Saturday, February 27, 2010

What's new at The Loft - Episode 10

Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild Inaugural Event

Our kick off event took place Tuesday night at the Milk & Honey Tea Room and was a big success. We had a great turn out and our guests enjoyed tea and awesome scones while we introduced our Board members, talked about the Guild and its purpose and inducted new members.  Our speaker Jill Haglund, better known as "Tweety Jill" was a real hit and gave an entertaining talk about her start in the business. Jill then conducted a make and take of playing card ATC's with part of the group, while the others enjoyed our show and tell presentation.

Here are some photo's from the event.

Guild President - Teri Morrow


Guests enjoying tea and scones






Fun at the make and take




















          Jill
       leading
       the make
       and take









Jill is so awesome!!!



Show and Tell time



The Board of Directors with Tweety Jill (that's me next to Jill on the right)


Jill was kind enough to pose with me for a photo holding my make and take ATC.  I have close ups of the ATC below.




Janet, our lovely host from the Milk & Honey Tea Room


and Janet's mom, our other gracious host.


ATC 3.6.5. Challenge


Here's my Tweety Jill ATC made on 3/23.  This is a 2 sided ATC made using a playing card.  This side was made using some polka dotted paper for the background, layered with a script pattened paper.  The script paper was edged with red ink and then glued at an angle on top of the polka dotted paper.  The script paper was then stamped with a chicken wire stamp in black ink and a chicken stamp in a brown ink.  Added on top was a silver ring tag stamped with a egg farm stamp in black ink.


Here's the back:

The back of the card was the number side of the card layered with a strip of red polka dotted paper.  On top it was stamped with more chicken wire in black ink, another chicken stamp, and a ticket stamp in black.  Added on top were some bingo card numbers. I even had Jill sign the card as a souvenir for me.  C.R. 5.0








My card from 2/24 is called "Spring Flowers" and was made by painting the background with a Neo II water color crayon in sky blue, and adding water to even out the color.  Next I took a coffee filter and sprayed it with meadow green Glimmer mist.  Once dried I cut a few strips out of this, and rolled into a tube and flattened to form the stems. I then cut two more strips and folded in half to make some spiked leaves. I then cut a larger strip and folded in half and put it into a rose leaf punch. One important thing I learned is that you cannot get a clean punch from a single layer of a coffee filter. However when I folded it over and had a double layer it punched cleaner. It still wasn't perfect, but I was able to get a good amount of leaves.  the stems and the leaves were then glued down to form the base of the bouquet.  Next I made each of the flowers buds by Glimmer Misting 5 coffee filters in bright spring colors.  To make the flowers I cut a wedge from each of the colored filters.  I wrapped them until it formed what looked like a flower.  Each flower as it was made was then glued down at the top of a stem.  Lastly I finished the leaves by taking a Martha Stewart fine tipped marker and drawing the leaf veins on. C.R. 5.0



My card from 2/25 is called "Enjoy the Journey" and was created using a layering technique.  I stared by adhering striped paper to the background and then edge with dark blue chalk ink.  I then took a antique looking postcard paper and ripped it into a strip exposing the white core.  I thin inked the edges with red chalk ink.  From here I detail cut the image of the woman from an Anthropologie catalog.  I then stamped a postage stamp, and the title stamp in black ink.  C.R. 3.5


Well that's all I have for today.  Feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

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.


Thursday, February 18, 2010

What's new at The Loft - Episode 8

Welcome back!

As a reminder, The Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild is having its first general meeting on 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 been so busy that I’m a little behind on posting the cards I've been doing for the challenge. Sorry about that.  The good news is that I’m still keeping up with making a card a day. My dilemma now though, is where to store all the cards I've made. Up until this point I have been storing them in an acid free photo box but now that I’ve filled that up I have to find something else. 7 Gypsies has an ATC system that reminds me of a rolodex tilted on its side, but I don't really want that .  Temporarily I just wanted some baseball card sleeve pages that fit into a three ring binder.  Strangely though these are a little hard to find around here. I’m not totally convinced these would work either since some of my cards use pop up dots and are thicker than a traditional baseball card, but I think it's worth a try.

