout to get you going:

For this layout I used Tia Bennett's rockin 70 kit which is so fun and retro, and has this utterly delicious montage that I've used for my background all ready to drop in and go. Also appearing is one of Katie Pertiet's sun print brushes. These are just great for accents, since they're botanical silhouettes. And of course I am totally in love with Rhonna Farrer's new Old Stamps brush set. It has all the months, as well as numbers for each month, all old and grungy and random and awesome.

I can't wait to see what you make with your grungy photo mask. Here are some ideas:

-Change the mask by deleting other sections (such as a word) from the black, or by painting on the mask in black with a digital brush.

-Create a large black background and place three grung-i-fied photos side by side. Add a bit of white text in the black area, and you have an awesome frameable storyboard.

-Create your own grungy mask by cutting away bits from a black rectangle. You can use text, grunge brushes, anything you like.

Where do I get grunge brushes, you might ask?

Well, here are some places:
Misprinted Type
MissM
Scrap Artist Distressing Kit (which comes with a tutorial)
Pea Blossom Kit by Rhonna Farrer (which comes with a digital inking and sanding tutorial)

Please let me know if there's something you'd like to see. Have a great week, and don't forget to link up in the comments when you make something! :)

p.s. Want to know how I made the photos look kind of cool and old and dreamy and handtinted? Stay-tuned! There's going to be a mid-week Photoshop tip. ;)

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Had such a cool, low-key weekend. We just played together on Saturday, and then Saturday night we received an offer on our Minnesota house. We accepted it on Sunday, and the closing is May 5.

So there was much rejoicing. It is SOO nice not to have this hanging over us. Having double house payments is a huge amount of stress. Wow. So now the fun can begin! Househunting here in NC! Wahoooo!!!

And in scrapping news (cause that's the big news, right? sell your house yeah yeah, but what DIGI kit did you buy, Jes? Well, I will tell you.)

SO loving these things:

Rhonna's Old Stamps brushes. *drool*
Rhonna's April kit, called PeaChy Keen. Wow. The art in here alone is worth the price.

Here's a quick one I did with my new goodies. I caught this photo the other day at the park. I am just stunned at how sweet Rowen is in this photo. The pigtails, the puff kitty, my brown bead necklace that she insisted on wearing, and her, out in her element. It just makes my heart melt.

The word art I used as the title, as well as the frame, the lace, and the bird brush are all from PeaChy keen. I paired Rhonna's accents with papers from DesignerDigitals.

Included here is probably my favorite paper of all time, Katie Pertiet's Cabana White. I use this thing all the time. Probably too much, but who cares? I love it. :)

And the multi-colored paper of awesomeoness is from Jackie Eckles, in her Inspire kit. Wow. This lady does distressed and destroyed paper like nobody's business.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Photoshop Friday! {Issue No. 2}

Hello!

Welcome to another installment of Photoshop Friday.

Here's today's inspiration.

See the accent in the bottom right corner? That's what we're going to make today.

Here's what you'll need to complete the tutorial:

1- a brush image (I'll give you that)
2- a digital patterned paper (you can check out some of the free digital kits at Two Peas in a Bucket if you don't have any papers)
3- Photoshop. :P

Okay.. here we go.

Creating Patterned Paper Accents with Brushes
Skill level: Intermediate

So last week you made your own brush. How cool was that? I love PS brushes. Seriously, give me a brush and I'll follow you anywhere. But then you have to feed me and give me a place to stay.. so better be really sure you want to give me that brush.

This week, you'll be making a brush from this image:

I think it's pretty and kind of Art Nouveau. So we'll take it, and make a patterned paper accent with it to either print, or put on a digital page. This brush, like last week's, came from the Dover book 1500 Decorative Ornaments.

Right-click the image above to download, open it in Photoshop, and create a custom brush.

Now we're all set to create a patterned paper accent.

1. Open a patterned paper in Photoshop. (I chose this great word one from Jen Wilson, in her Being kit.)
2. Open a new Photoshop document, 12x12, 300 dpi, and drag your patterned paper into the new document. (I really highly recommend that you never do anything to an original patterned paper. Trust me on this one).
3. Create a new layer above the patterned paper layer (Ctrl-Shift-N).
4. Hit B to choose the brush tool, and select the brush you just made from the image above from your brush palette.
5. Resize the brush to a really nice big size by hitting the ] key a few times. (Incidentally, the [ key makes it smaller.)
6. Stamp your brush anywhere on the paper, in any color.

Cool. Now you should see your patterned paper with a stamp on it. Something like this:

But we're on to the coolness now. The first thing we'll want to do is create an outline for our patterned paper accent, so the edges don't bleed into the background when we cut it out of the patterned paper.

Create the Brush Outline

1. Open your layers palette (Window>Layer), and right-click on the thumbnail image of the stamp you just stamped.
2. From the flyout menu, choose Select Layer Transparency.

You'll get the marching ants selection around your brush.

3. Create a new layer (Ctrl-Shift-N).
4. Go to Edit>Stroke.
5. In the dialog box that appears, choose 10 pixels, and a nice dark color to complement your paper. Also choose Outside for the location.
6. Hit OK.

Now you have an outline around your brush image.

Create the accent

Now for the final set of steps to acually make the accent.

1. Back up in your layers palette, drag the brush image (not the outline) just below the patterned paper layer.
2. Select the patterned paper layer.
3. Hit Ctrl-G (in CS2, the new command is Ctrl-Alt-G) to create a clipping mask.

Your patterned paper should disappear except for what's inside the outline.
You can even move the paper around inside the mask, until you flatten your accent to make it draggable onto another document.

It should look something like this:

Now you're free to print your accent on photo paper or cardstock and cut it out, or use it on a digital page.

The challenge:

-Okay, now go make a layout. Paper or digi, it doesn't matter to me. And use the techniques outlined above to make a cool patterned paper accent. Don't forget to link up in the comments when you're done! :)

Oh, and please feel free to send me an email if you have questions or coments. My email address is in my Blogger profile.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

It feels so weird to be in between assignments. Someone tell me what to do!

Just kidding. :P

I guess I'm just a person who is most motivated by an impending deadline. Is that also known as a lack of self-discipline? I don't know. But I have it down to work on it. Later...

And I found some really delicious inspiration at Barnes and Noble yesterday: Interior Design Magazine. It's all about clean and modern lines, inspiring design, and great color schemes. I can't wait to adapt some of this great stuff into scrapbook pages.

So how is the Photoshop brush thing going? I've seen two gorgeous layouts with it so far. Link 'em up if you've got them. I would love to see.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Happy Easter!

Oh, and happy taxes if you still aren't done yet. And that's all I'm going to say about that. ;)

I did one more layout using my new Photoshop brush. If you'd like to make one, check out my blog post from Friday. Come on! All the cool kids are doing it!

I made the sun brush look like part of the distressed background using a distressed overlay from the Digital Distressing Kit at Scrap Artist. Very cool effect. The font is Two Peas Tasklist.
For this one, the kraft paper is from the Being kit by Jen Wilson. The striped paper is from the Dude paper pack by Kate Teague. The floral brush is from the same Dover CD as the sun is.

There are so many options with brushes, I might make them the focus of several of the next Photoshop Fridays. But comment away or email me if you have things you'd like to hear about.

Have a wonderful and relaxing Easter.

Sick.Sick.Sick.Easter.Sick.

So we are laying low this weekend.

Everyone here is sick. Headcolds, but bad ones. From the little tiny one all the way up to the big one, we're all sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head.. well you get the idea.

And just like I did for Halloween (and if I remember right, it was for the same reason), I'll celebrate with a post-holiday photo op. Rowen and Elliott won't know the difference. Uh.. unless they read this sometime in 10 years and are like hey mom! You slacker!

Not a slacker, my sweet loves. Just sick. And taking advantage of this blissful time when you haven't yet been sucked in by the Easter Bunny.

Anyway, if you didn't see my post from yesterday, I have started a little thing I am calling Photoshop Fridays. It's not necessarily for the complete novice digital scrapper, because I think there are a LOT of tutorials out there that teach how to create your first digital page (and second, and 10th and so on). So the goal is to provide a snippet of information that might be useful whether you're on page 5 or page 500. And to provide a little inspiration to go along with it. I'm hoping to compile 2 or 3 layouts that feature the technique involved. I might only get one. So we'll have to see.

