What's new at The Loft - Episode 9

Welcome back!

REMINDER, The Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild is having its first general meeting on TONIGHT February 23rd at the Milk & Honey Tea Room, 2092 Busch Blvd., Tampa, FL 33612. We are very happy to have Jill Haglund, CEO and Creative Director of Tweety Jill Publications as the speaker for our inaugural event. The meeting is from 7 - 8:30 PM and costs $5.00. There will door prizes, show & tell and much more. Anyone interested can reserve their spot by calling 813-404-5165 or by visiting http://www.tampabayscrapbookingguild.com/

To check out some of Jill Haglund's work please visit http://www.tweetyjill.com/.

ATC 3.6.5. Challenge

I've noticed a trend in myself lately.  I don't want to say I'm slapping cards together, because I'm not doing that but I have been in a habit of trying to put together a card as quickly as possible so I can get it done and move on to other things.  I know this is because there are other things going on right now and I had been dealing with a bad cold a good part of last week.  But I've also noticed I've taken to a trend of oversimplifying them.  I'm still going through magazines to find new and interesting backgrounds, and images but it seems I spend more of my time doing this than actually developing the card.  That's not to say I think that the cards I've created lately are bad ones, but they are rather the product of a repetitiveness to the process.  In the future I'd like to explore more with image transfers, pastels and paints, and spend less time flipping through magazines. We'll see how that goes.


 

My card from 2/17 is called "Vanity" and was made by cutting a printed background from my daily scrapbooking calendar and adhering it to the card.  The image of the girl was cut from a magazine and adhered to the top.  I next printed and cut the words out in blocks.  C.R. 3.0

My card from 2/18 is called "Be yourself" and I started making this card by using my Neo II watercolor crayons to paint the background.  I then detail cut the image from a magazine and adhered on top.  The title was cut from text filled scrapbook paper. C.R. 3.0

My card from 2/19 is called "As Lovely as a Tree".  For something different I left the background blank on this card.  I then made the tree by cutting and trimming the leaves from some Basic Grey paper.  The tree trunk was also cut from the same paper and assembled and glued the tree down.  I then chose a quote and wrote it around and inside the tree.  The quote reads:   "I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree - Alfred Joyce Kilmer.   C.R. 4.5

My card from 2/20 is called "The Reviews are in" and was made by adhering an ATC paper that I took from my ATC pack.  The text shown "Entertainment Guide" served as the inspiration as I then detail cut an image of a silent movie actress, the name of which is escaping me at the moment.  I then colored the image using some of my Stencil Collection chalks, then added a little bling by using a rose star Gelly roll pen on her lips and a clear star Gelly Roll pen to her hat.  I then very lightly edged the card with some red Stencil Collection chalk. C.R. 2.0

My card from 2/20 is called "Pixie" and I made this by first coloring the background with a sky blue Crayola watercolor pencil and added water to paint it.  After drying I then stamped the image of the pixie with her fairy dust trail using a black Ranger archival ink pad.  I then colored in the image with pink, purple, peach, orange and brown Crayola watercolor pencils and lightly applied water to these areas to smooth out the color.  To add a little bling I added stardust Stickles to the fairy dust and golden rod Stickles to the wings and to make the sun in the corner.  My daughter loves this stamp so the C.R. was 5.0.  My rating would have been more in the 3 range.

My card from 2/22 is called "Born to Shop" and was made by taking an interesting magazine ad and using it for the background. I then did a close cut, but not detailed one on the image of the woman, which was taken from my Tweety Jill collage pack.  I then created the title using some letter stickers.  C.R. 3.5

Update on Daughter # 1's Bedroom Redecoration

Well I'm happy to say that we did finish getting up the paintable wallpaper this weekend and managed to get the first coat of the new color on the paintable wallpaper as well.    Look for pictures to come soon.

Visual Poetry Photomanipulation 2 class update - Week 3

Ok so I did fall behind a little this week on class stuff.  Mostly because I was sick and didn't feel like sifting through dozens and dozens of images in my computer to find ones I think would be suitable for this weeks assignments.  I've actually completed assignment 1 and 2 but I'm not crazy about assignmet 2 and I would like to find another photo and redo it.  With my limited time lately I haven't been able to go out and shoot some new pictures and I really need to do that. 

Assigment 1 this week was about painting with light using a linear dodge.  I chose a bowl of strawberries that I took during my first digital photography class. 

Here's the before picture

And here's the after picture

You can see what a real difference it makes by adding some light to the left side of the strawberries.

Assignment 2 was on how to create a pseudo infrared photo.  Here's what I've done with the technique, but overall I'm not happy with this and will probably redo. 

Here's the before photo:

Here's the after:

It's a dramatic difference but I think I may have pushed my settings too far.  I hope I can get out sometime this weekend and get some new photo's. 

Well I'm off for now.  As always your comments are welcome so please feel free to drop me a line or two, and tell me what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you come back soon.