The Experience so far

What I really love about making these cards is you can make them as simple or as difficult as you want.  I also like that the level of difficulty in making the card doesn't necessarily translate to a good card in my opinion.  Some of the simplest cards I've made are the ones I like the most.  Of course whether a card is good or not is a subjective argument when it comes to others who look at your work.  One may look at a card and love it, while another may hate it and that's ok. 

With that being said, I can honestly say I don't always like the cards I make.  I am usually my harshest critic and there have been a few cards that I would consider in the "do over" category.  These are cards that I wanted to do over because I just didn't like the way it turned out.  There is one in this post that I was tempted to actually make a "do over" but as my husband pointed out, this challenge isn't just about making a card everyday that has to be the best, it's about improving skills, learning new techniques and finding out what works and what doesn't.  Cards that are in the "do over" category are examples of what I think didn't work and from that I can take away new knowledge and understanding of the whys and hows, namely why it didn't work and how I could fix it.  This analyzing process has now carried over to the cards I do like. When I look at a card I like my first thoughts now become what elements do I like about this card, and why does it work?  My family has also become a great sounding board for constructive criticism.

But enough of my yammering let's move on to the cards ...


The card I created on 2/10 is called “Love”. I started this card by cutting out the background from a daily scrapbooking calendar, which included the word love. The candy hearts, small and large, were detail cut from another page of the calendar. The large heart was adhered to the red heart on the background with a pop up dot, and the smaller hearts were individually glued down as a border at the top. I ran the pink trim through my Xyron, and glued it down along the bottom edge of the card. I then used some tombow metal glue to adhere the brass XOXO to the card. C.R. 2.5


My card from 2/11 is called "The Maid of Orleans".  I was watching a rerun of a show I love called "Wire in the Blood" (originally aired on BBC) about a criminal psychologist who works with the police to catch serial killers with his uncanny ability to get into the minds of victims and the killers.  In the episode I was watching the killer was a religous fanatic and had delusions of divine influence to kill victims as a means of cleansing them of their sins.  Many comparisons in the episode were made to Joan of Arc. Bing! Somewhere a light bulb just clicked on, and I immediately went online in search of a picture.  This portrait I found online of Saint Joan inspired the rest of this simple concept.  I started by cutting a background from some purple diamond patterned paper, and then piece cut the portrait and adhered on top.  Next I printed out the french spelling of Joan of Arc's name, along with a nickname she was known by and glued it onto the card.  to me this is an example of a simple card that works.  C.R. 4.0.


My card from 2/12 is called "Sweep".  I love the winter Olympics because it's generally the only time I usually get to watch curling.  Growing up in the north, I used to think curling was a rather ridiculous sport, but then I watched a movie called "Men with Brooms" which made the sport look rather exciting.  Of course in movies, even something mundane can be made to look exciting, so when some real curling showed up on late night tv one night I decided to check it out and see if this sport could really be that exciting.  I won't lie, the real curling match wasn't as dramatic as the movie, but I did find myself getting into it.  Once I understood the rules I gained a real appreciation for the skill it takes, and the strategy involved.  The 2006 games in Torino, Italy turned me into a full fledged fan.  I even turned my husband into a fan. I was so excited for the opening of this Olympics' curling competition that I took off a 1/2 day from work on Tuesday so I could go home and watch.  Since curling is generally a sport that doesn't get primetime coverage (it generally gets a lot of overnight coverage) my DVR has been working overtime  But in getting back to my card depicting a sport I love, I'm sorry to say it turned out to be one of those cards showing what doesn't work.  What went wrong?  Simply enough rock candy Stickles on top of an ink jet photograph don't work well together. Instead of creating this glossy, ice kind of look, it just smeared the ink.  Lesson learned.  C.R. 1.0


My card from 2/13 is called "One in a million" and was very simply made by cutting the background from some cute Bisous PDQ paper, and then detail cut the flower from the reverse side and glued on top.  At the top I added the title cut from some Theresa Collins paper.  I love these double sided papers from PDQ because they are so versatile.  C.R. 4.0





For 2/14 card I obviously chose a Valentine's Day theme.  My card is called "To My Husband".  To make this card I started by spraying the background with scarlet Glimmer mist.  I then printed the personal sentiment in a fun, heart filled font on a piece of white cardstock and roughly cut it out a little smaller than the card size.  Next I took a distress tool to the edges of the cardstock.  I then sprayed the printed white cardstock with vintage pink Glimmer mist.  Once dry I colored in all the hearts on the words with a red Zig marker.  I then inked the edges of the cardstock with red brick Distress ink.  This was then glued on top of the card, and embellished with a gold heart button with the shank cut off.  A simple card to make and I'm happy to say my hubby loved it.  C.R. 4.0.