But check the post for yesterday for more info. And if you complete the challenge and create a layout with the new brush, PLEASE link it up in the comments for that day's post, I would love to go see!

Friday, April 14, 2006

Photoshop Friday!

Well, I have done a lot of thinking over the past few weeks. A lot of thinking and not a lot of blogging as you can see.

I've decided to start a little something I'll call Photoshop Friday. I chose Friday because it's my favorite day of the week. So full of hope for the weekend, things winding down from a usually hectic week, that kind of thing. I'm just usually in a great mood on Fridays, and I hope you are too.

Well, what I would like to do is share a little bit with you. Not just a layout, and not just a tutorial, but sharing ideas and inspiration for Photoshop as it specifically relates to digital scrapbooking.

I put together a layout, and some little instructions, which you can use to do the Inaugural Photoshop Friday challenge: creating your own digital brush.

*This is geared specifically toward Photoshop. If you use another program for your digi scrapping, you can still download this image and use it!

First, you need an image. Try this one (you can right-click this image to download it):

This is a royalty-free image from a Dover Books publication called "1500 Decorative Ornaments". If you like what you do with this, and dig digi brushes, I recommend this book. :) Plus it comes with a CD, which makes creating brushes just about as painless as it can get.

Okay, so you have your image ready to go?

Now let's set about making your brush:

1. Open your file in Photoshop.
2. Select Edit, Define Brush Preset.
3. Type in a name for your new brush.
4. Hit OK.

If you open your brush palette, you will see your new brush down at the bottom of the list.

Now using your new brush:

1. Open a blank canvas. (I usually start out with 12 x 12 inches, 300 dpi)
3. Hit B to choose the brush tool.
2. Open your Brushes palette (Window > Brushes). (If you don't have a tool active that can use the brushes, they will be greyed out)
2. Hit Shift-Ctrl-N to create a new layer. (It's generally good practice to create a new layer any time you're going to stamp with a new stamp. This keeps things individually editable.)
3. Select the brush you just made (it'll be at the bottom of the list).
4. Pick a cool color for your brush.
5. Click anywhere in the document once. Brushes are like stamps.

Next Photoshop Friday we'll talk about using Photoshop brushes in other ways. Stay tuned.

Here is a layout I created using my custom-made brush:

I used the brush as a single stamp for an accent, as well as creating a new layer just over the background paper, stamping randomly, and playing with the layer blending modes until I got just the tone-on-tone I was looking for.

All of the papers and the journaling tag are from the Jungle Cruise Digi Kit by Kellie Mize. Love this kit!

Okay, now the fun part.
Go make a layout. :)
And if you do a layout with this brush, PLEASE link it up in the comments so I can go check it out!

That's it for now. Can't wait to see! :)

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

I started a 21-day challenge with Ms. Rhonna Farrer, which she posted over here at her blog. She's such a cool, positive influence.

Anyway, my challenge for 21 days is to create a great habit, and I am so excited for it. I'm creating an art journal along the way, too, and I'll post today's and tomorrow's tomorrow. Finishing up some stuff tonight and headed for bed. I'm beat. (The challenge involves getting up much earlier than I'm used to..)

Monday, March 27, 2006

Such a rough day today. Sometimes the path to becoming Mama is a little full of thorns. And maybe some fallen trees, and the trail washed out in places. It is a hard adjustment to a lot of change at once, and that sometimes gets me down.

I happened on Ms. Suzanne Quillen's blog. Turns out she had just posted a layout on an Effer Dare. What is an Effer Dare, you ask? Well, these five fab ladies started weekly dares some time ago over at Two Peas in a Bucket. All about keeping it real. All about expressing yourself. And you know what? I never joined in and I wanted to. But I never did.

Until today.

So back to my rough day (it's all about ME around here, right?). Jared finally took the kids away, and I sat down. And the first thing I did was check out Suzanne's blog. And then I went to look at this week's Effer Dare, over here. And it turns out that this week's dare is about hope.

Boy, did I need this. I needed to do this one this week. Today.

So in my hour-and-a-half of silence, I completed this week's dare about hope.

Normally I am the cheerful chirpy. My online persona is a pretty stinkin' happy one. (My real-life persona is too, don't get me wrong). I choose not to share my troubles with the world. But hope today came to me because someone else dared me, and so I'm passing the love along.

I discovered today that hope is a choice. And in the midst of the terrible day, the Effers gave me a little. I choose hope.

Here's the layout, with my thanks to the Effers. I feel a LOT better.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

I was asked to be a guest designer for April for a new kit club called Artistic Embellishments. Such a cool concept. There are a lot of kit clubs out there, but none (that I know of) focused entirely on embellishments.

She's got two kits a month - one with a color theme, and one with a style theme. Just add paper and photos. :)

Here's a layout I did with the blue embellishment kit. How cool are those circular slide mounts? Perfect for a little photo or some patterned paper. Loving the new Bookshelf line by American Crafts.

The other kit this month is an Elegant style kit. Here's an embellishment I made with it. LOVE me some scrolly chipboard. I put the two scrolls together (they're from Fancy Pants), and made a heart thing. Pretty cool. :) And it's true. Love is the best word in the English language.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

My sister Julie is getting married in May.

Here is her wedding announcement, which I finished up last night:

The blue border will actually be Bazzill cardstock. The invitation itself will be printed on photo paper, and then they'll assemble them.

I used papers from the Artia paper pack by Fhung Lie. WOW these are so elegant and detailed and a little Eastern in feeling. Perfect for Julie's wedding. I used a brush from Katie Pertiet's Sun Print stamps set.

I'm so happy for Julie! She deserves this happiness. She graduates with her Master's degree the end of April, and gets married the first part of May. I am so proud of her and all she has accomplished. I can't wait to go out to her wedding and see everyone. :)

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

My poor little fella has a fever.

It's actually the very first time he's been sick. He's 9 months old and he's never had so much as a sniffle. Rowen, on the other hand, was sick almost constantly for her entire first year of life.

But the Little Bear is the sick one today.

We went down to feed the ducks in the pond next door. Pretty much I just had to watch Rowen to keep her from eating the bread. But it was nice to be outside in the sunshine, and I think the ducks liked it too. :)

Monday, March 20, 2006

WHEW!

Finally the secret is OUT OF THE BAG!

I got a call last Wednesday evening from Lisa Bearnson, the founding editor of Creating Keepsakes magazine. She told me that I had been inducted into the CK Hall of Fame, by winning their annual contest.

Here is the list of the 25 winners of Hall of Fame 2006. And I'm on it! AAAAHHHHH!!!! I can't believe it still, and I keep going over to check and make sure it's still real.

I'm so proud and humbled to be part of this group of talented ladies. WOW. We started a message board today, so we're going to have a great time getting to know each other this year.

I can't wait! Anybody got a spare tiara? I feel like a queen today. :)

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Rowen and I went for a walk today, in the grassy area near our new apartments (our "new new house"). They're doing construction down by the entrance, and they leave their equipment there overnight. We've been down to visit the tractors a few times, since she can't get enough of them.

If you aren't up on your Bob the Builder toys, this is Rolly, the steamroller (woh-lee, if you are having a little trouble with your r's). Rowen's latest obession. It all began with a bottle of juice, with the Scoop character on the lid. We re-filled it with water and it became "Tractor Water". Well, anyway, every single Bob the Builder character (and she now owns 4 of the toys and 2 DVDs) is "Tractor Water".

What can I say? The girl's in love.

Got my books today. I've thumbed through the photography one and I can't wait to dive in. It looks awesome.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Okay, so I got this book.

It's called The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist You Truly Are, by Danny Gregory.

It's amazing. The first part of it talks about creativity in general, and our need as humans to be creative people. It's so inspiring, and of course the hand-drawn artwork rocks. And then.

Then comes the shocker.

He makes this statement:

"I am going to teach you how to draw."

I admit I smirked a little. Me? Draw? Heck no.

But why not? What could it hurt to try? I haven't picked up a pencil for anything but writing shopping lists since High School, so who's to say I couldn't do this? So I did the exercises. And I sucked at them.

BUT one thing I learned really fast. Right away. Looking at a thing, really seeing a thing, is key to one's ability to draw it.

