About
empty nest homemaker pastor's wife, mother of 2 grown daughters;
past hobbies have included gardening, flower arranging, calligraphy, crocheting, sewing for home and fashion, counted cross stitch, basket weaving, painting and drawing; my current hobbies are bead crafting, digital photography and digital scrap booking; I still sew once in a while; I volunteer my time a lot at church; we have one cat and I like to cook; I also seem to be traveling a lot lately; I would do more flower arranging, but the cat tries to eat my creations or knock them over.
Update 2013: (Much of this applies to digital techniques--skip reading it if you are not a digital scrapper)
Since I first started posting here at ACOT I have learned quite a bit about PhotoShop--simply by using it and playing with it. It is a wonderful tool for scrapbook crafting. Just when I think there is nothing more to learn I bump into another tutorial and then I go in a new direction. As an example, the past year I learned how to transform photos into line drawings and then how to color the line drawings with watercolor effect painted masks on the original photo. From there, on my own, I tried filtering the photo multiple times with various artistic filters, blended together with more painted masks to further effect a painted or pastel artistic rendition--very nice for portraits. Except for one or two tiny projects I haven't tried any paper scrapping. This is most likely a gap in my "scrapping knowledge", but I am hampered by space and financial considerations, so I have stuck with digital. I used to print all my creations--now I just transfer them to my Ipad--so easy to take with me for show and tell, and saves ink, paper and physical storage space. I am on the CT for one designer. She has been very instrumental in my learning and development, and I am very grateful to her. I am not a "word smith" so I don't venture onto the Forum very often. When I comment I sometimes describe what my eyes see, which has at times been received as (unasked for) criticism. Huge mistake, so I have backed off of that. If I like a LO then I look critically at it and try to figure out what it is that I like, what makes it work, and then I try to write specifically about that. Here are some things I DON'T particularly care for (in no particular order) which I would never post in COMMENTS, so I am listing them here instead:
1) LOs where "white space" grabs all the attention. "White space" by definition is the space where you don't put anything, where viewers' eyes can rest before moving on to the next interesting and beautiful part of your composition. Why gush about nothing? If "white space" is doing what it is supposed to, it won't prompt such inane comments as "Oh what wonderful use of white space!" or "I love your use of white space".
2) keyhole photos (just the face and eyes and maybe the shoulders) padded with a "bridal bouquet" (that's my terminology) spray of flowers, ribbons, lace and trinkets dominating the composition (if you ask the question "what is this LO about?" and the answer isn't obviously "my precious (baby, children, parent, ancestor, friend, etc)" then, IMO, there is something out of whack with the focus of the composition (unless you really like doing "bridal bouquet" LOs with a bit of tiny photo thrown in for embellishment. IMO that is putting the cart before of the horse. To each his own. There are exceptions, however, such as when the keyhole photo is balanced with a page full of heartfelt "journaling" (See below for explanation of quotes).
3) Paper and element colors that have nothing to do with any of the dominant colors in the photos they are paired with. Unless, the photos are B&W.
4) Large, over-sized, cutesy, embellishments which are larger than the photos they are paired with.
5) LOs with poorly exposed photos--any part of any photo can be corrected to make it look better. Pairing such an UN-enhanced photo with tons of great papers and elements doesn't turn it into a striking LO--you just have lots of great looking papers and elements nicely arranged. How lame is that? Editing photos isn't difficult--the image adjust tools have everything you need. Some of them do it automatically for you.
6) LOs where every single photo is a view of the back of some person's head. One such photo, positioned effectively, is great, but when not even one photo on the page shows a face, something is missing. Why bother? Any photo journalist worth his salt would be fired if he only turned in photos of the backs of peoples' heads.
7) For the record, the word "journal" is a noun. Adding "ing" to the end of it is an attempt to turn it into a verb. (I distinctly remember learning about these and the other parts of speech a long time ago in elementary school). Oops! I used it that way in number 2 above. At least I put quotes around it signifying an irregular use of the word. Hey, if the Spell-checker underlines it, I'm not the only one who knows that "journaling" is incorrect usage. I do write things in text boxes as journal entries, but it rubs my fur in the wrong direction whenever I read the word "journal" used as a verb. (Where are the grammar police when you need them? I guess I was taught my grammar too rigidly).