My card (sorry for the poor picture quality) from 2/15 is called "Twelfth Night" and was created
by cutting the background from some cute Jennie Bowlin ledger paper.  I then detail cut the image of the woman from a free collage sheet I found on the internet.  The image was in black and white so to give her some colored I added my Stencil Collection pastel chalks, and some Gelly Roll Star pens. Next I hand wrote the quote from Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night and then embellished with a red butterfly I cut from some Tweety Jill collage paper.   C.R 3.0



My card from 2/16 is called "Truly Adore You" (sorry, I'm not sure what happened to the bottom of the photograph) and was made by cutting the background from my daily scrapbook calendar and adherering it to the card.  I then detail cut the lady from my Tweety Jill collage pack and glued her onto the background.  Next I cut out the title from some labels to a scrapbook page by Teresa Collins.  Lastly I embellished with a few light pink self adhesive pearls.  C.R. 4.0




Update on Daughter #1's bedroom redecoration

After we finished painting the upper portion of the room, I had a lot of touch up to do.  I spent a few hours on Saturday doing that.  Sunday morning I went out to my Mom's and took her out for a Valentine's Day brunch and when I got home, hubby and I began the task of putting up the new wallpaper on the bottom half of the room. 

Since we got such a late start we were only able to get one wall completely done and part of another wall.  This was also due to some issues we were having with the new paper and the old paper we laid it on top of.  While putting the new paper on top of the old paper we noticed that in some places it was causing the old paper underneath to bubble, even though the previous paper had been smooth to the wall before we started.  This was driving us nuts because we thought we were doing something wrong in not being able to smooth out the new paper.  It was in our frustration that we pulled the new paper down and realized it was the paper underneath that was bubbling.  We tried to work out this problem several different ways but finally we gave into our frustration and just put a new piece of wallpaper on top of the old and decided to live with the bubbles.  Besides the bubbles we were bothered by the fact that the old paper underneath was showing through more than we expected.  However  since we were most likely going to be painting the new paper (color to be determined) we didn't stress it too much and moved on.

The paper we chose is a paintable paper that we got at Lowe's that looks like Wainscoting.  Here is a close up of the pattern.


This is pre-pasted paper and after we began putting it in the water to activate the paste we also noticed that the lines had turned almost brown.  We weren't happy with this either but as mentioned before we were goint to paint over it so it didn't really matter.  Once we finshed the putting up the small amount we had done, we decided to stop and wait until it everything dried to see how the paper looked.  After a few hours we went back up to check on the paper, and we were pleasantly surprised at how good it looked (below).  We are hoping to have the rest of the paper up this weekend.


I always look at redecoration projects in two parts, the work and the fun.  Work is the prep, painting & wallpaper, and the fun is new bedding, furniture, accessories.  The work is almost done, and then the fun can begin. Of course once this project is done then it's on to the kitchen. 

Well I'm off for now.  Feel free to leave your comments.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

What's new at The Loft Ep. 7

REMINDER: The Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild is having it's first general meeting on 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/.

Exciting News:

I'm so happy and proud to announce that my very talented friend Kelly Boyden, owner of Ensemble Paper Arts has just been chosen to teach at the Donna Downey Inspired Artist Workshop 2010 from May 13 - 15 in Concord, NC.  Kelly is going to be teaching a class for a book she created called Everyday Memories Mini (ideas and memory jogger).   It's the cutest book!! 

I've taken many classes from Kelly and just love her creative spirit and enthusiasm and she's always a source of inspiration for me.  WAY TO GO KELLY!!!!!!   


