Beautiful Digi Scraps

These girls deserve a big SHOUT OUT! Go to this blog and read all about it. In a nutshell they get together and make beautiful digital scrapkits to help differnt awareness groups and offer lots of freebies. They are also looking for more digi scrappers to join in, so do something good and join if you have the talent.

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Reflect The True You

This was a doodle and it sort of took off in a myriad of direction. It was also going to say "there was a little girl, who had a little curl ...." lol don't ask.
There is tissue paper, gesso, watercolor pencils, watercolor crayons, acrylic paint, markers, rub on, magazine flowers, chalks and of course a little bit of bling. She looks a little dated back in the 70's as I sit here with my little ipod listening to Santana and such lol. The white frame is added after the fact courtesy of Paint Shop as is my siggy. Thinking I rather like it and may do it for real.

As for "Reflect the true you" well I can't emphasize how very important thoes words are because you get one shot at life and if you can't be true to yourself you will wander the earth forfreaking ever!

Free Class!

And this is pretty cool -


You can also ......


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Yadda ...yadda ...yadda..............

It just occurred to me that I haven't posted in a few days. Just a little busy I guess.

The last few days I have had some really good news, some not so good and some just yet to be determined.

I have been selling stuff on Ebay again, now that's a chore in itself and why does everyone want to buy stuff I would rather keep? Click on Ebay to see my junk....PLEASE!

LOL

and then why does my hubby find it necessary to talk to Rachael Ray on the TV????? OMFG! like she can hear him.....................truly I do wonder what she would say back to him and his comments. Oh well like I should complain since he isn't hanging out in places I would rather he didn't right?

I have a few busy days coming up with test and such but I have started painting a picture / collage again......thank you SuziBlu! she is inspiration at it's core. Not sure how long that will take me to finish it is on its third layer right now trying to dry in this humidity that the great state of Florida finds necessary to produce daily at approximately at 3pm - yeah everyday. So far we have had something like 23 inches of rain in a week.

In the mean time I did happen to make some ribbons and such digitally and here they are. If you click on them they show up bigger and pretty and then if you want to you can save them and use them since they are optimized. If you do use them just don't claim em but USE them!

Just Charming

I want to brag a little bit before I share the digi stuff. This is a bird my sister made at a workshop in Buffalo with Wendy. Isn't it beautiful?
I am totally jealous that she got to take that workshop and I didn't!!! So jealous that the day of the workshop I sent her a text message, knowing she would think it was and emergency and look and all it was - was a dirty joke about Kermit the frog and Ms. Piggy nuff said.... I knew she would start giggling and it was going to bring attention to her and I wanted the teacher to ask her what was so funny. I know childish butttttttt I miss my sissy and love to make her laugh. You can see more of the birds at Studio 490 just click on "Wendy" or "Studio 490" along with some more amazing art. And AND! she gave the birdie to her daughter! LOL well I love my niece but if I had the chance.....






Giving a try at charms, my gold one isn't so gold so I am thinking I need to download a gold gradient for them but the concept is good. On second thought it almost looks like one of the cheapo charms you use to get at the five and dime when we were kids lol.






I like the vellum tag it almost looks real. Now I do wonder what if I just scan the stuff in and select it and get rid of the background. Maybe it would be the same especially if I added an inner bevel. Lord knows I have a lot of stuff to scan if I choose to.

I wonder about the digital scrappers, do they just take the pictures and scan most of their stuff? Do they really digitally produce this stuff? Hee hee always looking for the easy way out.

One thing to know is that all these photos and digitally produced items take up a bunch of space on your computer so if you don't have an external hard drive, you need to use a flash drive or even CD's to keep all this stuff on or you will eventually run out of room and crash. So because of that .... today I will be busy cleaning out my puter so I don't crash and burn.

How many programs???

OK - I know you really don't need two programs to make one spread. Unless your me.
I used Photo shop because it is easy to add and take away layers without thinking but then I used PSP to add text, borders, bevels, drop shadows etc.

This is my grandson Clayton and this is a picture from around Dec/Jan 08. The background of the original picture really sucked so I tubed him out and smudged, feathered, erased etc to get a nice clean shot.

Here is the original....















and the cutout or tubed version


















I also had a little time to try my hand at Chipboard alphabet well I just did the big A and little a but it came out OK. I tried distressing them with the sponge and marble brushes it worked out pretty well. I know there are grunge brushes out there I am just lazy. I think this would work for making thing look appliqued too.




Well that's it for today....till next time.

I have been busy but neglecting my blog and other stuff...

I have been so busy taking classes at PSPU and today I decided to stop. I found it was taking over my life and although I enjoyed it - it really isn't what I wanted to learn about digital. It is cool though I did get as far as the animations. I like making the PSP tubes the most, that is way cool and collecting Posers now that is cool too. They look like really great comic book figures. There are a lot of them over at deviant art the people generously grant permission to use after they labored for hours on them.

I had to stop and take a copyright class which is always good, problem was that they didn't all seem to be on the same page so I investigated further. Peoples copyrights change like the wind and you have to keep up with it or you will be infringing. I know I wouldn't want to infringe on someones copyright anymore than I would want them to infringe on mine. So that was ALL good.

My digital world will consist of more of my art not someone elses, so I need to learn elements and paper and textures. I would prefer to paint my own and figure out how to digitalize them that is my plan. I think I have been away from actual making for far too long and I have an outrageous amount of stuff! I need to use it.