As I have seriously strayed off my topic, I will end here. For now. (to be continued . . .)
past hobbies have included gardening, flower arranging, calligraphy, crocheting, sewing for home and fashion, counted cross stitch, basket weaving, painting and drawing; my current hobbies are bead crafting, digital photography and digital scrap booking; I still sew once in a while; I volunteer my time a lot at church; we have one cat and I like to cook; I also seem to be traveling a lot lately; I would do more flower arranging, but the cat tries to eat my creations or knock them over.
Update 2013: (Much of this applies to digital techniques--skip reading it if you are not a digital scrapper)
Since I first started posting here at ACOT I have learned quite a bit about PhotoShop--simply by using it and playing with it. It is a wonderful tool for scrapbook crafting. Just when I think there is nothing more to learn I bump into another tutorial and then I go in a new direction. As an example, the past year I learned how to transform photos into line drawings and then how to color the line drawings with watercolor effect painted masks on the original photo. From there, on my own, I tried filtering the photo multiple times with various artistic filters, blended together with more painted masks to further effect a painted or pastel artistic rendition--very nice for portraits. Except for one or two tiny projects I haven't tried any paper scrapping. This is most likely a gap in my "scrapping knowledge", but I am hampered by space and financial considerations, so I have stuck with digital. I used to print all my creations--now I just transfer them to my Ipad--so easy to take with me for show and tell, and saves ink, paper and physical storage space. I am on the CT for one designer. She has been very instrumental in my learning and development, and I am very grateful to her. I am not a "word smith" so I don't venture onto the Forum very often. When I comment I sometimes describe what my eyes see, which has at times been received as (unasked for) criticism. Huge mistake, so I have backed off of that. If I like a LO then I look critically at it and try to figure out what it is that I like, what makes it work, and then I try to write specifically about that. Here are some things I DON'T particularly care for (in no particular order) which I would never post in COMMENTS, so I am listing them here instead:
1) LOs where "white space" grabs all the attention. "White space" by definition is the space where you don't put anything, where viewers' eyes can rest before moving on to the next interesting and beautiful part of your composition. Why gush about nothing? If "white space" is doing what it is supposed to, it won't prompt such inane comments as "Oh what wonderful use of white space!" or "I love your use of white space".
2) keyhole photos (just the face and eyes and maybe the shoulders) padded with a "bridal bouquet" (that's my terminology) spray of flowers, ribbons, lace and trinkets dominating the composition (if you ask the question "what is this LO about?" and the answer isn't obviously "my precious (baby, children, parent, ancestor, friend, etc)" then, IMO, there is something out of whack with the focus of the composition (unless you really like doing "bridal bouquet" LOs with a bit of tiny photo thrown in for embellishment. IMO that is putting the cart before of the horse. To each his own. There are exceptions, however, such as when the keyhole photo is balanced with a page full of heartfelt "journaling" (See below for explanation of quotes).
3) Paper and element colors that have nothing to do with any of the dominant colors in the photos they are paired with. Unless, the photos are B&W.
4) Large, over-sized, cutesy, embellishments which are larger than the photos they are paired with.
5) LOs with poorly exposed photos--any part of any photo can be corrected to make it look better. Pairing such an UN-enhanced photo with tons of great papers and elements doesn't turn it into a striking LO--you just have lots of great looking papers and elements nicely arranged. How lame is that? Editing photos isn't difficult--the image adjust tools have everything you need. Some of them do it automatically for you.
6) LOs where every single photo is a view of the back of some person's head. One such photo, positioned effectively, is great, but when not even one photo on the page shows a face, something is missing. Why bother? Any photo journalist worth his salt would be fired if he only turned in photos of the backs of peoples' heads.
7) For the record, the word "journal" is a noun. Adding "ing" to the end of it is an attempt to turn it into a verb. (I distinctly remember learning about these and the other parts of speech a long time ago in elementary school). Oops! I used it that way in number 2 above. At least I put quotes around it signifying an irregular use of the word. Hey, if the Spell-checker underlines it, I'm not the only one who knows that "journaling" is incorrect usage. I do write things in text boxes as journal entries, but it rubs my fur in the wrong direction whenever I read the word "journal" used as a verb. (Where are the grammar police when you need them? I guess I was taught my grammar too rigidly).
As I have seriously strayed off my topic, I will end here. For now. (to be continued . . .)
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