Tomorrow I'll post the mug, table, and the slice of bread I drew. Just for laughs and giggles. I intend to get better at this. Danny Gregory is going to show me how. :)

I ordered these four books from Amazon this week, just to indulge/reward myself. I've been a good girl, and it's less fattening to buy books than it is to eat chocolate. I hear they were shipped today, and I can't WAIT to get them and just soak them up. (p.s. Lest I mislead you, reader, into thinking I opted OUT of the chocolate in favor of the books, it wasn't so. Had me some chocolate AND bought me some books. How's that for self-indulgence? Ha!)

Thinking with Type
1001 Graphic Elements
How to Photograph Your Life (this one comes recommended by Kelly, the photographer behind the awesome Chatterbox catalog and idea books. He rocks. And that's totally grounds for buying a book recommended by him. :)
Making and Breaking the Grid (also on Ms. Lisa Gluestick's wish list. So I'll let you know how it is.)

I'm spending the weekend working on.. what else? Scrapbook assignments. But it's such fun, it's hardly fair to call it work. Seriously.

So loving life right now.

***
ETA:

Oh, and I've been asked a couple times. Yes. The Post Office has been located. We met up in a dark alley. It is actually this tiny little building wedged in between a house and a church on a dead-end street. The only identifying marker is the American flag out front. Methinks they could use some upgraded digs. And maybe one of those electronic weigh-and-buy-postage-without-standing-in-line-and-talking-to-someone machines, like I had in my OLD town (*snif*). I was SO the girl in there mailing stuff at 9pm in my jammies. We are gonna have to rethink this whole shipping scenario.

Monday, March 13, 2006

I am part of a circle journal, and we've dubbed ourselves the "Eager Beavers". I, however, have officially forfeited the title, and have fallen a few rungs, down in the vicinity of Drowned Rat. But I am hoping to redeem myself in the next couple months by getting them done on time. Here's hoping.

And here's an entry I made yesterday, in the journal of my good friend Kirsten Hegman. She is beautiful, talented, ambitious, and always has a smile on her face, and I miss her. The theme of her book is "The Little Things", so I created my page about the little things that make me smile. Dr. Pepper made the list. And so did Pigpile Snuggles on the Couch. And so did the smell of clean baby hair.

This page used elements from DesignerDigitals. Check out those fab flower doodles by Tia Bennett (the papers, called 70s, are also hers. How much does she rock? Oh, so much). I also embellished the page after printing it, with some chipboard from the AWESOME Comstock line by We-R-Memory Keepers. This is such scrappy goodness, it'll keep me from diving over completely into digi.

---

Okay, enough about scrap. How about life?

I hear there's a blizzard in MN today. So after the stress and trials of the past 2 weeks getting here getting settled in (losing my scrap space - but oh, I forget, I'm not talking about scrap for a minute), getting LOST trying to find the freakin post office, I finally feel a bit vindicated.

Sorry MN. It's 82 degrees and sunny here today. Ha!

But alas, the location of the post office still eludes me. My first complaint about Cary.. and there aren't that many.. is the really shocking lack of street signs. Especially for a town reputed to be the "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees". Sure, contained cause they can't find their way out.

Looks like I'm gonna have to switch to FedEx. I found that today, right next to the Barnes and Noble. And speaking of B+N. I got a really AWESOME book and then got so crazy I didn't get to write about it. So that'll come tomorrow. Get your paper and pencils ready. (Do people still use those?)

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Loving my new camera. I got a Nikon D50 the day before I moved. I had been researching cameras, and was torn between the D50 and the D70. Nisa and I met at West Photo in Minneapolis and the guy there recommended the D50. And Nisa said, "Will Jess be happy with this one? She's kind of a technology snob." And I said, "You know, I'd buy the D70 just out of the fear that I'd be unhappy with the D50 in a year when I know what I'm doing." And he said, "You won't be. Get the D50 and go find something else to spend the extra money on." Haha. I LOVE salespeople like that.

And that Nisa called me a technology snob. Boy does she have my number. But was I that obvious?..

I have had the cam for a week now and have taken about 400 pictures. I am really REALLY impressed with how much better quality the photos are. And this is only the beginning. (Insert maniacal laugh here).

Top it off with the fact that I now have more technology to research and be snobbish about: lenses. :) A pretty good deal, I say.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

February.

I had a really extraordinary February. Here it is, in overview...

Feb 1: Our house officially goes up for sale

Feb 1-8 (plus a teeny bit of the tail end of January): Spent creating 10 layouts for the Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame contest. Which I suppose is an admission that I entered.. They will be calling winners the middle of this month.

Feb 11-13: Jared and I visit Raleigh. Him for the 2nd time and me for the first. We tour the area, sign a lease on an apartment, eat dinner with his new boss and lunch with Gabbyfek, and so on..

Feb 14: A really, truly, uneventful Valentine's day. Who has time for that mushy stuff? :P

Feb 18: My scrappy ladies of MN throw me the sweetest and most awesome going-away brunch evah. Seriously, evah. And I'm so sad but so lucky to know them. And here's a little photographic evidence of the event.

~ All through here is packing like MAD. ~

So I have a suitcase packed for myself for a week, knowing that when I head out on the 22nd I won't be coming home again. :
Feb 22-25: The Chatterbox retreat. I'm gonna come back to this. Refer to it for life, even, because it was wonderful.

Feb 25: Jared leaves in the morning, and I arrive back in MN at about 4:30 p.m. Ships passing...

Feb 25-27: Jes and the kiddos stay with the in-laws.

Feb 27: Jes spends the morning at the now-empty Old Sprague House.. cleaning the fridge, wiping baseboards, that kind of thing. And then goes to West Photo with Nisa. Ahh she is so LOVELY. And I bought my new camera, which I love. Nikon D50. Kit lens. And now I'm off to learn a whole bunch about better photography, and every time I click the silver button I think of her. My friend Nisa, the genius photographer, rad scrapper, and all-around Lady of Awesomeness.

Feb 28: Moving day. With two kids, carseat, laptop/camera bag, diaper bag, Jes' purse, pillow, and two blankets in tow, we check our bags and head for the plane. We are a rolling two-seated stroller circus, complete with domed sunshade. I will come back to this event too. Everyone said to me, "Well, at least flying with two kids is better than driving with them, because it's shorter". Ha. It MAY have been shorter, but only because it was 24+ hours of agony compressed on down to 7. It was the time equivalent of that gum the girl chews in Willy Wonka, that lets you eat a whole meal in 2 minutes. Now THAT was some killer indigestion.

And then the month was over. Incredible. Flying to Raleigh, to Idaho, and then to Raleigh again. Packing and cleaning and moving away from our house, entering Hall of Fame, completing scrap assignments, I still can't believe we did all of it.

But I am sitting in my new apartment, freshly hooked up to the internet, and I'm glad. Mostly glad that February is over. But also glad for all the experiences I've had, to keep me on my toes, to push me to my limits, to help me realize that my limits are a little further out and a little deeper down than I had previously imagined, and to help me see that there are a lot of people in the world who love me and are my friends. So not a bad February after all, I guess.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Without a doubt, one of my favorite things about being a Memory Makers Master is the chance I've had to meet gorgeous, talented, and creative ladies like these two. Susan Weinroth (left), is a local. She's so talented, so beautiful, so much fun. A great photographer, and a designer with a great eye for color, shape and chic fun. Love this lady. She's so inspiring to me, and I am so lucky to have gotten to know her. What a cool chance that two Masters live so close to each other.

Lisa Vanderveen (right), happened into our neck of the woods by accident--their flight got delayed on the way back from a Colorado ski trip, and they happened to spend the night where? In the Twn Cities! Well, we couldn't resist a little get-together, so here we are at the Archiver's at the Mall of America on Monday.

Now, I have to say here that the MoA Archiver's is just about my favorite store. I'm there at least once a week, since the mall is in my weekly rotation for taking the kids out places during the wintertime. We park convenient to Archiver's and I always stop in to pay them a little visit, see what's new, that sort of thing. It's one of the few scrap stores with aisles big enough for my double stroller, which is a huge plus for me. And it was great fun to introduce Susan and Lisa to them. :)

Lisa. Such a great person. She scored some MM jewel brads at Archiver's (can't wait to see what she does with them), and we had an awesome time chatting. She has a gorgeous daughter, who, in perfect three-year-old fashion, devoured a Dora the Explorer cupcake, and managed to turn most of her face and hands a perfect shade of grass-green. Awesome.