ATC 3.6.5 Challenge Update:

My card from 2/8 is called "Free Spirit".  I started this card by cutting a background out of a sky blue paper with kites on it by Best Creations, Inc..  I love this paper and have used it to make a few cards already.  Next I detail cut the houses and a tree from some cute Heidi Grace Designs paper and glued them down along the bottom edge of the card.  Next I then detail cut the girl from a page from the 2009 Scrapbooking Daily Calendar and adhered her on top of the houses.  The girl is a lot larger than the houses and by placing her on top of the houses and not showing her full image, it gives the card some dimension and perspective.  I then detail cut the kite from the same paper as the background and adhere it to the upper right edge of the card.  Lastly I stamped out the title using little wood mounted rubber alpha stamps.  I bought this stamp set from Michael's really cheap a long time ago and love them.  The quality of the construction for these little stamps is not great, but for the price I didn't expect them to be.  But I love the font, and they are small enough to keep in my scrapbooking supply kit  C.R. 5.


My card from 2/9 is called "Dance", and I started this card by painting the background with angled lines in red and yellow matte finish Basic acrylic paint.  I made this card kind of quick so I didn't take the time to measure my lines and make sure the radial look was even, but I kind of like the non-uniform look to the background.  While the paint was drying I detail cut the man with the music player from an iTunes gift card.  Since the card was a heavier plastic, I had to use my Tim Holtz scissors on this.  I got these scissors for Christmas and I absolutely love them.  They even cut through 7 Gypsies board with ease.  Once I had my guy cut out I glued him on to the painted background with some Tombow glue.  Finally I stamped the each letter for the title on a different stripe using the same alpha stamps from yesterdays card.  Artistically this was not one of my cleanest efforts but I like the radial background concept and would like to try this again.  C.R. 3.5.



Visual Poetry Photomanipulation 2 with Susan Tuttle - WEEK 2

I've been working on my assignments for week 2 for this class and here are some of what I've done.  With everything that has been going on lately I haven't had an opportunity to go out and take some new photos so I've had to use some of my older photos to work on my assignments.

Assignment one was called Dramatic Still life, in which we had to use fill layers and erasing to highlight the subject.  So for this assignment I chose a close up of an Egret that I took while at Disney's Magic Kingdom park. 
                     

Here's the before shot


And here is the after shot



For assignment 2 this week our project was called flooded with light, and in this lesson we learned how to create a dramatic sunlight effect by using a gradiant fill layer.  For this project I chose a picture I took of some chairs on the beach when we went to Vero Beach, FL a few years ago.

Here is the before photo

I cropped the photo and then after going through the lesson here was my result

Our third assignment this week was called Tinted Grayscale and teaches how to convert a color photograph to grayscale and apply a color tint.  I chose a picture from Disney's Animal Kingdom. 

Here is the before shot.


Here is the after shot.  It's a pretty dramatic change.

Well that's all I have today.  Comments are always welcome so please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think  Thanks so much for stopping by and come back soon!



Sunday, February 7, 2010

What's new at The Loft Ep. 6

REMINDER: The Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild is having it's first general meeting on 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. Any one interested can reserve their spot by calling 813-404-5165 or by visiting "wwww.tampabayscrapbookingguild.com

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

What's new on the blog

I've made a few changes to my blog for better ease of use.  I've added a comment link on the right side for those who'd like to say hi, along with a link to my flickr page so you can see some of my photography work, not only from the photomanipulation class I'm currently taking with Susan Tuttle, but also some of my work prior to taking the class.   Also, if you want to receive my posts to your e-mail, click on the subscriber link below.

ATC 3.6.5 Challenge Update:


My card from 2/5 is called "Hearts Forever", and was made by cutting a colored background from artist paper and adhering it to the card.  Next I detail cut an image from my Tweety Jill vintage collage sheet and glued her on top of the background.  I then cut several hearts in different sizes from some Webster's Pages vellum.  I stacked the smaller ones on top of the larger ones and used a thin pop up dot to put them together.  I then used some black ink to distress teh edges of the hearts.  I found some light pink adhesive pearls and stuck one medium sized pearl on each group of hearts.  I then glued these stacked hearts onto the background.  I then wrote the title on white paper, and cut them out.  I distressed the edges of the titles with brick red Distress ink, and then glued the title down. C.R. 3

