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Life Poster

In my travels around the web, I surfed onto the Mike Matas blog. As a tech aficionado, Mike has been in my periphery for some time. He's been designing user-interfaces that are awesome for some time now and he's exceptionally remarkable since he's so young … 18 now I believe. Anyhow, I ran into his blog and saw a tutorial he posted on making a life poster and it caught my eye. A very cool idea, especially for summing up a year. Not being a mac user, I set out on my PC quest to make a life poster. I decided the only reasonable medium was Picasa. Picasa is a very cool free photo cataloging system for the PC, from those geniuses over at Google. I started playing with the collaging features of Picasa. While it's an excellent program, they made it a little too user friendly (i.e. cut out a lot of options that would have been nice) so you have to sort of work within its confines. Here's how I did mine:

1. Start by gathering images that you like or that go together for some reason into a folder. You'll need 54 of these for the size I made. These should be pretty good quality images. 1000×1000 dimension minimum. Try to vary your images. You don't want all people or all landscapes. Choose your best images, most colorful, most special. Try to get some outdoors ones … these tend to not be so white/bright. Continue reading “Life Poster”

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Urgh

I'm writing this from a very tiny last-century computer (circa 1999). It's a bit pathetic, but it'll do the job …. once the job starts. I'm waiting to get some help with a project … anyhoo. I'm not feeling my best today. I actually went home sick from work yesterday. I should probably do the same thing again today, but I won't, because I need my precious vacation days. Indeed, I would really like to make up the half-day I lost yesterday, but I fear I will not have the stamina today to work an extra hour. More's the pity. I guess there's always unpaid leave.

I slept LOTS yesterday. And I watched some Tivo. I had a bunch of episodes of the Barefoot Contessa backed up on my Tivo. I don't really like the Barefoot Contessa herself. She says “fabulous” a bit too often and reminds me in some ways of Martha Stewart, although I can't imagine Martha sans footwear. Anyhoo, despite not really lurving the BC herself, I enjoy her cooking. She made some really interesting stuff yesterday … chicken with peanut satay sauce and spanikopeda (which I could easily make myself) and a strawberry topiary (easy also). Very cool.

I've also got a backlog of projects to work on. I have yet to break out my new silk-screening system for anything more than a quick perusal and Matt got a dremel for Christmas as well, which has its own website and a myriad of projects. Maybe I can work on some of those tonight.

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Updates

I did manage to stay home for alllmost all of Saturday. I did go out with Matt and Kell to get a little dinner and pick up (finally) our (sort-of) repaired blind from The Great Indoors. I got a bit done, but of course, not as much as I would have liked to. I did, however, get tons of sleep, which I *really* needed. Anyhow, an overall good weekend. So I've got three new crafts and a couple new recipes.

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More Scrapbooking

For y'all that are interested in the digital scrapbooking gig, here are two pages from our trip to Appleberry farms that I did. here and here.

To do the first one, I just filled the background with a ginham pattern, then I made the text, and applied another pattern to it. Then I did the postcard, grouping it as a layers set so after I was done I could move it around as a group. It's mostly polygons, lines and text, but the stamp is an image with a white border around it, that then has a round brush with 150% spacing around it to take away some white and make that scallopped stamp border.

The apple I got from microsoft's design gallery (or maybe from google's image search?) and then I took away all of the background and let photoshop resize it nicely (photoshop is gooood at that!).

The photo is a regular photo, but I added a white border to it by increasing the canvas size. Then I used a rough brush around the edges to make it look a bit more realistic … and that is it.

On the second page, I did the same technique with the photos. The other elements were done by using the rectangle tool. Then on top of each, I used a symbol from the dingbat (font) called “Counter Scraps” and put them on red, and then messed around with the layer opacity until I liked the effect.

The text around the edges is just that … text. I did it in four pieces, since PS7 doesn't let text follow a path. Continue reading “More Scrapbooking”

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Digital Scrapbooks

I got a couple of questions about digital scrapbooks, so I thought I'd write about 'em a little.

