Back from Vacation

Maybe you noticed my blog (and comments) have been a little quieter than usual...that's because we just got back from 10 days in Seattle and Vancouver!  We had a blast and took almost 1,000 pictures (988 to be exact).  If you want to see a small sampling, keep reading; if not, tune in next time when I promise I will post a card (maybe even a stamped one).

This was a waterfall we "hiked" to (for about 10 minutes) in Olympic National Park.

 We were also playing with our new camera and Mr Corgi took this (I think) very professional portrait.

He also took this shot of Seattle from the ferry.  Note the blue skies--it only rained two of the days we were there!

In Vancouver, they have a large suspension bridge to walk over, as well as this "cliffwalk" that is attached to the side of the cliff.  I was being a no-hands dare devil (note the look of terror) (also note the new haircut I got about two days before our vacation).

Another waterfall!  This one is the third largest in Canada.  Or British Columbia.  Or on this highway.  Ok, so I'm a little fuzzy on the tour details.

We spent almost an entire day at the Vancouver Aquarium.  We saw dolphins,

otters,

and bald eagles (I know-at an aquarium?  It's a summer thing for them and it was pretty awesome--they were flying just feet away from us!)

Even more awesome was that we got the chance to go behind the scenes and feed a sea lion!  If you ever go to an aquarium where they offer the chance to go behind the scenes like that, do it! 

I hope you enjoyed this segment of "what I did on my summer vacation." 

PS-With well over 1,000 unread posts in google reader, I just had to cut my losses, mark all as read, and start fresh.  I hope to be back to my normal commenting soon!

From The Corgi

Of course Miss Addison had to make a card for Mr Corgi's birthday!

She kept it pretty CAS, what with the lack of opposable thumbs and such.  Can you believe how well she colored that stamp from There She Goes "Puppy Love" set?  There was also some fur in my Antique Linen distress ink, so I think she may have used that to color in the sign with an aquapainter.  I had to help her use the cuttlebug to die cut those banners (the C plate, Addison, the C plate!^[1]), but she tiny-attached them and foam taped them all by her onesies.  And corner-rounded the top corner, too! 

Also, I just had to share this photo I took this afternoon (with apologies to all those poor Northerners still stuck in snow):

Isn't that just gorgeous?  We just got this at Lowe's this weekend and I hope the other four or five buds blossom before I kill it  (I'm all about setting realistic goals).

Anything growing in your garden yet?

^[1]Typing this line about made me pee my pants. I grew up watching Lassie every morning (shocker, huh?) and my favorite episode was where Timmy's mom gets trapped in a cougar trap, so she sends Lassie to get the C-clamp.  Except Lassie comes back with a cheese slicer instead!  Silly Lassie!  So Ruth repeats, "No, the C-clamp, Lassie!  Get the C-Clamp!"  I searched for a video to link, but I couldn't find one.  So I hope someone out there can back me up on how awesome that episode is, or you'll just have to take my word for it.

Bad News/Good Friends!

Good news: We had downright gorgeous weather this weekend!  Even my mini-crocuses got the memo:

 

Bad News: Stamping inside could not compete with a good book and that gorgeous weather!

Good News: I still have some great creations to show you--they are just not mine!  I've gotten some wonderful RAKs in the past couple of weeks:

What a surprise this package was!!  Maria of Crafty Creations had some extra paper and doodads, so she packaged them up and sent some fabulous RAKs out!  I was fortunate to be one of the lucky recipients because there were some fabulous goodies in there!  It's hard to see, but there is a whole stack of paper there under the doodads and thread.

This little beauty came from Lindsey of Bashful Blogging.  What a fabulous Valentine!  I love her great heart balloons, and I hope the shimmeriness of the ink shows in the picture--it looks so shiny and happy in real life!

Another fabulous scrappy/shabby chic card from Angela of Paper Cupboard.  How can she figure out how to put on fifteen different elements and it looks so freakin' fantastic?!?  Plus it came in a totally cute polka-dotted envelope, which I did not get to take a picture of before someone in this household threw it away.

 Finally, these cards and book were from Emily of Art from the Heart. The one on the left is a cute little Valentine (aren't those hearts adorable?) you can see here and the thank you on the right (aren't those apples adorable, too?) can be found here.  The thank you was for sending her some Unity stamps that were gathering dust, and in return she surprised me with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which I just told her was on my wishlist.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some absolutely stunning creations today, even if I can't take the credit for them.  Well, ok, I guess I can at least take the credit for making good choices in stamping friends!

PS-I've fallen a bit behind in both my reading and reading reports, so here's the latest:

Books #2 & 3: Best American Magazine Writing 2010 and Best American Crime Reporting 2010 I've gotten these books for past few years and there's usually at least 3 or 4 stories that really stick with me, a few that are entertaining, and a few that are meh.  About the same for this year, with maybe a little more meh than usual, which may be why I abandoned reading for a couple weeks.

