Tut: How-To House Card

Posted on | May 31, 2008 | 5 Comments

To download the video –>>House Video

Music: Podsafe music by Colie Brice titled Flamingo Lounge

Another card and another tutorial. This time it’s not a Photoshop tutorial but a card tutorial! Did I use my camcorder? Oh no!!! I just took some pictures and used the free Microsoft Photo Story 3 application.

So for those creative ladies who loves to create tuts and have been doing photo tuts, this is a great, free, way to add more to your fancy tuts. Add voice narration AND background music to your tuts. You can watch a how-to on YouTube (I think he’s using Photo Story for that video).

Many asked me how I create my videos. Well, on the Windows machine, I use Camtasia and on the Mac, I use Snapz, then edit in iMovie AND if I need anything else with the audio I use Garageband. Long winded, huh? You get use to it. I love using Camtasia, especially version 5, because of its ability to zoom in and out and also I can easily save for many devices quite easily. It’s a pity Camtasia only works on the Windows systems.

Photo Story I don’t use personally. This is the first I’ve actually used it. But I teach it to my students who will be future teacher or instructional technologist of America {::SMILES}. K-12 students LOVE using this to create digital stories. If you’re a teacher, pass this info along, try it out, it’s super fun and the kids pick up on it quickly. If you’re a mom, use this for your kids and send grandma a fancy photo story with voice. Let your kids pick the music, etc. Use it to learn history, science, literature, etc.

Color swatch Ok, back to the card… I used Kristina’s color inspiration for this card. The colors are Almost Navy, Old Olive, So Saffron, Bashful Blue and White.

I created this card for Emma. She so wanted a house card and also a picture of her and me inside. So that’s what started this. She loves it and she did promise to take very good care of it.

The measurements for the card is:

Card body: 4×25x4.25
Roof: 3×4.25
Piece between roof and card body: .5×5 (or the width of your ribbon if you use a wider ribbon).
Grass: 1×4.25
Door: 2.5×1.5
Door layer: 2.75×1.75

Updated Sunday June 1:

I did another card with the color combo since they’re such fun colors and I have all my stuff still out from the house card. This one is using the Spring Solitude stamp set and the Rough Edges Alphabet that I’m still cutting and mounting. For the U, I used Thickers from American Craft.

I hope this was a wonderful weekend for you. It was for us. Just nice and relaxing. M and I will be baking chocolate chip cookies after this post.

Thanks for looking and I really appreciate you all’s visits!!

Tut: Color Selection, Action, B&W, and Sepia

Posted on | May 30, 2008 | No Comments

Since I wasn’t too happy with the way the video looks, I am adding the Flash version. You need to have Adobe Flash Player, which is free, installed on your computer. Most computers have this already built in. Actually, you’ll probably like this Flash version better than the YouTube/Revver ones. You can resize it and it’ll pretty much keep its clearness. Let me know what you think. I just never did it this way because you have to wait until it downloads fully before you can play it. I might just posting two versions like this until my service space gets full. I think I can fit over 80,000 videos if I make them around this size (6 minutes at 15 megs). Yeah, I have 1,000 gigs of web space. INSANE! I have this site, a personal blog that hasn’t been updated and I donated space to my church and I’ve only use 5,500 megs of space!! My church uses it more than I do for pictures.

So the video… There are a few other things too in the video but if I list them all, my title would be super long {::SMILES}. Some info on the action. The action that you saw will only work AFTER you’ve changed the pen path to the marching ants OR if you use the marquee tool. The reason why was because Photoshop didn’t record my right click when I changed the path into marching ants. That’s also why you might want to create a few actions for the same effect. Maybe you might want to do one for a general image, with nothing selected. Just a picture and change that to a b&w or sepia. Lots of different ways. As usual, contact me if you have any questions. Either leave a comment or use the Contact form that you can find under the Contact menu above.

Some video tuts info: In case you haven’t noticed, my tuts that were uploaded to Revver, they got a little warped after I updated to WordPress 2.5.1. The plugin for Revver was only tested up to 2.3 and after the update an 1/8″ is cut off from the left and the right of the video screen. The height is ok. So, for the most part the tuts are viewable but if there are something that I clicked on that was either to the very left or right, you might not see them well. It seems like no big deal on the video portion but because of the “shrinkage” you now can’t close the ads. The (x) sign is on the bottom top right… on that 1/8″ that’s cut. I’m still messing with it when I have the time. Like I said before, I just like Revver better because my videos still look decent looking even after going through their resizing, decompression, format changing or whatever they do to get the videos posted.

In the mean time, just try to live with it and when I have time, I’ll convert and upload a Flash version of each video. Sorry about that. Besides the video issue, I LOVE my WordPress 2.5.1. If you use the installed version, you should update!

My So Sketchy LO

Posted on | May 29, 2008 | 3 Comments

My blog buddy, Ally, started a sketch blog site, So Sketchy, and this was her first sketch. I changed it up a bit since I didn’t have anything with three wallet size photos. Instead of a third photo, I layered a few embellishments and voila.

I love sketches. It helps me focus on the content and not the general big picture. If you’ve never done a sketch before, you should. It’s really fun and you don’t have to stick to everything on the sketch. For example you can flip this layout so that the pictures are on the left. Or like me, replace a picture with an embellishment.

This is Ally’s first sketch on So Sketch but she’s got a lot of other cute ones and I can’t keep up (girl, SLOW down!!).

What did I use for this LO? I use a lot of Amy Butler’s (K&Company) new stuff. The swirl paper lace is Prima and the overlay behind M’s first picture is Hambly. The paper I journaled on is Making Memories. For the embellishment, the replacement of the third photo, I just used my thicker pop-dots to layer them. I used pop-dots too for the butterfly, the red/pink flower, and the “special” sentiment. It didn’t take me long to make this page. Maybe 45 minutes. The sketch was awesome and all I had to do was put it together to my liking.

Thanks, Ally! Now I just have to decide on which five sketches that she’s got posted that I want to do next. Oh, not to mention the card sketches. {::SMILES}

What a Nice Day!

Posted on | May 28, 2008 | 4 Comments

Today was a great day. Not only did I have a productive day, I got to spend my productive day with one of my favorite person, my daughter {::SMILES}. To many, this might not be a big deal, but to me, who works outside the home, today was a special day.

I worked from home today. I told myself Tuesday that I was going to start at 6 a.m. so that I could get done early. Well, I was 15 minutes late, but hey, I did get up early and that’s a plus! M didn’t wake up until 8:30-ish. Lazy girl!! She ate breakfast and she did what I asked her to do… I’ve been prepping her since Monday about her playing alone and me working until it’s break time. She did her end and I got a lot done. I had two breaks and a lunch break. I did do a bit of work after 3 p.m. but it was because I wanted to finish a few things and M was napping (until almost 5!). We did talk a lot and I had activities for her so it was quite nice. The dogs were happy too. They just curled up next to me and every so often they’d ask for a belly rub.

Great day! This was the first time that M stayed home with me while I worked. I’ve worked from home before but I always drop M off at school and then daycare. We’ll be doing this again!

This card is a super quick card that I did today. The card stock are Stampin’ Up! (the yellow is Summer Sun) and the pattern paper is Making Memories 5th Avenue. Ribbon, Offrey from Wally World. The bird stamp is from the Natural Beauty set. I’ve had this set for a looooooong time and barely use it. This is the first time I’ve used this bird actually. The sentiment is PaperTrey’s Shapes by Design. The colors were actually inspired by Cindy Beach. You should check her out. She’s one awesome stamper! I think this is her first inspiration challenge… not sure but hey, it got me {::SMILES}.

Embrace Life

Posted on | May 27, 2008 | 4 Comments

Finally a card! This is the first time I used this stamp set. I’ve had it for a little while but just haven’t had the mood for it until now. I have a couple other stamps that are in this state.

This is a pretty simple card to make. I just used Cameo Coral and Sky Blue besides white card stock and a ribbon that I bought from my lss. The ink I used is Cameo Coral and black. Just cut, cut, cut and glue, glue, glue and that’s it. I actually used two size dimensionals on the flowers. I paper pierced under the sentiment too. I think it gives the card some accent. Ok, so not the greatest. I don’t think I’ve made the flowers pop but it’s a good start {::SMILES}.

A busy (short) week. I’ll have more later.