Christmas journal so far

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Suzanne

I’ve taken some pics of the physical journal in progress and uploaded them to Flickr. I had purchased a “Christmas Art Journal” from Evalicious (which are sold out, but you can still see them at that link), so a lot of the paper I’m using is from that. I’m using some overlays designed by Ali Edwards, which I’m printing on matte photo paper. The library card that I’m using for journaling is a freebie that I found here, I modified it in Photoshop to add the red December “stamp.”

A lot of my photos are either going to be taken with the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone, or I’m using my “real” camera (which I found…) and using some kind of an action to “age” them — the photos for the 4th are modified using the Seventies action from The Pioneer Woman.

I’m trying not to be too precious about this project — not agonizing over choices, just picking things up and doing. Now that I have figured out what I’m doing, and have done some prep, I can take as little or as long as I like with each day.

Some of the “topics” for each day are from the Journal Your Christmas class by Shimelle. Once you have paid for the class, you are in it forever, and she keeps updating and changing it every year. There is a lot of inspiration. Some of the prompts aren’t interesting to me or don’t apply or whatever — so those days, I’m just doing whatever I want, in this case…the treadmill just got set up, so this seemed like a good day to talk about our early Christmas presents…

And yes, I asked for a treadmill for Christmas. But dang!! You have to be coordinated and concentrate when you are on that. I hope I don’t hurt myself….

That time of year

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Suzanne

Leaves on the trees,

Tractor in the field,

Dandelions in the yard.

More 10 year old artwork

Posted on April 3, 2010 by Suzanne

My sister sent Joe and Will her old video camera. I promptly forgot about it, but this week, Mark mentioned it, and of course the boys wanted it. They haven’t done much in the way of movies, but they’ve taken a bunch of stills. After I taught them how to import the photos onto the computer, one of them remembered that I had let them play with Photoshop one time. I think he was particularly taken by the distortion effects. I showed them how to get the photo open in Photoshop, told them not to save over their original file and pretty much walked away.

Here’s Cocoa straight out of the camera, contemplating the great outdoors:

And here’s Cocoa, contemplating a black hole:

Here’s a picture that Will took of the McD’s toy he got Thursday night:

And here’s Joe’s version, that he titled Dragon Slayer:

As I said, I walked away, he figured out all of that on his own. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with as he continues to play.

Today’s Photoshop/Photoshop Elements/Any photo editing software tip:

As long as you don’t save over your original image file, you really can’t mess it up. Use the undo, use the history feature to back up, use layers if appropriate, and just CLICK on the buttons and try them out. Don’t be afraid to dive in and try things out.

Attack of the something or other

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Suzanne

We know for sure that Will had strep throat — the positive culture at the doctor’s office said so.

We’re pretty sure that when Joe spiked a fever last night, he’d finally succumbed. (Joe, does your throat hurt? No. Well, only when I swallow…) Actually, we knew even before we saw the thermometer — Joe got COLD, and put on his sweatshirt, and Joe NEVER gets cold. He wanders around here in our 60-62ish house temperature with barefeet and short sleeves…

Me? I don’t know what’s wrong. My throat is a LITTLE sore. My stomach hurt a LITTLE bit this morning, and my head hurts just a bit, too. On the other hand, everything’s dry, and I often have a bit of a sore throat, and gee, my stomach is always betraying me, and the fact that my neck is in desperate need of adjustment, just might have somthing to do with the headache.

Whatever’s wrong with me, it got me out of going grocery shopping. Ha. Mark had to go, and all by himself, couldn’t talk Will into joining him. I stayed home and snoozed, read my book, watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica (and cried at the end), and sewed.

And I seem to be feeling better, so I should probably go to bed NOW so that I get plenty of sleep and continue to feel better…Rather than staying awake until all hours playing with Photoshop, even though I’m dying to do so. I’ve already learned some really cool stuff from my new book — I want to keep going!

Of course, it would be nice if I had some decent pictures to work on. Every single one I’ve taken in the last 2 days has been blurry. The least blurry picture I took was one of Katie.