Book #4: To Fetch A Thief by Spencer Quinn.  Yes, a mystery as told by the private detective's dog.  Yes, I love the whole series.  Yes, I'm a total dog dork.  Yes, I'm OK with that. 

Black and White Photo Strip Tutorial

Everything looks better in black and white.  Especially if you add a little touch of red and make it in the shape of a heart:

Is this not the cutest garland you've ever seen?  I got the idea from eighteen25, who in turn used scrappergirl's tutorial (WARNING: MUSIC ON BLOG).  I used Stampin' Up's Love Letter polka dot and Bella Rose red floral paper and some sheer pinky-red ribbon (hint: use a thick needle to string the hearts onto the ribbon).  Each heart is made with two 1x5 inch double-faced paper strips.   The photo strips were easy (and fun) to make (tutorial below).

I also used the photo strips again to make this fun Amber Ink Valentine's card:

Photo Strip Tutorial

Step 1:Gather photos.  I use Picasa, which made this so easy.  I went through my photos and pinned any I wanted to use (see screen capture below).  Then I exported them all to a new folder I called "valentines" (clever, huh?).   Having them all in one folder makes them easier to batch edit and to find later, plus you're not messing with your originals. 

Step 2: Batch edit.  Clear your holding tray, then select your "valentines" folder. At the top menu, select picture --> batch edit --> black and white.  

Step 3: "L7, you're a square, dude!"  Crop each photo to a square.  After selecting crop, you can choose "Square: CD cover" from the pull-down menu (see screen shot).  It doesn't matter what size your square is, we'll make them all 1x1 in Word.

(For the next steps, I should have taken some screen shots to show you, but my DH just installed Linux on my computer and, yes, I am too lazy to restart it in Windows to get some Word pictures.  But if you have any questions, let me know in the comments.)

Step 4:Word is the Word, baby. Open a new Word document and make the margins as big as your printer can handle (you can do this by dragging the margins along the rulers on the top and side, or by going to page setup and entering in new measurements).   I went with .25 at the top and bottom so I could get 10 inch strip.  I tried to go with .12 at the sides so I could get 8 strips, but the margins were too small for my printer.


Step 5: Insert your pictures.  In Word 2007, click the insert ribbon, then picture.  Once you go to your easy-to-find Valentines folder, you can use "shift" to select multiple photos at once-I suggest about 5 at a time so your compute doesn't wig out.  Click the first one, then hold shift as you click the fifth one (another hint: you can hold down control to select multiple files that are not in a row).  Repeat until all your photos are inserted.

Step 6: EEEK!  They're all crazy different sizes!!  No worries, man!  Double-click the first one so the "picture" ribbon shows up.  On the right of the ribbon, enter in "1" for the height, and your width should automatically change to 1 (sometimes mine changed to 1.01 or .99...that's ok).  Continue for the rest of the pictures. Word will automatically put them in a line with a wee little space between them, but the next row will be right under the previous one with no gap.   I was able to get 7 columns of 10 pictures each, which meant I could make 7 hearts from one page. If you don't have enough photos, just copy and paste the same ones again!

Step 7: Print.  I printed mine onto Gina K's cream paper for the hearts and onto PTI's white paper for the card.

Additional step for card: Insert Amber Ink's ipaper jpg into a new Word document and double click the picture.  Then select "crop" on the picture ribbon, and crop the paper to the amount you'll need for the squares.  That way you can print just the amount of paper you need and not use up a whole sheet (and even print two blocks of different ipaper at the same time), but the scale of the paper doesn't change.

I love this garland almost as much as I love Word.

Hope this inspires you to get geeky this weekend!  Learn to love Word and it will love you back.

Card Collections and Corgi + Camera

Last weekend I spent some time making a set of cards for my mom's birthday gift.  I started by CASEing two cards I listed in my 2010 favorites post on Splitcoast that both used the Stampin' Up Manhattan Flower embossing folder: this one by hskelly and this one by jovialjudy. I made a couple more with the same embossing folder to round out the set, but I admittedly do not like them as much as the CASE'd ones.  Here's the whole set:

(Ha, sorry for the random background.  Were you wondering what my pantry door looks like?  Mystery solved!).  Here are some single shots of the two cased cards:

(watercolored with SU markers and aquapainter, PTI Fillable Frames sentiment)

(Embossed and sanded pre-patterned Core'dinations cardstock, Waltzingmouse sentiment, white pearls colored black with copic)

I also made her the OH-EM-GEE-CUTEST mini composition notebook.

