Train boy

One of my absolute favourite images of Angus at the moment. How he loves his trains, funny little thing!

Watercolours

Yesterday I had the gorgeous pleasure of taking a watercolour class with an artist, Alan Louis. It was an all day class held at my daughter's kindy, which is a tranquil spot overlooking a valley of trees. Oh, bliss! The image above is my masterpiece - it's meant to be two trees reflected in water. "Technique, technique," Alan would say encouragingly, when I despaired my trees looked more like an octupus. Or maybe pink flamingoes.

He suggested I could cut out the middle and call it "Pink Flamingoes"!

The main thing I took away from this class was the idea of what Alan called values. So, when you start with a colour - say blue, and blot it straight on the page, that's a 5. You add water, to make it a 4, and so on, until you get to 1, which is a "wash". "Values, values, values," he'd say, if we moaned about how terrible our shapes were looking! He was such a generous teacher. And funny! You can see some of his incredible work here.

The Energiser Bunny

Aahh... finally I managed to sit down last night and do a fun scrap page! I just grabbed whatever was close to hand and I had this recent photo of Tas doing her thing, madly racing around, singing, bouncing on the couch. I decided to make my own Tim-Holtz style tissue tape, by covering an A4 thick (80 GSM) page with crafters masking tape, then printing some images of text on top. I love love love the effect of this. I'm going to have to use it on ALL my pages!

Sharmaine... keep an eye on the postie, there's some coming your way!!!

Two years ago

playing with actions

I'm a few weeks behind in my beloved 365 (daily photo) project. The photots are all there, but not all uploaded/photoshopped/printed. Now that I've sat down and completed a week, and played with some exciting new Coffee Shop actions, I thought I'd share my faves from a weekend back in September.

Attic Vintage action

Attic Vintage

2 minute makeover and levels adjustment

Attic vintage and texture overlay

Nearly every time I sit and play with Photoshop Elements I seem to learn something new. Today I discovered that you can isolate any part of the image and adjust the levels for colour/shadow/midtones and highlights. So, if you have a face in shadow but the rest of the image is fine, you can fix it quickly in a few seconds. I wish I'd know that before!! At this rate, I may be ready for Photoshop sooner than I thought. On the other hand, I've heard the full version is very expensive.

How do you manage your photos?

Aaahh can you hear the serenity?

Behold, the before photo!!!


This is how I feel today.... totally relaxed! This photo was taken on Ian's and my recent retreat for carers. I've been playing with some new actions from The Coffee Shop blog, which are free by the way, to use with Photoshop or PSElements, which I have.

Do I look relaxed?

Here's today's road toll:

Tasmin awake 6.30am, three hours of "Are we ready yet?" punctuated with tears and tantrums; we leave home at 11.10am to collect Mum, arrive in Hahndorf half an hour later; have forgotten Angie's change bag with nappies, and Tasmin's bag of books; we stroll over a bridge on the way into town and Angie throws his Thomas the Tank boardbook into the creek; Tasmin has another meltdown; we meet Mutti; Angie nearly breaks a toy helicopter in the shop display while waiting for Tas and Mutti in Fairy Hollow; I nearly pass out from passive smoking (Mum's); finally we walk to the playground; tears of relief (mine) to see a friendly face (Lauren) there; collect Mum from her rest on the park bench and I am reprimanded by an Indian grandfather, "You left your mother here?"; back to the car and travel to Mutti's holiday house; leave everyone there while I go in search of nappies - on a public holiday - find some!; guiltily sit in the car with doughnuts and iced coffee, before returning; change Angie's very pooey nappy, get back into the car while Tasmin, excited to be having her very first holiday away from home, waves us off, complaining to Mutti, "Can they go home now?"; almost reach the tollway at the end of the freeway on the return home, realise I have forgotten to hand over Tas's car seat; then turn round for the return trip to Mt Barket with said seat.

Back home: 6.45pm. Phew.

Loving Light photography workshop

Danielle Quarmby was a warm, relaxed and very generous teacher at our workshop in Port Adelaide yesterday. I took around 400 photos I think, which I'm going to have a critical look at later tonight when the children are in bed. It was awesome to take my basic knowledge to a higher level and discover that you CAN take photos in bright sunshine - you just have to be a little creative!

Kraft It Up - October challenge

THIS MONTHS KRAFT IT UP CHALLENGE...

This month you need to create a layout using one of the following styles...
* Monochromatic
* Minimalist
* Vintage/Romantic/Shabby Chic

So... I went with monochromatic which I haven't done much, since I can't resist adding colours to my pages! But this was fun and I was pleased with the overall look.

This little flower was made by punching four scallops, folding them in half, and sticking the halves together.

i love stamps. There's a whole drawer of em in my scrap room! How sweet are these three little kookas?

I bought some crepe ribbon at Cheap as Chips - and boy they're cheap! - and decided to machine stitch this to add a little gather. Pretty. Too bad you can't put them on clothes, LOL!

Imaginarium butterfly...

...and the journalling

One of my favourite things to do is a mini-digi layout and print it as a photo. I've used a Katie Pertiet frame cluster here on a background frame and it's surprising how 3D it looks. By the way, my DH, who reviews all my pages, claims he invented the term 'hybrid scrapping' tee hee!