The idea behind digital scrap books is that instead of using the tangible 3D objects (papers, embellishments, pens, scissors, etc.) you would normally use to make a neat-looking scrapbook page, you instead use your computer. You take photos, and textures, and lettering, and clipart and combine them using a graphics editing program (photoshop, or paint shop pro) to make a simliar layout. Once your done with the layout, you can either print it or just save it digitally to view on a web page or to burn to a DVD or something like that.

Obviously, this scenario has it advantages. For one, if you're a digital photographer (like me), it makes lots of sense to simply import your images into a program and play around with them. For another, it's hugely excellent have your best friend, ctrl-z with you at all times. The “oops” factor is big with digital cropping. Another thing you've got to love is the cost … around $1/page if you print them yourself. Which is a huge savings in comparison to traditional scrapbooks. Another thing I really love is that I get to use my favorite fonts … and other digital elements that would be a super-pain to use with traditional scrapbooks. Another reason for me is that it's yet another way to keep my skills sharp. Continue reading “Digital Scrapbooks”

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Fixin and Packin


Yesterday we spent the greater part of the day cleaning out the sunroom. The sunroom is where I keep all of my art/craft stuff, so it was a huge undertaking. The main reason we tackled it is because we had to fix the cabinet where my craft/art stuff is stored, so it would have been silly to empty it to fix it, reload it and then repack it in a couple of weeks. But crafty stuff is lots and lots of stuff. And it has to be sorted and organized and packed in boxes within boxes and … it took us forever.

It was kinda fun, though. We got to look through some stuff that we hadn't gotten to look through in a while. For instance, we took out our respnse cards from our wedding. They were largely just boring slips of paper that told us who was coming and who wasn't. But some of them had sweet/funny notes on them. So those were good to look at.

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Trauma!!!

We're doing tha obligatory house cleaning/purging that you do when you prepare to move. As part of this, I decided to get rid of a prized posession … the model apartment I made my last year at college in art class. It was a wrench giving it up, but it's big, bulky, delicate, serves no useful purpose, and was falling apart (and not in a minor way). It was a wench to get rid of it, but I still have lots of good memories from making it, and some pictures. I guess I can always make another … I think, if it had held up, it would have been great fun for some kid to have. Continue reading “Trauma!!!”

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Art Fair!

We spent most of Saturday wandering around the capital building at Madison's Art Fair on the Square. It was a successful outing and Matt and I even made a few purchases … the print you see to the left, another one from that artist and some photographs from this artist who makes cool animal figurines and photographs them.

There was a hugely impressive showing at the fair and tons of stuff we would have bought if money had been no object. Keith Grace makes gorgeous mixed media collage/paintings that I just loved. Andy Van Schyndle (no website, sorry!) made the coolest paintings that (to me, anyhow) made a painting of the movie Big Fish. Sort of dark, with trees, whimsical, so gorgeous. Ahh … but if I had the $$. Larry Stephenson does amazing paintings of toys and comics and they're way more amazing in person than on his site. I also loved Robin Renee Hix's work. She takes black and white photographs and transforms them into brilliantly colored oil paintings. They feature lively tropical locations and put you in the mind of boat drinks and sun tan lotion. Ahhhh… More pictures in the normal spot.

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Art-O-Mat


We were down on State Street a couple of weeks ago and we went into this funky shop that had the typical sort of stuff you see in places like Uncommon Goods. The shop was fairly average, but upstairs, there was an Art-O-Mat. I'd read about them on the net, so I jumped at the chance to try 'em out. Basically, they convert an old cigarette machine and use it to dispense art for the masses. A pretty cool idea. We got two pieces … one was a piece of jewelry (a bug cast in resin) and the other was another cast of resin (also with a bug inside). It kinda sucked that we got two similar things, but they were neat anyhow.

There's a list on their website of the machines that they have. But I notice the one on State Street isn't listed, so you may run across one somewhere else. Pretty interesting idea!