I mean, check out that one bird reading her name!  This is some Cosmo Cricket paper, Sage Shadow modern label punch, and PTI bitty dot ribbon.

Now, I hate to brag, but I know many, many of you will be very jealous of my next statement: we hit seventy degrees yesterday!  So after taking Addison to the v-e-t (all clear!), I had a photo session with her in the backyard.  Here a few favorites:

Happy Sun-dog, everyone!

We Are Family + A Corgi Picnik

This is my card for today's Splitcoast Sketch challenge.  This tree from Unity Hodgepodge of Happiness just screamed out "USE ME!!" today.  I wanted a fun color scheme and for fun, you can't beat red paired with pale blue and yellow!  The tree is stamped onto Gina K Pure Luxury, then colored with copics.  The buttons are "threaded" with small strips of baja breeze cardstock.  The image is matted with a nestability blossom cut from SU Barely Banana.  The sentiment (from the same Unity kit) is stamped in Memento Rhubarb Stalk, with a baja breeze mat stamped with PTI Polka Dot Basics II.  I punched the heart from the red dp. All the dp is SU Sweet Slumber.  I added three cross-stitches to the top of the strip to try to "balance" my "triangle," because then I sound all artsy and such. ;)  Here's the whole card in all of its polka-dotted glory. 

Side note: the polka dots are not in perpendicular rows on this paper, either!  Arg!! Don't the paper people know I can't handle wonky dots?!? 

Addison filed a grievance yesterday, saying she noticed there were a lot of "creations" but not so much "corgi" for a blog named Corgi Creations.  So to appease her (and because she was being cute and somewhat compliant), we did a photo session this afternoon and then I picnik'd the photos.   (If you haven't tried out some picnik awesomeness for yourself, it really is fun.  And due to interweb goblins, I couldn't access my premium account, so all the effects used here are free).

 This little tongue-peeking-out move is a favorite of hers.  My DH is putty in her paws with this look!  (picnik effect: cross-process, border)

 This look comes out about 5:00 every evening.  (picnik effect: cinemascope, text)

It's really a yawn, but looks a bit more like "CRAZY DOG!!!" (picnik effect: postercize, text)

This is the photo she sends to all her fans.  (picnik effect: black and white, soften, stickers, text)

Hook me up with any links to your pet photos in the comments!   

Picnik Awesomeness

I started using Picnik a couple month ago and I'm starting to really like it, especially now that I've started blogging. Here a step-by-step of what I do for a photo (my first tutorial! It's like I'm a real grown up blogger!) (Note: Sorry the pictures are a bit too wide. I didn't think of that when I was doing screen captures on my widescreen monitor.)

1. Take 5-8 (or 10 or 12) photos of my card, using my 99 cent foam-core board "light box" and a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH20 point-and-shoot.

2. Import images into Google Picasa, crop a bit, and select the best one to upload. Upload to Picasa Web Album, choosing the "small" size from the drop down menu.

3. Go to picnik.com. I upgraded to the premium version, which costs $5/month or $25/year. Some features are only available to premium users, but even the free version is pretty packed.

4. Go to library tab, select Picasa Web albums, then double click the photo you want to edit. This is the photo I started with.

5. Choose "Exposure" and "Auto-fix." This normally does a superb job.

6. Choose "Colors." The Auto-fix here always makes my photos too cool/blue, so I just use the neutral color picker. Click on it, then click on any white or black in your photo. Use the sliders to adjust if needed.

7. Straighten if needed. Click "rotate" then drag a line using your mouse along a side you want to be straight. Or use the slider.

8. Crop if needed. All these edits took maybe 2 minutes, tops, and look how improved the photo is:

9. Now it's time to create! Click the create tab. I like a soft glow around the photo, which you can find in effects. Choose "matte" then play with the size and strength.

9b. Or sometimes a matte doesn't look right and I want a frame. That's easy, too. Go to frames (duh!). Select "border." I like to make my corners curved. You can also change the color of the frame to match a color in your card. When you click on the color rectangle, just move your mouse over to your card to select a color.

10. Watermark! Option 1: Type it in. Choose "Text", type your text and choose a font, then click "add." You can then change the size, rotate, and move it. You can also fade, choose a different color, or choose an "advance blend."






Option 2: Add a watermark. I created a watermark in GIMP, then uploaded it to picnik. With the premium account, you can layer photos. To this, click at the bottom to bring up your photo basket, then drag and drop your watermark onto your picture. Then you can resize, change the color (if the font is in black), fade, etc. I made my watermark a creamy yellow to match the polka dots.
11. Click the "Save and Share" tag to upload your new version to Picasa Web Albums and/or save the new version to your computer. Here is the final before and after:

Let me know if this helped you out or if you have any questions!