My sister sent me a really neat book for Photoshop, and I have been playing with that, it is a good one called Digital Designs for Scrapbooking - ABC making your own by Renee Pearson. It came with a CD and once you understand the concept it is quite easy.

There are tons of tutorials out there too if you know where to look for them and depending on which program you use. All in all Paintshop is easier to use and easier to find tuts on but Photoshop is the most powerful.

This Slideshow below is from the Sophomore class

And then the Animations another Slideshow

No Copyright infringment is intended so if you think I have violated your copyright please contact me immediately so I can remove the problem.

I was messing around trying to get over my day, and made this. Cute huh? it's not rocket science really just playing around.

First I tubed the cat off of some fabric and saved it. Then picked a really fat font, and made a patterned fill thingy and then did some paint shop magic with selections and tubed in the kitty. Added bevels, and drop shadows etc just to show the effects. I stuck the kitty in the middle so you could see where the pattern came from. The outside pattern is just the blinds effects like what's on the frame.

I figured if I do something everyday, it will only improve my skills.

Painting Pansy's the Photoshop Way

While I am waiting for PSPU to reopen I have to have something to do so I decided to try a tutorial over at Eagles Rest Graphics. This is a tut on alpha channels and painting that Susi has provided. Click here that will take you to the tutorial if you want to have a go at it.

So what is an alpha channel? That I don't know concerning this but it was fun! That's me putting the donkey before the cart, I am sure that will be covered in class somewhere down the road. As far as I can see it is explained as a file within a file. Masks, settings and info can be stored in this Alpha Channel. As long as you save as a .pspimage or .psd that alpha channel remains there, with the items within out of sight until you load/recall (in the case of a mask) from that Alpha Channel. In this case someone else saved the image as such for people like me to play with. One day I will make some for others to play with.

I found this a lot of fun, and a bit of a challenge. Everything I know about painting had to be temporarily shoved aside because this is nothing like the real thing but has similar, possibly better results. In my head I am thinking OK now paint one with your paint and brushes on an actual canvas and compare. I may try that if I have the right colors of paint in my stash without having to go buy some. This also took me longer to do, 2 days - only because I really screwed up yesterday an just deleted the whole thing and started over today.

I learned a few things from this tutorial, I learned how people get the shading so perfect (well as perfect as the artist's eye) and patience! I used my Wacom tablet for some of it but I am still having trouble coordinating my eye and hand movements, and I grip the pen too tight thus click goes the little buttons at the most inconvenient times! there is the fact that my brain still thinks the harder I press the darker or blendyer (new word) it will be. Got to stop doing that before I wear out the tablet and the pen from heavy usage.

Well hope you enjoyed this little bit, I am sure there will be more soon!

Painting a new way

So while PSPU is still on spring break, I was messing around a bit and painted a Sunrise....or is it a sunset? It was fun to do, messing around with gradients and the deform tool. This is the first I ever tried that deform tool and it took me about five times to get it the way I wanted it. The clouds were fun too, using a brush and reducing the opacity to make them actually resemble clouds.

I was trying to make shapes too and actually did but I am not sure what to do with them yet lol.

Surfing around I found so many really awesome digital scrap booking sites and boy oh boy they can be addicting. Most of them offer you teasers so you will go back and buy their stuff and if I were truly a scrapper I would be in heaven. I do love to look at it and have actually saved some of it but not sure I will ever use it.

I am so torn right now, I want to get out my paint, inks, papers and do dads and play with them but I want to do this too. Somewhere down the line it will have to merge right? I think maybe I am just running a quart low on energy lol.

Well that's it for tonight, sleep tight.

Moon Gone Digital

Where have I been? Well long story but I am trying to be back now so that is all that really matters. So while I was gone I decided to try digital. There is a lot to be said for digital work, it has always interested me but I really never pursued it until now. The only thing is you can't expect miracles overnight, as it is a long process to learn.

I joined a group, and I highly recommend it to anyone just starting out. The group is called PSP University and they are some fantastic people willing to teach quite a lot. They share too, and in return you do the lessons and share back as soon as you can. Quite simple. Now this group is for Paintshop Pro and you can get free copies of that if you don't have it, but if you know a little bit about Photoshop you can do the lessons in that too. They have a few rules as all groups do, and believe me they are fair but necessary rules. You work at your own pace, and it is like going to school with lesson, a final and even graduation.

I made a slide show of some of the Freshman lessons I have learned there. Note please that some of the tube graphics are not NOT mine but if you like the tube you can go to the website listed on the picture and get the tube, please leave a thank you comment and READ the TOS. I did learn how to tube finally and I love it! The biggest challenge is finding the right photo to tube from and it has to be your own or something like Dover clips(which I use a lot) also there are some really cool thing from old postcards that you can snag which I will probably do soon.

The Number You Have Reached Has Been Temporairly Disconnected!

And the Valentines Tree.

It seems lately, that I have been disconnected in a lot of area's concerning life in general. I have had an artist block from hell going, my logic has flown out the window(due in part from trying to learn digital), I do not understand humanity at all and to top it off, my Internet will not entirely engage lately, and now my phone disconnects when I try to say "Goodnight, I Love YOU!" sorry sis. Not to mention my brain but ehhhh..............we won't go there just now.

Anyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyywho I said I would post my pitiful Valentine Tree so here it is.



A close up and yes I know it really isn't anything special but at least I made the effort!




I will end this particular post with my Best Wishes and Love and yes I am working on a few things which I will post about later. Right now?.................night, night!