For my card from 2/6 called "Altered Cassidy" I used a black and white photograph of my youngest daughter and lightly sanded it before dry brushing a layer of Gesso on top.  Once dry I then outlined the image and added detail with a fine point black marker.
I then took acrylic paint and began coloring in the areas of detail, and used some blue and a little white acrylic paint for the background.  For the skin I used flesh colored pastel chalk.  Once the paint was dry I then went back and added some detail to the hair with a wider point black marker.  C.R. 4

My card from 2/7 is called "Each is one-of-a-kind".  I started by creating a background of turquoise and yellow Adirondack paints, that I blended using a baby wipe.  After this dried, I dabbed some gold Adirondack paint on randomly, only this time I didn't blend it.

When dry I then stamped some flourishes in the corners and randomely on the background of the card with black ink.  Next I detail cut the boys from a Tweety Jill collage page and adhered to the background.  I then cut out the phrase from some patterened paper and glued at the bottom.  C.R. 3







What I've been working on

Since I did my first ATC card using this technique I've become completed addicted to altering magazing photos. 

Here is one I completed on 2/5 during a crafters night




Here is one I started on last Thursday and am almost finished with.  I need to paint the background and then I think I'll add some bling.

These are so easy to do and so much fun.


Update on Daughter #1's bedroom redecoration

We're coming along nicely on our project and managed to finish the second coat of primer and get two coats of the new paint on this weekend.





Here's a picture of the room with the new color. 



Next up is to put new paintable wall paper over the purple checked wallpaper on the bottom half of the walls and paint a darker color.  We haven't bought the paint for this yet, but we're looking at a darker shade, probably a plum or raspberry.

Please feel free to send me a comment, they're always welcome.  Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

What's New At the Loft Ep. 5

Yipee, our technical issues have been resolved. Thanks again for your patience!

REMINDER: The Tampa Bay Scrapbooking Guild is having it's first general meeting on 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. Any one interested can reserve their spot by calling 813-404-5165 or by visiting "wwww.tampabayscrapbookingguild.com
To check out some of Jill Haglund's work please visit http://www.tweetyjill.com



ATC 3.6.5 Challenge Update:


Feb. 3rd's card is called "Mardi Gras" and for this card I took a simple approach. I found some images from a magazine on all the Mardi Gras happenings. I couldn't help but use them, the colors were just magnificent. The yellow border of the card was done with an oil pastel crayon. The jester was adhered using some pop up dots. C.R. 4










The card from 2/4 is called "Best Friends". For this card I started with some grungy plaid paper for the background. I got the image of the child and dog from an ATC paper pack. The corners were cut like a ticket stub using a small round punch, and it was then edged with walnut stain Distress Ink. After I adhered the image I then stamped the paw prints along the right edge. I then adhered the title using pop up dots. The entire edge of the card was then inked with walnut stain Distress ink.







Visual Poetry Photomanipulation 2 with Susan Tuttle

I am really loving this class so far, and looking through our class photo gallery has inspired me, but also made me feel really inadequate. There are so many incredibly talented people in this class and have posted some of the most amazing photos I've ever seen. I can only hope to be that good. Nevertheless I want to share my progress.

Week one started with our first lesson on giving your photo a vintage feel. For my assignment, I used a picture of my daughter Cassidy.


Here is the before shot.










After going through the lesson, and playing with the settings, here is what the photo looked like afterward.








For our second lesson this week it was all about the blur, and applying it selectively to a photo. For this assignment I chose one from some pictures I took at a Tampa Bay Lightning practice session.


Here is the before photo.











Here is the photo after I applied the blur.









For our third lesson this week, we learned how to give your photo a more retro look, by applying a photo filter and adding texture. For this lesson I used a photo of a flag I took at the Florida National Cemetery.




Here is the before photo.



















And here is the after photo, with filters and texture added.













Susan is a such a great teacher, and I'm really liking the supportive environment of the other students in the class. Everyone has been very generous with their comments.

Well that's all I have for today. I'll be at a crafters night tomorrow so my next post won't be until Saturday. As always your comments are welcome so feel free to tell me what's on your mind. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon!