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!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

What's New at the Loft Ep. 4

Update on our technical issues. For followers, past postings and other blogs I follow please scroll down to the bottom with your elevator bar. The right sidebars are there but are still appearing very far down the page. We are still hoping to get this issue resolved soon. 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 www.tampabayscrapbookingguild.com.


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



ATC 3.6.5 Challenge Update:

ATC 3.6.5. Challenge is going great so far, but I'm starting to feel the challenge of making a card per day. Daily life - i.e. job, kids & family, home things and a new online class are making it harder to find the time to do my cards. For something fun though, I thought I would let my 7 year old daughter Cassidy, rate the cards everyday on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being not so great to 5 being absolutely fantastic. So now after the description you will also see C.R. (Cassidy rating)followed by a number. Cassidy really likes ATC's and has made several herself.




My card from 2/1 is called "Lady in Abstract" and was created by stamping an image onto the card with a Versamark pad. I then used silver embossing powder and a heat tool to emboss the image. After that I used several colors from my NEO II watercolor crayons to color in parts of the image and then added water with a brush to thin the color and move it around. C.R. of 3.5.








My card from 2/2 is called "Altered Lady". To create this card I started with a magazine image that I adhered to the card with gel medium. I then dry brushed a light layer of gesso on top of the image. Once the gesso dried I outlined the image in a fine point marker. When doing this I also changed a part of the original image. For example the original image was of a girl with long dark hair, which has now been changed to a short blonde. I then painted in parts of the image using arylic paint. C.R. of 5.





Update on Daughter #1's Room Redecoration

Ok we've been making some progress on the room redecoration but it's been a little slow going. Hubby managed to get all of the border paper off and I taped off the room, but unfortunately it got very cold and we couldn't leave the window open anymore, so we were only able to get one coat of primer on.



Before Primer














After Primer







Tomorrow, I hope to have an update on my Photomanipulation class. So far I've only been able to watch the welcome videos and have a look around our class site. I'll be starting the video lessons, and practical assignments on wednesday.

As always your comments are welcome and appreciated. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.