PHOTOGRAPHS FOR COLOURING

Sunflowers as line drawing

Colouring is still a popular activity which many people find really relaxing.  If you have access to an image editing programme such as Elements you can easily turn your photos into images for colouring. 

I've just used the auto pencil sketch function for this, made a duplicate layer, blended the layers using "Multiply"and then adjusted  levels to increase the contrast.

If this all sounds too hard (believe me it isn't, but its probably easier to have someone show you if you aren't familiar with how to do this) then you're welcome to use the sunflower image (Yes I did grow them!) to colour.

I have to confess I haven't really been bitten by the colouring bug - I spend far too long agonizing over colours for it to be in any way relaxing - but should it strike I think it would be kind of nice to use some of my own images, and as I draw at around grade 3 level, photos are my one hope!! 

Original photograph

DIE CUT FROM PHOTOS

Photo and dies

Die-cut birds from repurposed photos

I like playing around with photos....sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't end up quite as I imagined it would, or I get carried away and have extra prints, when one is sufficient.  The red daisy photo was an example of the latter, but as I hate throwing things away, I decided cut out a flock of little birds instead.

I'm quite pleased with the end result - the photo (commercially printed) has a nice surface sheen, the paper is stiff enough to be mounted with foam dots and keep its shape, and it cut easily.  If you were really keen you could even design your own prints especially for certain dies (I'm already imagining a collage of tiny feathers for these guys).  You can get a 15 x 10cm print for just a few cents from many processors nowadays - bargain thick patterned paper!!

ACCORDION BOOK FOR A PAPERCLIP COLLECTION

Someone made reference to something being "as boring as a paperclip collection", and although I agreed, whilst I was sorting thorough my craft room, it dawned on me that I might just possibly, at a stretch, perhaps be........a paperclip collector myself.

That left two alternatives - denial or celebration.  Having decided on the latter, Imade this little accordion book in which to display (some of) the collection.  I love this style of book.  Its super easy to make, but it sits so nicely that the whole contents can be displayed at once, or you can turn the pages like a regular book.  Better still it packs away easily for storage.  I used a fairly stiff card for the "pages" and covered some slightly higher and wider panels for the back and front, securing some ribbon under to tie it closed.

I was sure that the paperclip comment was a quote, and upon consulting Dr Google was delighted to find that it came from Sesame Street (Ernie to Bert, even although Ernie had his own collection!)
Better still, there was a whole song!!!  This solved the problem of what to write on the back - and I liked the sentiment - its easy to find beauty in a sunset or panoramic landscape - sometimes you just have to try a little harder to see it things like.........PAPERCLIPS!!!

PAPERCLIP ACCORDIAN BOOK

THE ''PRE-JOURNAL' JOURNAL

PRE-JOURNAL 

PRE-JOURNAL PAGE EXAMPLES

Not exactly a technique this week, but........
Popping photos up on a blog is one way to keep a track of various papercraft techniques but nothing quite beats the real thing......so I've finally started to organize all my little examples by sticking them into a sketch book and adding captions, to remind me what they actually are.

Its not a fabulous art journal.....more a scrapbook in the old-school sense of the word, full of bits and pieces to provide inspiration for when I do get the time to make something fabulous....sort of a pre-journal journal if you like.

Its turning out to be quite a fun activity in itself.  I don't aim to "finish" a page......just stick things here and there until there's no more room left.  No rules, even about which way is up, a great way to pretend all those little scraps of paper that used to live here there and everywhere, were always destined for greater things than the rubbish bin!!!!

TORN PACKAGING FOR BACKGROUNDS AND TEXTURE

TORN PACKAGING FOR BACKGROUNDS

People are ripping packing card apart all over the internet at the moment.  More talented folk than me are even ripping patterns and complicated designs.  I thought at the very least I should give it a go.  As I don't do a lot of grunge style work I wasn't anticipating it being very useful for my cardmaking but the effect is kind of compelling and may yet find its way to a sample card or two in the future.

