when I can paper scrap …

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to win one of the random draws at the BPS Festival and last week I received a box which contained a lovely kit from American Crafts.  I can’t do anything with them at the moment because my house renovations have not reached my craft space yet and I don’t have my stash or tools here.

I’ve had a whole series of delays as all my tradespeople seem prone to injury – really it could be written up as a farce.  So lots of waiting.  My Mum had been commiserating with me about the latest delays when I showed her my prize and she laughed and pointed to one of the rub-ons and said this is appropriate – la la la – sitting waiting, drumming your fingers on the table.  Then we saw there was a button with la la la too.

So when all the work is done and I can paper scrap I will make a layout about the delays called la la la. 

I love how elements can be interpreted in ways not originally intended.

photo a day week 34

Hadn’t realised until I put them together how many were of food.  Weather in the last few days suggest these may be the last pictures of summer.

1. apples from trees in my parents’ garden

2. paint colour tests (green and pink in office/craft room other 2 are possibilities for the living room)

3. 99 cone on the beach (is the a UK thing?)

4. raindrops on the washing line

5. Tuesday is 2 for 1 pizza night

6. using the garden as a carpentry workshop

7. masses of swans on the river – they have been moulting at the river mouth

digi art – power of words

I really enjoyed exploring what I can do in Photoshop elements to create a piece rather than a layout.  I used this as my medium for creativity bootcamp and wanted to play some more. 

I was delighted to find the challenges on Inspiration Avenue which call for a piece in any medium.  The prompt this week is ‘power of words’.  I used a photo on my sister’s cat – halfway through I realised that while his ginger parts stood out well, the white parts were more of a challenge.

challenged

I visit way more scrapping/photo/journaling challenge sites than I respond to.  I find that if I don’t get an immediate spark then I don’t return to it either.

This week the spark was there when I read the digidares challenge.  The subject was water – which I love and one component was to split the photo and I knew I had a template for that from Mel.  The other components were challenging (which is good).  The instruction was to use as least 3 blues and that is not my favourite colour and also to use a wave or splash or water droplets and I don’t usually use those kinds of elements.  Having a one word title was the final instruction and I was OK with that. 

So here is what I created

the journaling reads

I like to walk by the sea regularly, weekly if possible.  There is something about the sea that recharges my energy and makes me feel good. I know some people get this from trees and some from mountain tops but for me it is the sea. Wild or calm I like the sea, I like the sound of the waves breaking and I like the ever changing nature of the surface.   It is this self realisation that prompted me to look for my new home in a suburb near the shore.
August 2010

credits – split photo template from I Speak Melsh (free); waves are one of the shapes within PSE; font for title is hand me down; brush behind journaling from Shadowhouse Creations (free)

mosaic to layout

I decided to turn the mosaic of photos from the Fringe that I posted yesterday into a layout.  I’ve been playing with overlay techniques in Photoshop Elements and used one for the background.  I also discovered recently the magic eraser tool and applied it to a wordle to use for the journaling/title. 

 

I’ve started to add month and year to every layout as a useful piece of information.  So far I’ve been using the month which relates to when the photos were taken.  Do you include a date on all your layouts?

Fringe festival fun and a freebie

 

The High Street turns into a free performance space during the Fringe festival as performers tout for an audience. 

I love all the fun and zany ways that people are dressed and the things they do to attract attention.  Here is a mosaic of interesting sights I snapped in an hour last week.

Often I use Picasa to create a mosaic but his time I wanted an unusual overall shape so I created it in Photoshop Elements. 

If you’d like to use this template that I created in Photoshop Elements, you can download it for free here.  The zip contains 3 versions – the right length for A4, US Letter and 30cm (12 inch). 

To see more mosaics check out Little Red House for her Mosaic Monday

photo a day week 33

more birds, more house renovation milestones and some oats

1. all the components for my kitchen, delivered in flatpack boxes

2. porridge (with sugar and cream) from a stall at the Farmers’ market

3. one of the young seagulls I can see from my window [hard to see – bottom left]

4. swans on the river

5. met up with an old Uni friend who was in town

6. clouds over Arthur’s Seat

7. my new wardrobes in place

inspiring sunset

felt the urge to scrap today (on the computer) and pulled out some photos I took in May when I had a week on the beach after working in Canberra (Australia) before returning to Scotland – just to explain why there are pelicans in the photos. 

I used one of the fabulous free templates from Katie Pertiet – she creates one most weeks for the Sunday Challenges on Designer Digitals.

I also used this layout for the challenge at ARTastic which uses a famous painting each month as its inspiration point – this month it is a sunset by Monet.  I just discovered this challenge site this month – I like the idea and that there is a month to respond.

Journaling reads

Pelicans were the stand out stars of my week on the coast east of Canberra.

I love their silhouette, - it is so distinctive flying and standing on posts, as they do a lot even though they are big.

They look graceful gliding over the water but on land they are awkward and they make a big splash when coming into land on the water

I had stunning sunny weather and lots of light sparkling on the sea which seemed to stretch out for ever.

