Merry Christmas!!

Posted on | December 25, 2009 | 2 Comments

I hope it was a great one for you! It was for us, from the time we got up until now… full tummy stuffed with yummy ham and other goodies. Since we had M we always made it a habit to be home for Christmas. This way M, and now Jovie, can always experience Christmas mornings at home. It’s so nice to just play and hang out in our PJs… even during Christmas dinner {::SMILES}.

I’ll make it short for today! Have a great one!!!

PS: The other day I posted a photography tip on capturing the details instead of the whole. Another good way to make your photo stand out (I learned this in my photography class) is to crop tight(er). You can see M’s original photo in this post (the last of her set) and by cropping (and making it b/w) the photo looks a tad bit more polished.

Photography Tip: The Details

Posted on | December 23, 2009 | 10 Comments

I’m not a pro at photography but I love to learn anything in this area in order to improve my own skills. A few weeks ago I read Scott Kelby’s The Digital Photography Book, and learned lots (I love that my work’s library has access to full blown e-books now… new release books too… I’ve been reading a bunch!!). One thing that caught my attention was this: Instead of trying to capture the whole thing take photos of the details. Even though Kelby’s suggestion was for travel photography the concept can be used for anything. Here’s an excerpt:

“I’ve heard a lot of photographers complain about the results of their urban shooting, and much of the time it’s because they try to capture too much. What I mean by that is that they try to capture the entirety of a majestic building or the grandeur of a magnifcent cathedral, but even with an ultra-wide-angle lens this is very, very hard to pull of . That’s why the pros shoot details instead. For example, instead of shooting to capture the entire cathedral at Notre Dame in Paris, instead capture details that suggest the whole—shoot the doors, a window, a spire, a gargoyle, the pigeons gathered on the steps, or an interesting architectural element of the church, rather than trying to capture the entire structure at once. Let your photo suggest the height, or suggest the craftsmanship, and the mind’s eye will f ll in the blanks. By shooting just the details, you can engage in some very compelling storytelling, where a piece is often stronger than the whole. After all, if you want a photo of the entire cathedral, you can just buy one from the dozen or so gift shops just steps away. Instead, show your impression, your view, and your take on Notre Dame.” (pg. 166)

So the other day I went and put his words into practice when I took these ornament photos. Instead of taking a picture of the whole tree I took photos of my favorite parts of the tree.

In a way this is how I like to scrapbook too — the details or have a focus on one thing. There are different styles of scrapbooking and the one that fits me best is where my page shows one or a few similar/related photos that tells one story. This way I am also forced to choose the best photo(s) — digital photography has made it so easy to take 100 photos of the same event and you don’t need them all to scrapbook or even put into an album.

For the page I used some Nov & Dec’08 Scarlet Lime goodies and new My Mind’s Eyes pattern paper (the base) and Christmas die-cuts + American Craft alpha.

Have a great one and I hope you get a chance this holiday season to grab some awesome photos of the event.

Precious Moments

Posted on | December 12, 2009 | 5 Comments

We’ve been doing housework today which included cleaning my craft room/office/playroom. I wanted to make something for my R&R time but didn’t want to pull out all my paper stuff. Last summer I bought a bunch of digital kits at Shabby Pickle but never got to looking at them until today. Here’s a tip… when you download a digital kit extract it right away. This way you know if you downloaded the item correctly. Don’t be like me who’s finding out that a few of the kits didn’t get downloaded all the way.

Speaking of digital kits I received an email last week asking if one can only use Photoshop to create a digital page. No you don’t. There are many software and Photoshop is just one of them.

Free software:

Purchased software:

My recommendation is to download and install Gimp first. See what you think of it. It’s free and quite a powerful little thing. If you have extra cash go ahead and buy Photoshop Elements and if you got a decent tax return and your spouse and kid(s) let you go ahead and splurge on Photoshop CS4 or a used copy of CS3/CS2. Any will do what you need well!

Here’s my little page. I used all sorts of elements from New Life Designs: 5 steps to Heaven and the butterfly and bird was from Catherine Designs: Noel Chic.

If you think my top flower is a bit off on placement, it’s on purpose. I print my digital pages at whcc.com and they don’t do 100% prints. They crop at about 1/8-1/4″ from the edge. Yes I can go with a different company who does 12×12 without cropping but I just love the quality of whcc’s prints and if the company hasn’t done me wrong I’m usually a pretty loyal customer.

Alright, time for night night… got lots to do tomorrow!

Freebie: Butterfly Die-Cut Template

Posted on | October 14, 2009 | 12 Comments

Hi! I made a card AND used my Klik-n-Kut. I’ve been wanting to cut out a butterfly for awhile and last weekend at the expo I saw this acrylic butterfly that was part of a scrappy kit. Well, I didn’t want the kit, just not my style, but the lady wouldn’t sell me just the acrylic butterfly. She said there’s probably one somewhere in the expo I can buy individually <– NOT helpful, lady!

So last night after all the kids have gone to bed Savitri went to work and I got this:

Feel free to download the files (if you want the jpg format, just right click the butterfly image above and save as) and use them for your projects. I have them in a few different format so that other Klic-N-Kut users can use it and also those who has a Silhouette, Craft Robo, Wishblade ((by the way, the three are the same machines, just sold by different companies with different software/download and warranty packages)), and Cricut Expression. I could have converted it to other formats but hey, it was midnight, it’s free, and so if you don’t see your file type, download Inkscape ((it’s free version of Adobe Illustrator, kind of like what Gimp is to Photoshop)), open the SVG or DXF in it and export/save as (I can’t remember which) to your format. I think the only thing missing is the WPC format for Gazelle or Pazelle users.

SVG - Cricut users who can SCAL can use this format
DXF – Probably the most versatile, most die-cut machines that hooks up to a computer can open this format
KNK – Any users with the KnK software, like studio GE used by some Silhouette, Wishblade, and Craft Robo users)

For the acrylic butterfly I used the acrylic protector that came with my PaperTrey Ink stamps. It’s the part that the stamps stick on. It’s nice and thick but not too thick. I could still bend the butterfly to give it form. Then for the pattern paper (PTI stars) I shrunk the image using my KnK inline embedding/layering tool and took it down to .4. Look in your manual on how to do this, you can’t just grab a corner and shrink the image because the size will not be right. That’s it. ((The rest of the material are PTI ribbon and stamp, Making Memories paper, Martha Stewart butterfly punch, and border punch by Fiskars))!

Have fun and I can’t wait to see what you make with this!!

My Blog is Mobile

Posted on | October 1, 2009 | 1 Comment

Do you have a mobile phone with Internet access? Well I’ve been testing this WordPress plugin for the last few weeks and officially love it. My page now loads very fast on a mobile phone because it only shows the above. Go ahead, if you have a mobile with Internet access, go online and type my URL out. So now if you’re bored at the dentist’s office you can go online and read my post he he he…

iPhone users still sees my page as normal cause the iPhone is clever, with pinch and zoom, and has a better browser and so my site can look like this when fit to width:

If you’re a WordPress.org user (the install yourself version) add a mobile plug-in so that it won’t take 5 days to load your page on a mobile or crash the mobile browser because your site is loaded with graphics {::SMILES}.

Want to see what your blog/website looks on a mobile? Check this site out. If you want to test it out on an iPhone you can go to iPhoneTester (not set to fit to width).

Tomorrow I’ll have something crafty to share. Til then!