Me Do It!

"Me do it!" Have you heard that cry from your toddler, now or once upon a time? Your child's new-found independence is definitely a step you want to record! This kit is perfect for that--and it even has a printable chore chart, as well as unique, hand-drawn elements, and lots of other fun goodies:

I had fun digging through some old photos of Allen, and found one from 2006, when he was barely 3 years old:

  

Here are some other cute pages from the CT:

Jen's goofy little Jenna:

Julie's cookie-traumatized little grand-daughter Ashlyn:

And another Jen's little big boy Abe:

So much fun! I hope you get to spend lots of time @ MScraps this weekend. We're having our 2nd birthday bash, and there will be games all day Saturday and Sunday, with chances for prizes and points to store up for shopping even more. Plus awesome kit giveaways for $10 or $20 spending. And, there will be a blog/Facebook hop too! All kinds of excitement going on! On Sunday morning (Jan 29, 15:00 GMT), I will be having a "scrap by numbers" chat going on live in the chat room on the forum. Hope to talk with you there!

Template Challenge @ The DigiChick!

Come on over and play -- get a free template, and a chance to win a store coupon!

Here's the layout I made for the template:

(Everything (except the template, which is mine) by Jennifer Labre @ The DigiChick, from her Sunkissed: Sunset and Sunkissed: Sunrise kits. Font: Butterbrotpapier. Journaling reads:

"before night's gray
all the joy of the day
squeeeeezes into
exuberant paint pots
that the sun struggles
to close before it
slips under the water

one last hour to play")

Typography Challenge!

This month @ The DigiChick is all about “What’s new?” Although we’ve lived here on the coast for 3 years now, the beach and the ocean are still a very new thing to me, and continually astonish me.

For this first type challenge I’m going to focus on using VERY LARGE TYPE as the basis for the entire layout. When you use very large type, it’s really easy to use it as a clipping mask for photos, and it gives some interesting shapes to your page. To give this a twist, I’m also going to suggest that you use your photo’s central figure as part of the clipping mask. Don’t worry, this is easy to do!

First of all, here are some samples:

Subgrafix @ Deviant Art:




Dronograph @ Deviant Art:




See how the type blends in with what’s going on in the background?

Here’s how I’ve translated it into a layout:



And here’s how to do it:

1. Look for a photo you like, preferably with a strong visual component with clear outlines, such as a person or flower or building. You are going to ADD this outline over, under, in the middle of, or somewhere attached to the type.

2. Think about what the theme of the photo is. Do several words come to mind, or just one? Write it/them down on a piece of paper and play around with how they might stack or be squooshed. Write it out in all caps, and in lower case. Think about where the silhouette or outline of your central figure from the photo might fit (sides, top, bottom, middle).

In my case, I focused on the strong triangle formed by my son’s stepping from rock to rock, which suggested the A. And in the first example above, you can see the woman’s shape by the side of the letters.

3. Choose a strong typeface that will work with your theme. You want something pretty thick, but you also need it to be legible, so don’t pick anything with really fine lines that will get lost. Start your layout and put the type there.

Note that you don’t have to use a font that’s all caps, or one that’s super, super-black. For mine, I actually used Charlemagne, but I also like Zepp — or really, just about anything will work unless it’s too fancy. Heh. =)

4. Pull your photo into the layout, on the bottom layer. On a NEW layer a
bove the photo, take your marquee tool (lasso or straight edge lasso) and vaguely outline your central figure. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just ballpark. Fill the shape with black. Now hide your photo.

5. Continue arranging the type and the figure you just outlined until they all fit together in a pleasing fashion.

6. Highlight all the layers that have letters or words on them, and the outline layer (ctrl+click on the appropriate layers) then merge them (ctrl+e) [or go to Layer-->Merge Layers (down at the bottom of the menu), or right click and choose merge layers]. Now you should have just one layer with black shapes on it. This is what you’ll use as your clipping mask.

7. Make your original photo visible, and drag it above your mask layer. Press alt+ctrl+g if you’re using Photoshop CS+, or just ctrl+g if you’re using PSE, or whatever “Make Clipping Path” command your graphics program has.

8. Ta dah! Now your photo is showing up in just the shapes of the text and image. At this point you can start creating a collage of photos to fill in the blank spots, or you can add brushwork to the mask layer itself by using a grungy brush to include some of the background of the photo (that’s what I did in mine; I also used the Burn tool and a paintbrush on the photo layer itself to make some of the rocks darker where my letters were).

You can play around with using other doodle brushes to add or take away from the mask as in the examples, too. Just have fun with it!