It did, however, occur to me that a scan or photo of the torn card would make a terrific texture to add to some of my photos.  The two I've played with aren't "quite there" but, as you can see, its worked well enough to justify a bit of playing around.  Just drag the torn card photo on top of another picture and play with blending modes in Elements, if you'd like to try for yourself.

SUPER-SATURATED AUTUMN LEAVES
+ TEXTURE

SEPIA + TEXTURE

MORE PENDANTS

MORE PENDANT IDEAS

I'm still enjoying playing with wearable paper.  Two of these are photos (the red and gold round picture is the ceiling of a local church, the other is one of my touristy snaps from London.  The top example is a bit of a "ring in" as it is made from wood veneer.  For the record I'm not super keen on the end result with this one as the glue reacted strangely - I think that perhaps sealing it first would help.

The same is somewhat true for the photos - the London one in particular (printed on my home inkjet printer) went a bit blurry as the dimensional magic I used as glue dissolved some of the printer ink.  It was a bit of a happy mistake in this case as I don't mind the end result at all.  I used less glue on the other photo and there were no problems.

All of these so far have glass tops, but the remaining pendant features a cut out from a Kaiser paper pad, and is topped with an acrylic sticker.  This worked way better than I would have predicted.  I was going to use it as a card embellishment but am now thinking it might have an outing or two around my neck before I consign it to the craft box.

DIY COLOUR SCHEMES

COUNTRY LANDSCAPE

SPRING

AUTUMN

I have a bit of a tendency to use fairly "safe' colour schemes, and think that maybe its time to branch out a bit.

All I've done here is use the eyedropper tool in Elements to select a few colours from each photograph, by way of inspiration.

The country and spring colour schemes are fairly conventional but the autumn example throws up some fairly interesting combinations.

The next step of course, is to stop playing with the charts and actually translate the colours into papercraft projects!!!!

EXPRESS SCRAPBOOKING

Scrapbook Express

I was a day late posting (first time ever in over a year) last week.....partly because I was working on this week's offering.
We had a weekend in Melbourne and rather than consign the photos to the "Gunnadoo" pile I decided to do something with them straight away.  I'm not at avid scrapbooker but quite like the concept of mini albums which in my household are more likely to be looked through than 12 x 12 epic productions.
Luck (good or bad I'm not sure which) would have it that I only took my little pocket camera with me and somehow in re-setting the light sensitivity I also changed the image quality to small.....no more that about four inches at 300dpi.  That meant I didn't have to agonize about appropriate sizing - basically everything was edited to 2 x 3, 2 x 2 or 3 x 3 (inches). This also made layouts simple as the pages were cut to fit these sizes  I used textured ivory off-cuts. I kept to a simple colour scheme - ivory, black, red and silver.  As the aim was to undertake this project  immediately while events were fresh in my mind and before it became just another thing on the "to do" pile I decided to try and finish within a week (bearing in mind I work full-time so we are talking evenings).  As a consequence rather than play around with fancy binding I made a template to ensure that all the holes were cut  in the same place and simply punched a hole in the corner of all the pages and fixed them together with a screw post.  I used my Cuttlebug to die-cut the front page title but other than that all the rest of the journalling was handwritten.  (This was actually the biggest challenge as I always feel that my writing is never neat enough even although intellectually I know that this is not the point).  I used my score board to score lines onto ivory card before writing so that I could keep the text more or less straight and I didn't ruin a whole page if I made a mistake. I cut most of the journalling blocks with a 2 inch square hole punch.  
Everything that would fit went onto the pages- over 100 photos, footy and movie tickets, boarding passes etc and yes......it was finished withing the week!!!  It won't win any prizes for neatness or originality and I won't be bringing it out to show the visitors........but I didn't make it for them.  In 10 years time hopefully I
can browse through the pages and remember a really lovely weekend away.  So my advice to myself is don't always put it away until I have time........JUST DO IT!!