Another So Sketchy layout. I love this sketch! Why? I got to use the edges of my Pink Paislee paper!

Material:

Pattern paper: Pink Paislee and Sassafrass
Cardstock: Bazzill
Embellishments: Prima, Basic Grey rub-ons
Alpha: American Craft
Ink: SU

Hint: DON’T use Craft ink on foam. It’ll NEVER dry! I heat gun’d it, I laid it out for a couple days, I dabbed it with tissue… wet! The end of the 3rd day I just stuck it in my book with a paper towel on top of the “GIRL.” Now… well, I need to check.

I love these pics of M and dad. M wasn’t close to dad when she was little so every little moments like this (which probably lasted three minutes) was precious. Dad was not around much soon after (his work schedule was horrible then) she was born and he left for CA when she was three months. The first time we visited she was fine, but the next ones (we visited every three weeks) were not so eventful. It came to the point where she wouldn’t let him feed, change, or hold her without fussing unless I was there. She just wanted mom because dad was just like any other stranger (she wasn’t stranger friendly when she was a baby). Things didn’t get any better when a few months later he was sent overseas. We did everything we could to keep them close, web cams, video stories, phone calls, etc. but nope, not into dad. I was out studying one day (grad school) and hubby called. I couldn’t hear what he said but I could clearly hear M crying. Screaming bloody murder. I think in between that I heard hubby said, “come home, NOW, NOW, come home!!!” It wasn’t until she was three that she got comfortable with dad. The first time I went to an overnight conference she cried on the phone missing me. Now she’s all over him and they’d have fun together when I’m gone but for the most part, she’s still very much a momma’s girl.

While in Cali, hubby got a new tattoo, that’s what he was trying to show. It says “Emma” on it. I’ll take a good pic of it sometimes. M on that trip had the most horrible diaper rash but she was still such a happy girl AND sucking her thumb. She still does, that turd!

Another geek-dio for you IF you have a Facebook account. Do you know that you can do this… feed your blog content or anything really that has an rss into Facebook? This is for lazy people like me… who are too lazy to even login to it, he he…

–> High quality video here <–

So now, even if I don’t log in, my Facebook friends can read my blog posts, Tweets, and see my Flickr uploads. Cool, huh? Now, wish MySpace’s rss reader is this nice. Unfortunately, NOT! Personally, I don’t like MySpace, and I haven’t been in there for weeks either. Have a great one!!

It’s been awhile since I did a digi tut. This is a super easy one. Just a how-to on the page I created last week using Corina’s freebie kit. I received a couple private messages that basically said: how did you do it exactly? Since my explanation was a bit unclear. So here it is:

–> You can also watch it on YouTube in high quality <–

This is a really nice technique actually for those who aren’t into digital. I printed a little bit, in color, on transparency paper and voila… my very own, I can make as many as I want, transparent overlays or cool, again, Hambly-ish looking transparent. You should try it out!!!

I have a few cards to share but I’ll do that  tomorrow. It’s for my very first class at my lss. It’s kind of weird though. They scheduled my class for 10:00 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and I work in the day time. So I was asked to drop the materials off for the morning session. I hope nobody in the a.m. session knows me and will be disappointed if they find out that I’m not going to personally be there.

The cards… they’re not something you’ve never seen from me… I wasn’t feeling super creative since I have to prepare cards that somebody else will need to know how to teach FAST and I can’t go buck wild on Thickers or any sort of packaged alpha since they do get expensive. I don’t like the Cricut machine. It’s a great machine but it’s not for me. I’ve used it twice and it was good for me. I’m saving up for a Klik ‘n Kut or Pazzle so that I can use gazillions of fonts and cuts through thicker material. If you want to know about the difference between the two, go to PaperThreads. The forum is an awesome place for this type of Q&A and research. If you do the math, by the time you buy 10 cartridges for the Cricut, you can buy a Pazzle and some more accessories or a KnK. At the end, you get more varieties from the Paz or the KnK. So that’s how I justify my need for an expensive machine. I’m not sure if tight wad me can do it… hand over my $$ {::SMILES}.

I have a few things to share today. First it is this beautiful M card. What do you think? Since I was working at home today, instead of the regular lunch, we did arts and craft for lunch. We liked {::SMILES}. M used the Embrace life stamp for this, SU markers, ribbon, sticker, buttons and glue glitter. She tied the ribbon all by herself and I had no say or help in this piece of work. I think she’ll be quite the paper crafter one day {::SMILES}.

Here’s my version of it. Not so nice I think. Hers is more original where mine was a combo of my version of Mojo Monday’s sketch and SCS’s colors: barely banana, chocolate chip, and groovy guava.

Since on work at home day I start work super early, I got done early too and made this video while I was in the video editing groove. I have a new laptop, work laptop, and had to test out the video codec and set up my video compression apps on my new toy. So, I just continued on with my video experimentation and finished the day off with a personal video.

This is my first video editing from my camcorder so be nice - not super great… just not sure where my hand, items, etc. was in the shoot. Plus the lighting wasn’t so great. I created this video so that I can show you how to create scallops using a corner rounder. I thought everybody knows how to do this until I met up with people at the lss and each time I’m the only one who knows how to. So here it is:

Just to clarify, you need a corner rounder that looks like the below:

See how you can remove the bracket?

When you’re punching, make sure that you overlap from one scallop to another for nice waves. Test it out on some scrap paper. I think you’ll like it.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me personally or via a forum how I print my wallet size photos or how to print a wallet size photos without paying the wallet size price and the extras. How do I do it? Like the below video!