Then, give it some dimension with a few elements, and add some journaling if you wish.

–>Remember that it’s supposed to be about what’s new for you! <–

Here are some more examples from the fabulous DigiChick crew:

Here’s another of mine:

By Jenn7:
 

By Heather B.:

By Vanessa:

Link me up either in the comments to this post, or in our challenge thread in the DigiChick forum. Of course you’ll get a little prize for participating!

Blog Challenge @ The DigiChick... Sponsored by Moi!

For all the scoop, and prizes galore, point yourselves here...

Template Challenge: Make Your Own Luck!

Type Challenge!

Over on Pixel Canvas... I'll be running this typography challenge for the nonce, every couple of weeks or so. Here's my layout for the first challenge, single letter layouts (emphasize one letter so it stands out):



Sound fun? Come play!!!

Getting Creative With the Supplies At Hand

I guess that's basically what a challenge is all about, and I just LOVE challenges, because I always learn something, almost always try something new, and definitely have fun. Here's something I made with a quickpage freebie from my friend Julie K. in Taiwan:



Credits: Paper by Dana Zarling (Designer Digitals, Golden Splendor) and pinned tag by Katie Pertiet (DD, Pinned Sentiments). Font: Euphorigenic.

Oh, the challenge part? Well, Julie's quickpage was 4x6, and I don't usually scrap that size, plus, it was totally outside of my color range. But I resized it, overlapped the circles somewhat randomly, and then Dana Zarling's paper just jumped out at me from my trusty Picasa organizer (I later realized that besides the color, the stripes ran the opposite way and that made a cool contrast). I'm really pleased I was able to do Julie's quickpage justice!

More Odds & Ends

Dagnab it, 2Peas is down again, so my blog is all patchy. Sorry 'bout that! Guess I'll have to upload these...

Ok, I'll go from oldest to newest:


(Click for credits and text)

It's funny that this started completely differently. I do like how it ended up, though. I especially like the interplay of the graphic element (the wavy line, which almost looks like it's actually drawn in the sand--pure serendipity!) and the title. Also, make sure you play around with the positioning of the elements before you decide it's over. The natural place to put the text was in the upper-hand right corner--but somehow it didn't quite feel right once I got it there. Just moving it lower really made the piece gel!

This next one pretty much came out of nowhere! I'd been trying to follow Cassie Jone's tutorial on making a photo into a sticker (which she handed out during her freebie Monday chat at Designer Digitals), and just couldn't make it work. So I fiddled around with it and got this vivid color that I really liked (I used the same extraction as for the San Francisco layout), and for some reason the vertical wavy lines and strong color came to me, then the path, then Dr. Suess... and boom, another Taylor Weirdo Layout (c)!



And this morning I threw together this quickie in response's to Designer Digitals's Wednesday "Just My Type" challenge:



Boy, did I have fun with this one! I just loooooove to play around with type. I think many people forget that you can make fonts rillyrillyrilly big... And by the way, check out the flowers: those were from that grocery store run. Pretty nifty, eh?

And finally, just finished this fun--but perhaps hard to read, from far away--layout that was also created in response to a challenge, this time the Ideabooks4U circle layout challenge:



I am just loving the close-ups that my cruddy little digital camera can take, though. Even though there's major lense curvature obvious near the edges, the close-ups are fabulous; and even though the macro lense doesn't allow for flash, it always seems to have super-exposure, even better than the regular lense. What's up with that? So much so that I really try to use it whenever possible... Of course, I had to go out and buy Rhonna Farrer's Swirly Frames. *sigh* I just never seem to have the time to design my own, plus, hers are just so wonderful! I did lots of different blending here as well, plus I made those little leaf thingies. Fun!

Hope you get plenty of time this weekend for artsy play... =)

Challenges

I really love challenges. For some reason I can always come up with stuff I'd never think up on my own in a million years! I've done lots of card-making challenges (I guess you could consider a swap somewhat of a challenge too), where somebody sends you a pre-stamped image and you have to make a card with it, or a background that you have to incorporate into one of your own designs.

In digital scrapbooking it's even more fun--not only do you get to create fun and unexpected pages, but on top of it, you get some remarkable loot!

Here's the result of Kellie Mize's Ad Challenge at Designer Digitals, with her great template:

(Font: New Gothic Standard. Template by Kellie Mize. Japanese kamon.)

The frame I made the other night by smooshing some white acrylic paint on a piece of black cardstock with a scrunched-up paper towel (yes, those are the technical terms!)--then inverting it for this layout.