A relaxing and refreshing week.

photowalk

in July I went on an organised photowalk – 20 of use following the same route and taking lots of photos then finishing up in  a bar to chat and look at the back of cameras (and there was a lot of conversation heavy in numbers – lens, exposure etc).

Really interesting to see what other people focus on, how they set up shots etc.  Here are my favs from the 140 that I took.  All have had some photoshop work on them. 

people hanging out in Hunter Square

cobbles on the Mile

I had to wait quite a while for some empty space around the bollards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Princes Street gardens have long rows of benches – loved the tunnel effect

This is my favourite – and it looks much better sepia than colour.  A typical sight in the gardens – lots of people use the grass to sit and read.

Just realised all of these are looking down – I did take a whole lot looking up as well – I need to go through and pull out a set of those ones.

Photo a day week 32

A combination of progress on my flat and visits to the Festivals.

1 – the floor was laid in my bedroom – planks made from bamboo

2 – went for a walk along the firth – amazing light blurred the water, sky and far shore

3- the festival cavalcade involves the bands from the tatoo – amazinghow many different pipe bands there are

4 – an example of the energy and choice at the fringe – a board covered in flyers

5 – my street was full of yellow vehicles as they dug up and then re-surfaced the road

6 – using a hotair gun to strip the old paint from a door – wonderful machines

7 – more fringe, all at one venue which has a mass of different performance spaces as shown on the signpost

bunting

template by K Pertiet at Designer Digitals

Getting back into some digi scrapping in amongst the house decorating (or stripping what was there before) .  Jumped started by two challenges – scrap weekly in 2010 challenge to use bunting on the page and the template is this weeks template challenge on Designer Digitals.

Bunting is a fixture of all the local festivals around here – does it feature in your local festivals?

39 project ideas for FREE

 

Have you signed up for the Big Picture Scrapbooking Big Idea Festival ?  Its FREE, starts on Thursday this week, goes for 13 days and has ideas from 13 different instructors, 39 project ideas, daily challenges and its FREE. 

 

short and sweet

when the flower fell

its vibrancy remained

caught on the step

 

[This week Rinda was inspored by the blogging Bradleys to prompt us all to post a photo with a haiku.  This photo was taken on the photo walk I did last month]

week 31 – photo a day

really is festival season in Edinburgh – first the local festival and then the start of the big festival season – I expect these will feature again over the next few weeks.  I love the energy in the city while the festivals are on and you never know what you’ll see just wandering around town

 

1. junior pipe band in local fancy dress parade

2. front of official parade – ‘honest lad’ has the flag

3. bridge to my parents’ house is finally crossable by car after 8 months

4. went to ‘pick your own fruit’ - yum

5. Dad’s garden has abundance for people (apples) and butterflies (stinging nettles)

6. enjoying a warm afternoon at my sister’s with no rain

7. jazz festival concert by Chris Barber band – great toe tapping

‘blackboards’

while looking for large wall decal I came across a number that are ‘blackboards’.  The inverted commas are because they now seem to be called ‘wet wipe’ boards and you can buy pens to use instead of chalk.

These two etsy shops caught my eye

 Signs by SJ has perpetual calendars and also labels for boxes etc

Bradens Grace has notice boards in various shapes as well as labels

I also love these dry erase boards

by Simple Shapes, and they do a perpetual calendar too

And my last word on decals {for now} I love these by Ellynelly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but they are not making any at the moment while they move to Australia.

I think I need more walls so that I can use all of these decals as well as having furniture and art against walls.

trees on the wall

Having shared the dandelion and urbanesque decals in my shortlist here are the trees that caught my eye to bring some oomph to my white bathroom.  All of them allow choice of colour.  [click image for link]

Decor Designs

Decor Designs

Decor Designs

Decor Designs

NouWall

NouWall

Nou Wall

Designed Designer

Stickerbrand

Way too many on this shortlist.  Next I need to map out what else will be on that wall and how each shape will fit in the space.  All of these have sizes in feet and inches which I can’t visualise so I also need to convert them to metric – all good brain gym.

looking at large wall decals

I’m realising that decorating the house means a lot of time scouring through brochures and websites looking for the thing that I want or that grabs me.

I’ve also realised that some aspects of house decoration leave me cold.  Really I cannot get excited about bathroom ‘furniture’ – as long as the basin, toilet and shower work then I’m happy.  Perhaps part of the problem is that it is all white and I just do not get excited by white.

So I decided to liven up the bathroom by putting a large decal on one of the empty walls.  Which meant several hours browsing various etsy shops and looking at an amazing range of ideas.

My favourites fall into three groups – trees; dandelion; urban [click image for link]

today I’m sharing the dandelions and the urban ones –

Decor Designs

Decor Designs

Chuck E Byrd

Lewa’s designs

Qinqin decal

Qiqin Decal

Decals Murals

hard enough choosing between these – wait til you see the trees in the next post!