In other news.. I got my hair cut today. :P So it is a HUGE, and let me say again HUGE improvement over the above photo, in which I demonstrate my desperate need of a good trim. I'll get a pic up as soon as possible.

The countdown to the move has begun. The logistics of the thing are pretty overwhelming, but we'll do it. We'll make it there, full speed ahead. But we could use a little luck, if you have any to spare...

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Raleigh

Jared and I spent last weekend in Raleigh, on the hunt for an apartment to live in while our house sells and we find a new one there. Jared's parents watched the kids (!) so it doubled as a nice relaxing weekend. :)

We had a fantastic weekend. This was my first peek at my new hometown, and I think we'll be really happy there. We spent most of Friday looking for places, and also got to meet/hang out with great people.

The biggest news: We found an apartment! Ah, this is such a stress-relief. Now we have an address, a place to move our stuff, and a nice home for the summer. It was the 5th place we went to, and as soon as we walked in, we knew this was the right one for us. Here are some photos:

Here is the view from our new apartment. There's a little porch with a railing, and then the little lawn, and there's the pool. We'll be there a lot this summer. :)

Here's our apartment, as seen from over by the pool. Great ground floor location (no stairs! hooray!)

Here is our next-door neighbor: A great little lake!

And here's goofy, happy Jared and Jes. And our new, temporary front door.

This apartment is about 10 minutes' drive from Red Hat, and Jared can't WAIT to make that drive every morning. I think Rowen and Elliott will be really happy here.

So we've purchased plane tickets for the kids and I, and scheduled movers. There is so much to do, I'm sure I won't be scrapping (much) for the next few weeks.

Also as part of the weekend, we were invited over to Jared's new boss' house for dinner. He's a former co-worker of mine from Lawson, so it was really nice to chat, and I think Jared will really love working for him.

On Sunday afternoon, we met the GORGEOUS and talented Gabbyfek of 2peas, Flair, and Scrapologie.com fame. She lives in Cary, and she and her husband Mike met us for lunch at their favorite pizza place. The pizza was wonderful. The welcome was wonderful. I am so lucky and blessed to have 2Peas in my life. It's like a community wherever I go. Can't wait to get to know her better.

With all that said, I will sorely, dearly miss my Minnesota ladies. Nisa, Kirsten, Michele, Susan, Angie, Margie, Jenny. Life will not be the same without the monthly crop. I feel like I have friends for the first time here, and it hurts to leave. But we all met online, and so much of our friendship can continue that way. I really can't imagine my life without scrapbooking. Mainly without the friends and the supplies and the laughter and the thrill of a really great page. It has changed the way I see things. Changed what I do in my spare time. Changed who I am, in that it has really brought into clear focus who I am and what I value most.

Speaking of scrapbooking.. I have pages to complete.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Well, the photos turned out great, and our house is officially on the market!! It feels so weird!

Here's the listing: Our House is for Sale!!

I think the photographer did a great job. I can't believe we are moving the end of this month. Jared and I are taking a trip out to Raleigh next weekend (the 9-12) to look for:

1- an apartment that will let us do a 3 month lease
2- a storage facility close to said apartment
3- a tour of the area, and perhaps a look at a few houses

I have only been to North Carolina once, and that was 12 years ago.. and just between you and me.. Jared isn't the most descriptive guy in the world. This was our conversation regarding his trip out there for his interview:

Me: So what is it like?
Him: It was nice.
Me: But what was it like?
Him: Well (thinking for awhile), there were a lot of trees.
Me: Trees, huh? What was the weather like?
Him: Not too bad.

And so on...

I know, it's hard to describe a place. But employing just a FEW more adjectives for the place I'm potentially going to move to.. would've been nice.

But we're moving anyway. :) In the words of Helen Keller, life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Well, the house is being photographed today.

We will officially be on the market tomorrow. I will post more when the whirlwind dies down.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Let's seeee.....

News, news, news..

-I got a new cute bag from Urban Outfitters at the Mall of America. So cute. Red, with a long web-weave handle. It's a lot bigger than my current purse, cause hey, a girl can always use more space, right? :)
-Elliott is getting his first tooth. He'll be 8 months old here in just a couple weeks, and pretty soon our little toothless babe will be giving us toothy grins instead. *snif*
-And well, the news we've been waiting for and wondering about came today. Jared received an offer to work for Red Hat, the maker of the Linux operating system. They're headquartered in North Carolina.

The offer is very good. And they've invited him to start work on March 1.

So it looks like we'll be MOVING!

After 5 1/2 years in Minnesota, we'll be moving.

So if anyone knows anything about selling a house, buying a new house, packing, and moving halfway across the country, all with two kids under the age of 2, just post your tips here! :)

Our realtor comes on Friday to walk through the house and introduce us to the wide world of selling a home. Whee!! Let the fun begin! :)

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

We have a winner. :)

I posted over at 2peas for some help deciding on the photos from Elliott's shoot. I chose a random post number with the help of a very trusty Random Number Generator, which divined for me the winner:

Christine Campbell (scoobiescrapper)

Ms. Christine? Are you in the house? Send me your addy and I'll get you out a RAK. (In the non-scrapping world, this acronym is random act of kindness. And the "kindness" is usually scrapping supplies. I tell you, scrappers are changing the world, one patterned paper at a time. We have got it going ON. Peace and love, paper and glue.)

Okay, I also need to fill out the tags with which I was tagged a couple nights ago:

Four jobs you have had in your life:

1. Housekeeper/laundry assistant at the Rexburg Nursing Center.
2. Editor at BYU Independent Study. Great place to take a class. :)
3. User Interface designer at Lawson Software.
4. Mama. This is my favorite one.

Four movies you would watch over and over:

It shouldn't surprise anyone that these are mostly going to be cartoons..

1. Emperor's New Groove. David Spade the Llama just kills me.
2. Madagascar. I laughed harder in this movie than I have in a long time.
3. The Lord of the Rings. While they don't *quite* compare to the books, they are some of the best movies ever made. Ever.
4. You know, I'm not really an "over and over" kind of girl.. so we'll just go with these three. Plus LOTR is three movies, AND you should see the documentaries that came with it. It's like 20 hours worth of goodness.

Four places you have lived:

1. Idaho Falls, ID
2. Provo, UT
3. Detroit, MI
4. Apple Valley, MN

Four TV shows you love to watch:

I don't watch TV. :
But we DO play World of Warcraft. And I scrap. A LOT.

Four places you have been on vacation:

1. San Francisco. (Honeymoon)
2. Northwestern Mexico
3. Brazil
4. Seattle

Four websites I visit daily:

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Brazilian churrasco
2. Pretty much every mexican food
3. Pretty much every kind of pasta
4. Sour candy. Is that a food?

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. I love my office. Love it. So I have two napping kids and an office full of scrap supplies and an internet connection. Forget Disney. THIS is the happiest place on earth. :)

Okay, and Brazil. Love B

Four bloggers I am tagging:

Everyone I know has been tagged. Seriously.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Want a serious eyeful of baby goodness?

Nisa Fiin, the fabulous photographer, and (even more fabulous to me..) my good friend, took these photos of my sweet little Elliott yesterday.

And then put up the proofs for all the world to see. I thought I'd share the love:

Photos of Elliott

Rowen wasn't there, since we got hers done in October, but the last photos are of a little photobooth fun we had earlier this week. Photobooths=fun!

So which one is your favorite? I know! There are too many to choose from! But call this an informal poll, and I promise I'll pick the most popular one as part of my package. Have fun lookin!

Oh, and I was tagged last night by Jlyne, Susan, and Wendy! I will get to that later today ok? Just gotta tear myself away to work on another CBX layout. This stuff is GORGEOUS!! :)

Thursday, January 12, 2006

2 Peas Challenge..

This one just jumped right out and inspired me last night. We were challenged on the Two Peas board to make a layout using only the tools the "average" scrapper has:

-Multiple photos
-No photo larger than 4x6
-NONE of the photos can have any computer help
-At least one "themed" product must be used
-No computer-generated title or journaling

Here's what I came up with.

Well, this was such a freeing exercise. I printed my photos with no editing whatsoever, used the swirl design from a template I developed from my Master's entry, and my themed products were Cloud 9 Design page coasters. :) The only part about this that I don't really like is the handwritten journaling. I just don't like seeing my handwriting on layouts. But it took about 70 minutes to do, including selecting and printing photos, and was a ton of fun. :)

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

After I paid a visit to Danielle's blog today, and saw all the wonderful images she had edited using Amber Ludlow's converson, I knew I just HAD to get the instructions. They work for color images too. This is a pic of Rowen from November, that I did tonight. I think I really like these new instructions. :)

What it proves is that even a fairly ordinary photo, with a few special touches, can become better.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Our church meeting time changed to 1 p.m. at the beginning of the year, and so we started getting ready at noon, arrived, enjoyed the 3-hour block, and chatted for a bit afterward. Anyway, it was 5 pm before we got home. But Sunday is a great day. Just slowing down, relaxing, hanging out together.

I sat next to a girl at church I didn't recognize. She was holding a tiny little baby, and between meetings we chatted a bit. The Relief Society president handed her a little information sheet to fill out, and I noticed that her last name was Gunyan. AND she had mentioned that they had recently moved from San Jose.

Well, after the meeting today I asked Megan if she knew Dan and Becca Gunyan, and her mouth dropped open. She said, "That's my husband's brother and his wife." I told her that Becca Bayless was my roommate during the summer of 1994 at BYU, and I knew she got engaged that summer to a guy named Dan Gunyan. Whoa. We all shared this little moment of whoa.

So suddenly shooting out of my past comes this connection. Amazing. Crazy. Wonderful. I love the LDS church for that. Turns out my former roomie has 5 kids now and is peacefully living her life somewhere in Napa Valley, CA. Wonderful.

It makes me wonder, now, that when I'm walking down a street or sitting next to someone in a theater, or pushing my stroller past someone at the zoo, if I might have some connection.. some 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing that ties me to them in a weird and wonderful way. It's such a cool thing to think about, this connectedness of humanity.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

I received a copy of the new Chatterbox idea book, "Coming Home, Vol 2." in the mail last week, and haven't had a chance to post about it.

This book is filled with inspirational goodness that stretches beyond eye candy, and truly examines the question, "Why Should I?", which is the question each designer asked with each layout. One of the reasons (out of really, a LOT of reasons) that I love Chatterbox so much, is that they CARE about the reasons for scrapbooking. They want to help motivate scrapbookers to record memories, to do the things they've been meaning to and haven't gotten around to for whatever reason.

The gorgeous photography and inspired layouts don't hurt one bit either. ;) And what would a blog be if I couldn't give a shout out to a great idea book from a GREAT company? {dt}

:) :) :)

Friday, January 06, 2006

I'm beginning to understand three little letters and the dread they strike into professional scrappers everywhere:

CHA

It's the semi-annual trade show, and it means that the months of January and June are up-to-your-eyeballs goodness in preparation. I've been working on so many of these types of projects I've basically forgotten about scrapping for calls, let alone "for myself". I'm getting the new Chatterbox papers (ohhh and they are so delicious!) on Monday, and have to turn around some assignments by the 25th. But it's fun. Not work, fun. And as long as it remains fun, I'll do it. :)

Okay, I promised a pic with the bounce flash. I don't have a hood, so this was just pointed at the ceiling. I was shooing in aperture priority, with the aperture set as small as it would go. Keep in mind that it was pitch dark outside, and only dim in our living room.

Ahh this girl kills me with cuteness.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

I got my external flash today. Played. I haven't yet taken the photos off the camera, but I will post a few tomorrow. They aren't good. But I'm learning. :)

The Mall of America is the saving grace of winter in Minnesota. You can go a hundred times and still find new things to see. And it doesn't hurt that they have quite a fine Archiver's to visit, either. ;)

Sunday, January 01, 2006

I love the time of the new year so much. It's a major reminder that the years are rolling by, but also a chance to put away old things and think about becoming a few new things.

Here's one of my favorite Tennyson poems:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This poem just speaks to me today. 2005 was a momentous year. Rowen turned 1. Elliott was born. Jared and I celebrated our 5th anniversary. I quit my job that I loved and said I'd never quit, and did the thing I said I'd never do: stay home with my kids.

I discovered the art of scrapbooking and Jared changed jobs. Our house and our cat turned a year older. I discovered digital scrapping. Jared and I discovered World of Warcraft. We stayed very close to home this year. For the first half, because of bedrest. For the second half, because we had a new baby.

We're looking forward to what 2006 brings. The adventure continues. Stay tuned. :)

Friday, December 30, 2005

My dad called tonight.

My sweet and wonderful grandfather -- his dad-- passed on into Eternity early yesterday morning, in his sleep. Seth Hamilton Bills was 83. He and my grandma gave my parents part of their land to build our house on, so we lived next door to them from 1990 on. He officiated at my wedding. He was stalwart and humble in all the capacities of his life, and he was one of my heroes. My dad said tonight, "You couldn't have done it better than grandpa did." And he was right.

Oh how I will miss him. He and my grandma were married in 1945, were companions for 60 years, and the best of friends. His funeral is tomorrow, in Idaho, and it breaks my heart that I can't go. So I'm going to spend the next several days recording a few memories I have of Grandpa Bills, since he'll be on my mind anyway.

Tonight's is from our wedding. I have to check if I can tell the whole story here, but it's sufficient to say for now that a whole lot of circumstances came together for me to have my wedding photo reprints in hand tonight (I got them back on Christmas Eve), and specifically that I have one of me and my grandpa, shortly after the ceremony. I am unbelievably grateful that I have such a sweet picture of us together, on such a momentous occassion. And to think that the negative for this photo sat in an envelope for 4 1/2 years. I know I was inspired to get these reprinted, just in time.

Here he is, on June 16, 2000.

Tonight I think about some of the things I believe. It seems that such things are brought into sharper focus in times of sadness, when a great light in your life dims.

In the New Testament letter to the Corinthians, Paul, rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ, said, "O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

And in the Book of Mormon, an echo of the same sentiment: "...the grave hath no victory, and the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ. He is the light and the life of the world, yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened; yea, and also a life which is endless, that there can be no more death."

I really believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe in heaven, and in Eternity, and in the immortality of our souls. I believe that when our life is done, or we are needed elsewhere, we are taken Home to that God who gave us life, and I really believe that although I can't be there to bid farewell to Grandpa's earthly self, that I will meet him again in time.

That doesn't make me miss him less tonight, and although my tears are of sadness mixed with reassurance, rather than desolation, they're tears nonetheless. Grandpa has gone home, and life here must go on without him.

If you haven't told a grandparent or loved one that you DO love them, do it. If there's something you've been meaning to do, but haven't gotten around to, do it. Just do that thing. It may make all the difference in the world to you someday.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Well, it's almost officially not Christmas anymore. I'm the last one awake at our house, and I'm just sitting in here getting pictures ready for tomorrow, and thinking about the day, and my life, and my blessings.

I heard a statement quoted today in church, as I was holding a sleeping, worn-out Elliott in my arms, that just hit me really hard. I just located it again. It is by Jeffrey R. Holland, one of the leaders of the LDS Church. He said:

“At the focal point of all human history, a point illuminated by a new star in the heavens revealed for just such a purpose, probably no other mortal watched–none but a poor young carpenter, a beautiful virgin mother, and silent stabled animals who had not the power to utter the sacredness they had seen. Shepherds would soon arrive and later, wise men from the East. Later yet the memory of that night would bring Santa Claus and Frosty and Rudolph–and all would be welcome. But first and forever there was just a little family, without toys or trees or tinsel. With a baby–that’s how Christmas began.
“It is for this baby that we shout in chorus: ‘Hark! the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King! . . . Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth’.”

I looked down at my little Elliott, sleeping sweetly in my arms, his little church clothes kind of rumpled, and the sweetest expression of peace on his face, and it really struck me that THIS was how the whole thing began -- the whole mortal experience of Jesus. And it's not just his birth that all of Christianity celebrates, but His life. His love. His example. His death. Our chance to change and be different and do better, to try harder, to be more. My chance.

So I'm awake at 11:30 thinking about this, wanting to make lists, and give myself some stern lectures in the mirror, but also thinking, I was worth it. He chose to come, to mildly lay his glory by the wayside for a bit, and just be a kid, and then a man, despised and rejected of other men. And then to die, and take his life back again from death.