I did the editing in Photoshop but this is a very basic concept and so any photo editing software should be able to resize and drop a few photos into a 4×6 work area. Don’t have a photo editing software? Try Gimp. It’s free! Hope this helps!

Ok… I got into my craft room yesterday. It was only for five minutes but I did make a card. Yeah!!! One more night, I know, and I get my craft room back {::SMILES}.

Here’s another video I want to share. It’s my first M video. I’ve made many videos of her but not one to publish to the world. I thought, since her picture is on almost all my pages and I’m posting them all over the place, why the heck not.

So here she is… the chatterbox. This is what she does everyday, make things up as she goes. This is her very new bike. Grandma and grandpa had to spoil her. We didn’t get her one because… we have no place to ride it besides the garage. We live on 1/2 mile of gravel road. But, they got her one and M’s just super happy with it.

After the bike we played school but somebody was just not cooperating! Ok, have a great rest of the day! More later… hopefully with something else but digital {::SMILES}.

I used a Flip recorder for this. My unit purchased three of them for faculty check-out. I’ve recorded and emailed myself the video using it’s software but uhmmm… I’m not sure where the email is. Lost in AOL land. So far I’m not too impress with the software but the recorder itself is pretty nice. The image is better than I expected it to be. I used iMovie to edit this. I’ll have a better report after I play with it a little more.

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.

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!!

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!

Made a quick page using Tara Sroka’s elements, Day by Day and Weather Forecast, lines, some brushes and fonts. I love M’s picture too. I love her look and how she pops against the sephia-ish, almost b/w, background. It was really easy to do too. I’ll show you how later! This layout has no drop shadow effect. For graphic style pages, I don’t use drop shadows. I want it to look flat, magazine style flat.

I created this video based on this layout. I did however edit this layout more after I ended the video — this is the final result. I probably spent no more than 10 minutes adding the journaling and readjusting the different layers just a tad. The video was a 13 minute video but since it’s just a demo, I fast forwarded it and now it’s a six minute-ish video. I added music too, so watch out, turn your speakers down a bit. I found a podsafe site that I like with a great amount of options. I’m trying to be compliant here with the whole copyright thing. I’ve also figured out the best settings for my video output. This 6 min. video with audio is only a tad over 13 megs. Not bad {::SMILES}.

So enjoy. This video might not be considered a tutorial since it is quick but I hope it will give you a good idea on what digital scrapbooking is and a glimpse on how I work Photoshop. Oh, always remember to create a new layer each time you use a new brush style or new angle. It’s easier to delete this way. The guidelines going around the page, that’s to help me see the 1/4″ margin for printing purposes. I use WHCC and I need to give them 1/4″ for cutting. I still get a 12×12 page. If you don’t know them, try them. They are awesome. Super fast (it’s the quick UPS they use), the print quality is great and for less than $4 ($12 min.) you get a printed digi page shipped free. Oh, one of the guys who packs (Brad I think — I can’t find his card that he stuck in there, the packed by …. card), he always puts a sucker in the box for M, so sweet!

Shortcut keys used:

- Alt/Option with scroll button to magnify an area (same as the navigation function)
- Ctrl - T to transform
- Ctrl - C and V to copy and past
- Ctrl - (–) zoom out

Two in one tutorial. Since I fail to create one last week, I tried but it just didn’t come out right, here’s a combo video.

Before you create an action, decide what you want to record first and then practice. Write down the exact settings (unlike me who just likes to wing it) and then record your steps/technique. You might find yourself buying less and less actions {::SMILES}.

A little story… yesterday I received a call from the Nielsen ratings folks. I was feeling in the mood for a survey so I went through the process. The first question was:

Nielsen: Have you watched a movie at the movie theatre in the last six months
Savitri: No
N: In the last 12 months?
S: Yes
N: I’m going to go through a list of movies and you say or no on whether or not you’ve seen any of them.
S: Ok
N: Something or something
S: Never heard
N: Something and something again
S: Wow, I don’t know that movie
N: Something, something, and something
S: (thinking: finally a movie I’ve heard of) No
N: Something, something, something, and something
S: N
N: Harry Potter - the last one
S: No
S: Hey look, I’ve only seen one movie in the last 12 months. Can I just give you the title and you look it up and mark it for me?
N: Uhmm, oh yeah, sure

One minute later he came back — wow, must have been a list!

After the call, I think the dude was probably thinking, “Wow, weird family.” We don’t have cable/satellite service, we have no Hi Def anything, we don’t download music/movies, we rarely go to the movies, we mostly rent kids DVDs, and I’m on the Internet A LOT.

I created this to help a new user at SCS. I’ll be creating a Photoshop tutorial too this week. Stay tune!

Oh, in the user control panel there is a profile picture and an avatar. I think most of you know what an avatar is but if you don’t, it’s the little image that shows up under your username (if you added one of course) each time you post in the gallery or the forum. The profile image can be larger and you can only view this if you go to your profile page.

Again, I created this using the SplitCoast site, but, this pretty much works for the majority of other forums/galleries. The big difference is that in others outside SCS, to get to the control panel you just click on the “User CP.”

My friend asked me how to add the keyword to a card she created for a challenge and that’s how this tutorial came about. I hope others will find this useful also.

Note: This tutorial applies to all galleries that has a keyword options. After submitting to all sorts of gallery, it seems like most use the same photo application and if not, the idea is the same. Some have the keyword before the upload, some after, you just have to get use to each system’s settings.

Haven’t done any scrapbooking or card making in the last few days. I’ve just been doing a lot of housework including gardening and shopping for the basement. I’ll add more stuff later and I have an awesome news to share.