And I am almost afraid to believe that he'd have done it ONLY for me. But I want to believe it. I want to be friends with a Man who'd lay down his life for his friends. I want to be the kind of friend that would, too. And this is what Christmas is about. The coming, and being born, and the second chances, and all the reasons in the world to shout for joy. Merry Christmas isn't dead, so long as there are people left to think about it, and remember.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

I finished an entry in Missy Gleason's circle journal today. Part of Ms. Nisa Fiin's fabulous Eager Beaver Circle Journal.

If you don't know, a circle journal is this. Some scrappy ladies get together and decide they want to do something crafty to share around. So everyone buys a book, chooses a theme, and does their first two pages. Then send to the next scrappy lady on the list, and someone else sends you theirs. One year later, you've got 12 fabulous entries in your journal.

Missy's theme is "What's Your Theme Song?" And I thought a lot about it, and decided on "Calling All Angels", sung by Jane Siberry and K.D. Lang. Such a beautiful song.

I did the whole thing digitally, using papers from Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals, as well as her super-cute digital pixie there in the corner. I found some wings online and made a Photoshop brush out of them.

I used some of Rhonna Farrer's brushes from her Chick Peas Digi kit. These are so awesome I swear I use them on everything. I grunged up the edges of the photo with grunge brushes from Rhonna's Pea Blossom kit, which comes complete with a digital inking and sanding tutorial. And no, she didn't pay me to say that. I'm just a big ol fan of hers. ;)

Here's the first page in the spread:

Here's the 2nd page. On this one I stitched a pocket on the back of the paper and slipped in a copy of the song on a CD. Then embellished with a few paper flowers and rhinestones.

For the full effect, here's the two-page spread:

My only worry is that I'm slipping more and more into this love of digital. So much flexibility and freedom. So much easier to correct mistakes, which engenders even MORE freedom. I tell everyone I'll always be a paper scrapper at heart (maybe so Memory Makers and Chatterbox don't freak out and fire me..) but who knows at this rate? Who knows...

Monday, December 19, 2005

So, North Carolina...

Jared is at this moment in an interview with Red Hat in Raleigh North Carolina. It's exciting to think about possibilities, and I'm really hoping all goes well for him.

Other than getting him off yesterday, there wasn't much to the weekend.

Except..

BIG things are happening with CBX. Huge.

I can't wait to bust wide open and share. LOL.

Stay tuned. ;)

Sunday, December 11, 2005

A little gift. :)

I got a little gift in the mail from my friend and fellow Master Angelia Wigginton. She sent this lovely flannel dress for Rowen. It's a little big for her, but SO sweet. Jared thinks she looks like a little Maid Marian.

Here's a shot from today:

We had a fairly slow day today. I am a naughty scrapbooking mama, and here's why. Rowen ate something weird last night and was up until 4 a.m. throwing it back up. :( Poor girl. We actually think it was soap? (WHO gave the bath last night? DADDY! ;0) Anyway, poor, poor girl. So we stayed home from church today on account of lack of sleep. She was feeling quite a lot better by about noon. So we got all dressed up and took photos. Rowen loved playing with Jared, who had a Thomas engine hovering above my head. Naughty, naughty mama.

Had to add a sweet pic of the Ele-man in here too:

This is him in full "free grins all around" mode. Ahh but I love this boy and his stickie-up hair. His little kissable cheeks. I'm going to go give him a kiss on the forehead right now. One lucky mama. :)

Friday, December 09, 2005

We went to the mall today, as is our routine at least once every couple weeks. The mall, the zoo, and the library are in rotation for winter destinations. That way everyone gets out of the house, and Rowen gets tired out for her afternoon nap. :)

So anyway, at the mall. And there's a high school band playing in the Sam Goody court. Have I mentioned how much I love brass? They were playing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day", and right before we left, they played "Little Drummer Boy".

I found myself singing it all the way home.

I have no gift to bring...
That's fit to give a king...

And it struck me how much I feel like this. What is my life now but rounds and rounds of changing diapers, wiping runny noses, feeding bottles and toddler lunches, packing up 1001 things for a 20-minute ride in the car. Listening to more crying than any person really ought to. And doing it again the next day. I have no gift to bring.

But then it strikes me. The finest gift I can possibly give the world, or the Lord Jesus, is a good life, however small, and, as my friend Steve put it today, "building the next generation". Which, as anyone who has ever built anything can attest -- is often filled with splinters and unreadable instructions on the way to a finished product. And the more complex the finished product, the harder the building of it is. And humans are by FAR the most complex things in existence.

Perhaps this is enough to bring. Enough fit to lay before my King.

And it's not that this life isn't worth it. Today I handed Rowen two pinecones out of the glass jar decorating our kitchen table. She carried them around ("big pine-comb", "tiny pine-comb") all morning long, and would've taken them to her nap if I had let her. But they can be prickly. And today Elliott laughed the pure laugh of babyhood when I tickled him.

I think my King--the one who loved and blessed and took delight in little children--would appreciate these small things. Perhaps it is enough.

Well, I posted a pretty cool tutorial on 2peas today about how to fill a circle shape with journaling. Only to find out that it doesn't work in Elements, which I'm guessing 99% of those women have. So bleh. But I even made a cool screen shot! LOL.

Well, if you've got Photoshop 7 or above, this ought to work for you. It's tested in CS.

We got our tree up, but no ornaments. Our stockings up, but there's not one for Elliott. So we've started, but we've got aways. I must say, getting all the schtuff out is harder to do with a little baby who cries when you set him down, and a little girl who just wants to pull the lights down off the tree. :) But we're going to have a merry little Christmas, and I'm feeling festive.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

There are just these times. When it's about 4:30 p.m. and after a nice trip to the zoo, both little kids are a little worn out and I can sit down while they sleep.

These are hard-earned times. But my cold soda is still cold as I drink it, and I've got lots of good blog-and-forum reading and general procrastination to do.

Something the fabulous Ms. Danielle Thompson said in her "Meet the Masters" article in the January issue of Memory Makers really struck me. She was talking about how she loves this "stream-of-consciousness" scrapbooking, and I thought, if there were ever a phrase that WOULDN'T describe me, there it is. I'm the planner, the one afraid to cut into the beautiful paper because what if I ruin it? But she just goes for it. Love that about her. So last night I was thinking, why don't I try one of these? I just had to keep telling myself "stream of consciousness, stream of consiousness" and not to stress about where things went or what not. And it worked! Well, mostly. I will admit I replaced my handwritten journaling block with a typed one and a ribbon with some Prima flowers. But seriously, I can't change all in one night.

I'm happy with the layout, overall. And I'm TOTALLY one to go back and fix things, or just throw the whole thing away if I'm not. So, progress. Ahh.

I'm almost finished for maybe the 6th or 7th time with the Lord of the Rings. I'm astounded every time I read it by the eloquence of Tolkien's writing. I just passed my favorite of all the passages:

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till."

Hooray for Gandalf the wise wizard. In whom I almost believe because of the writing of his author. Tolkien was a master of the craft of fantasy, and better than that, a master of storytelling that has meaning and wisdom for decades and generations that follow. Most stories are not so simple as they appear, and the Lord of the Rings, blockbuster movie though it is now, is no different.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Ugh. I am so lame. I was doing really well with the Photo a Day challenge for November. And then I don't know what happened. But here it is December. It's feeling pretty festive outside, what with the 6 inches of snow.

I will update more later. Just wanted to assure my legions of blog readers that I'm alive and kicking. :)

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Yesterday: No post. And no photo either. So I'm 11 for 14. Ah well. I've taken over 500 photos in the past 2 weeks.. just not at least one every day. *sigh*

My first CBX assignment is on its way to me!! Yippee!! I'm real! LOL. And I'm always bragging about how I love a nice, tight deadline. Well, I got my wish. Back in their hands by Friday morning. Yeah, baby! Let the glue fly.

Okay.. we went to the zoo today. And before the photo I need to say that the MN zoo has an incredible indoor section. Which they should. Because very, very few animals can tolerate the kind of winter that MN dishes out. Not much of a zoo if they all have to be outside. So there's this really elaborate tropical rainforest setup. Flamingos, the works.

And tapirs.

Who knew that a creature such as this lives just 10 minutes from my house? Not me, until today. Maybe they've been sleeping the other several times I've been through this part. But here s/he is in all his/her glory:

I guess that's it. Long, kid-filled day otherwise, and I'm beat. There's no more exhausting work than taking two kids under 2 to the zoo. And I didn't mean for that to sound as singsongey as it did...

And I just peeked at Nisa Fiin's blog wherein she does a challenge to Google your name plus the word "needs", and see what comes up, and then to post the first 10. Apparently the name Nisa isn't quite as common on "adult" websites as mine is.. so I've edited to keep this blog PG-rated. The "almost" top 10 things that Jessica needs:

-Jessica needs an adoptive family that is very structured
-Jessica needs to keep her mouth shut sometimes (LOL this was about Jessica Simpson.. but is apt..)
-Jessica needs a bit of time off by herself to process things
-Jessica needs you! (posted by a superbike racer named Jessica, who apparently needs funds...)
-Jessica needs to be left alone (about Jessica Lynch, but is also apt..)
-Jessica needs a family that will encourage her in her academic efforts
-Jessica needs to grow a back bone! (uh huh...)
-Jessica needs a nice romance that is free of angst (commentary on an episode of One Life to Live.)
-Jessica needs to get a new kidney.
-Jessica needs to fix her hair. (alright! enough with the Jessica Simpson! but is probably apt as well..)

Problem is, I share a name with Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, and Jessica Rabbit. All of whom made my top 10. Oh, and the fact that my name was the most common girl's name for about 5 years running in the mid-70s... but this was fun!

Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Newest Chatterbox Chick Tells All!

Well, okay, maybe not ALL... and normally I don't post twice in one day, but I got tagged, and ya know. Ya gotta.

My photo of the day post is below... in the other post....

But first is a major huge life-altering wonderful Toot of all time! I was chosen for the Chatterbox team a couple of weeks ago, and then things just got really busy and I never got my chance to toot about it!

So here I am! The newest Chatterbox chick! LOL. And I couldn't be more excited. Seriously. I've been dancing around my living room for two weeks. Nobody posted anything about it at 2peas and it didn't seem right to blow my own horn about something this huge. So I've just let it go. But no longer! :)

Okay, I was tagged by Courtney Walsh another of the Chatterbox DT members, to complete the following quiz. So here goes. Apparently I can only say two of each thing..

2 - names you go by: Jessica, Jess, Mama (only by Rowen ;)), Waah! (only by Elliott), Babe (only by Jared) I know that's more than 2. But I've got more than 2 names. LOL.

2 - parts of your heritage: English, Irish, German, a little Scottish, and some Welsh. Man I am sucking at this naming only two thing.

2 - things that scare you: spiders, dark streets. There. Only two.

2 - of your everyday essentials: My computer! And I've only got one for this one... Huh.

2 - of your favorite bands or musical artists: Cat Stevens and Billie Holiday

2 - favorite songs: Lose yourself by Eminem. Never fails to get me pumped up. And... honestly anything by Cat Stevens.

2 - things you want in a relationship (other than real love): Loyalty and selflessness

2 - of your favorite hobbies: Besides scrapbooking (which is somewhat less of a hobby these days anyway..) I'll say reading science fiction and fantasy, playing computer games with my husband. :)

2 - things you want really badly: I want to move further west. I miss the mountains. And honestly, nothing else. Except maybe an all-expense paid trip somewhere. LOL.

2 - places you want to go on vacation: Look at that! My wish might come true! I think a Carribbean cruise or Mexico, or England or back to Brazil would be great. Heck, Chicago would be great.

2 - things you want to do before you die: See, a lot of people would put skydiving on here. Not me. I want to stand on the Great Wall of China.

2 - ways that you are stereotypically a chick: I can be a bit.. um.. emotional sometimes.

2 - things you are thinking about now: Putting away my MMM scrap goodies (see post below), and maybe finding a treat to eat.

2 - stores you shop at: I want to say Bloomingdale's. But it's Target. And Designer Digitals and Scrap Supply and Archiver's and Lifetime Moments. Huh. The scrapbook stores outnumber the regular stores by about 10 to 1. Does this say something?..

3 - people I would like to see take this quiz: Ms. Nisa Fiin, Ms. Kirsten Hegman, Ms. Wendy McKeehan, and Ms. Susan Weinroth

:)

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled blogfest.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Now for getting it all put away..

A fairly big accomplishment today: The two huge boxes of prize goodies from Memory Makers for winning the Masters contest? Remember that they were on my couch for almost a week? I could barely even dig into them because I wanted to catalog everything and take a photo. These are the depths of my anal-ness.

But I did just this today. There were many very generous manufacturers who contributed to this prize package, which at my total ballpark estimate is probably worth a couple thousand dollars.

Here's the photo, which also doubles as my photo of the day. (Remember you can click on it to get a bigger picture . :))

Among all these goodies are albums from Mara Mi, American Traditional, Go West Studios, and K&Co., adhesives from Scotch, Liquid Nails, and Glue Dots, a WIZARD die cutting machine (yeah!), a Karen Foster Clickit + metal tags and die sets, unmounted stamps and accessories from Leave Memories, paper and embellies from Junkitz, Cloud 9 Design, K&Co., Deja' Views, Imagination Project, AwCute, American Traditional Designs, Scrappin' Sports & More, and MAMBI. There are several hundred sheets of Color Mates and DoubleMates textured cardstock, embellies from Go West, a create-a-calendar and papers from AwCute, Alphabet and word stamps, inks, and chalks from Inkadinkadoo, Dress-it-up buttons, charms, and embellishments, and the cutest cardstock "office" type embellishments from Creek Bank Creations. There was also a Baby Prints imprint kit and several items from Delta, including pigment ink and peel-n-stick fabric. And a produt I used on my winning Master's entry as well as a recent assignment: Flip-flop fasteners from Destination Scrapbook designs. They also sent 26 sheets of letter stickers.

Whew.

These companies have been incredibly generous, and I am so lucky and blessed to have the association that I do with Memory Makers.

And I'm also REALLY glad to have the boxes off my couch. It's up in the office in a HUUUGE basket, all ready to be integrated into the stash. But I just had to post right now. :)

Friday, November 11, 2005

Scaling the Heights.

Today's photo of the day was actually just captured about 2 hours ago. This is a huge shout out to my father-in-law, Dean Sprague. It's his 60th birthday today. TODAY. So what did he decide to do to mark his milestone?

Why of course. Climb the rock wall at REI.

He defied both age and gravity tonight. He reached the top of a very respectable climb. And he had a cold to boot. I hope to be in as good a shape as he is when I turn 60. Maybe I'll set the date for REI... 60 is just around the corner from 30... But the coveted spot as my Photo Of The Day in November goes out to him. Love ya, "Papa Dean"!

I HAD to climb too, so there's a layout in the works with me a-scaling. I think I might call it, "So this is what my butt looks like from behind." What do you think?

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Maybe Tomorrow.

I was thinking today about something Ms. Wendy said on her blog awhile back. About the little things that are undone in your life that make you old. I was feeling aged today. Dirty fridge, carpet needs vacuuming. And yep. The two huge boxes of scrapping goodness are still on my couch. So no picture of them for the photo of the day. And somehow the computer pulls, or the kids pull, or the schedule pulls, and the things get left undone. And it ages us.

But today, instead of moping about the house (well, okay.. truth.. in BETWEEN bouts of moping about the house), I took the kids to the zoo. Rowen got up close to her favorite animal, the "biiiig shark". And I got a pretty decent photo of it, considering that the room is in semi-darkness all the time.

She loves his teeth. Points them out every time she sees him. Man I love the zoo.

And to top it all off, my MIL and Jared took over the kids tonight. Playing, feeding, bathing, pj's, bed. And I just hunkered down in the office and attempted to unwind. I'm SO grateful to them for doing that. It was one of those kind of days when I think.. even the lowest-paid, most menial job has a lunch hour and mandatory 20-minute breaks every 4 hours. Why doesn't mine? I suppose the obvious reason is that you can't explain that to a 5-month-old. But lucky for me I've got some major backup. So after my 12-hour stint, I get a few hours' break. And I'm grateful.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Just such goodness today.

Ah today was a very good day. I got a couple of layouts done. And I learned a really cool new technique. Involving my inkjet printer, transparency, and Golden Gel Medium. So cool. I'm totally going to try this on a layout.

I tried it with a photo that had a face in it, and as you can see from this picture, part of the charm of this technique is that some of the image doesn't transfer. Well.. if that part of it just happens to be over an eye or a mouth or something, it looks really weird. So after a couple of tries of eyeless and mouthless people, I discovered the safe bet: flowers. So there we have it. Cool. :)

Oh, and also of note, my Master's boxes arrived today. 110 lbs of pure scrapping goodness. Yep. you read that right, one hundred and ten POUNDS. Oh man there is so much stuff in there I'm almost too overwhelmed to even look at it....almost.

So any guess what my photo of the day for tomorrow will be? :)

Monday, November 07, 2005

The REAL queen of the punches.

My photo of the day for today happened when I went to wake Rowen up to get her ready for church. She has had this thing with my punches for a couple months now, but I've neglected to take pictures or journal about what a cute thing this is. There is "eng-ess pahnch" (her favorite--by her right hand here), "biiiiig pahnch" and "tiny pahnch", and she loves to have one in her hand pretty much all the time. Especially at naptime and bedime. Somehow the buttons to push give her comfort. At night, usually an hour or so after she falls asleep, we hear a THUNK in her room, and know that one of the punches has fallen out of her crib. I think I've officially been replaced as the queen of the punches at our house. Simply because I prefer not to sleep with them.

I caught this shot of her with a punch for each hand:

The great thing about this challenge is, that while I would have almost cried for the cuteness of this moment, on any other day, running late, I wouldn't have stopped to capture it. But I knew it was my chance, and I'm glad.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

The most thoughtful gift.

<whine>
Why oh WHY can't I seem to get feeling better? It seems like I've had a cold for WEEKS. < / whine>

Here's my photo for the photo-a-day challenge. It's a great excuse to always be looking for the photo op. I didn't get my photo taken until 4:30 today, and what with the rain, it was pretty bleh outside. But I chose to take a photo of my wedding present from Jared--a traditional Hopi wedding pot. It's weird to think that we are approaching 10 years in December since we met.

This pot is known as the wedding pot, because the two spouts represent the two people getting married, and the bridge between them. I love the symbolism of a single pot with two distinct spouts. It's the most thoughtful gift I received for my wedding, and I got it from the person I married. Lucky for me, huh? :)

Friday, November 04, 2005

Okay, so I'm 2 for 4..

It's the 4th and Rowen is 21 months old. I used to laugh at people who counted their toddlers in months past like 12. I was like, hey people, they're a year old, or two years old and nobody cares if they're 17 months or 21 months. Well foo. There's a big difference between 17 months and 21 months. And an even bigger one between one and two YEARS old. Life is measured in shorter increments when your age and your height roughly approximate each other..

I'm taking part in a photo-a-day in November challenge over at Two Peas. And so far I'm 2 for 4. Ugh. It's because on my "days off" (there I go with the quotes again), I am USING pictures and not taking them. But I am setting a goal to do better.

And I did, today. :) Rowen for some reason decided to sit in the chair I had prepped with a wrinkly white sheet by the open front door. And she also decided to look up and shoot me the hugest toothy grin of all time. And now I am a happy mama. And I refuse to let the perfectionist in me take over. I will enjoy this beautiful smile and the happiness of little-kidhood that radiates from her. Ahh man do I love this girl.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Totally broke down.

And bought the kids costumes last night. Yes. I know it was November 1 and the holiday had officially passed. But they don't know. And the photos I'm taking today won't tell. ;)

Will update with some costumed cuteness later on. Here's hoping for at least 1 good one of Rowen. Oof. It might be hard.
ETA:
Okay, one of Elliott. I've been experimenting with the black and white conversion, and I really like this look a lot. I put a white sheet in his bouncy seat and put him by the open front door. He was good, actually. :) He loves interacting with people, so as long as I kept up the silly faces and noises, he was cool with it.

And here's Rowen the faerie. This little shoot also contains one of the best pictures I've ever taken of her. And maybe 15 other good ones. And maybe 100 ones that are eh and below. But this one is so sweet. Kind of ethereal..

Monday, October 31, 2005

The Halloween Version of the Grinch..

I bet I'd feel differently about Halloween this year if
a) my kids were older and knew what Halloween is
b) everyone (including me) hadn't been sick with colds for a week
c) I had decided that despite a and b I ought to go buy cute costumes purely for the photo op and subsequent scrapbook page submission come about May/June next year..

I didn't. Bah humbug. No costumes. No candy (unless Sudafed and Ibuprofen count..), and we're going to turn our lights off and pretend we're not home...

I can't be the only one doing this.. right? Please? Or are there last-minute sales over at Party City so I can have a little ghostie and witch photo shoot?...

Tagged. The "dig in your archives challenge"

Thank you, Nisa, for tagging me. :)

The challenge originated, apparently, with Kristi. And Nisa tagged me. It's the Blog Archives and Hidden Meanings meme.

Here's what Nisa has to say: Nisa's Blog Archive and its Hidden Meaning...
Personally I think there's a lot that can be interpreted about someone based on their beverage of choice. Mine is Diet Mt. Dew. What does this say about me? That I like it fizzy and lo-cal? Sweet but guilt-free? That I love drinks that are an impossible shade of yellow-green? Well, you can decide that.

So I had to go back to my OOOOLLLD (spam filled) blog to dig out my own 23rd post, 5th sentence, and it is this:

"I knew that there was something in it for me, but man I never pictured this."

Wow. Now that is deep indeed. It could be the title of a book. How often have I discovered something in my life that piqued my interest, and then turned into something really major down the road. I'm one of those girls who goes along sort of by gut instinct. This is also perhaps why my attention span is so desperately short.... what was I saying? Oh yes. Never pictured this. Well, it could apply to so many things in life, and actually is kind if deep. Wow. Kristi. This is totally cool. :)

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Pumpkin patch..

Despite an impending cold for both Elliott and I, we headed out to the pumpkin patch today to pick ourselves up a good one. Leave it to Rowen to try picking up the largest one available.

Regardless of the sun, it was actually quite cold today, windy.. we didn't spend long at the patch.
Good thing there's still one left right in the middle of town, just two blocks from us.
Jared says he wants to carve it, but with a 20-month old and a 4-month old I assured him it'd be for nobody's pleasure but his own. He's going to do it anyway. :)

Friday, October 21, 2005

Such a cool historical thing I (re)found. :)

I am the queen of web searches. I remembered this really cool radio program about the end of World War II that was broadcast on NPR a few months ago. I heard it while I was driving back from the cardiologist, so I knew it was after March and before June. And that's all I could remember about it. :P Well I tracked it down. :) Turns out it was broadcast in May.

It's over at MPR, and you can listen to it in two parts on RealPlayer. This guy is so awesome. He's got this great 50s voice and accent, and the little music in between times is great. But the broadcast itself--celebrating V-E day--is really something I think everyone should hear:

"On A Note of Triumph"

Scroll on down to May 8, 2005. The two segments combined last almost an hour.. so turn it on while you make dinner or something. :)

Thursday, October 20, 2005

I could probably say the same post...

every day. Love scrapping. Love the Pub at Two Peas. Love the feel of paper and glue (Well, maybe not glue so much, especially when I can't get it off my fingers...but let's go with it rhetorically...)
We've received our first Masters challenge. And I can't say specifically what it is, but I will say that of all the things they could've challenged me with (aside from something like Tia's No-Paper Scrapbook Page Challenge), this is probably the toughest thing for me.

Tomorrow is another "day off". Why do I feel like I need to put that in quotes? Because paying for childcare on days off seems sometimes to be incredibly self-indulgent.

Let's lighten up here.

I attempted to doodle on a page. I won't scan or post it because I've discovered that I dislike my own doodling. That look, while I love it in Hanni or Elsie is just not me. There, I've said it. I'll keep my striped patterned paper and corner rounder and intricately shaped computer journaling, thank you. Ahhh comfort.

And it's fall here. Love the leaves. Love that Rowen likes to play in them. Here's a shot from a couple days ago.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Hounded out of my old spot.. by spam!

We have been hosting my blog since March of 05. I now receive more than 5 spam comments a day, and have officially been hounded out of my own hosted domain. GRR!

But the good news is I had this fancy thing already set up. So with barely a hitch, here we go. :)