pixie garden tray: the photos

my project today on the pixie dust paperie blog is a very cool (well i think it is, lol!) tim holtz printer's tray. i used this month's gorgeous MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM kit and a whole bunch of photos of my mother's garden to fill it up!

there are lots more pictures of the tray on the pixie blog, including detail shots of the papers & embellishments i used, and photos of the pull-out booklet that is housed in the middle section of the far right of the tray, and i hope you'll check them out! meanwhile, over here i thought i'd talk about the photos a little bit, and show how i formatted them to fit the spaces in the tray.

i measured each section of the tray, and made a grid in printshop (my favorite graphics program) which i used to size and crop the pictures. this way i could move things around until i had an arrangement i liked in terms of shapes, colors, etc. when i was happy with the proportions, i did a test print on plain paper, just to check that color and lighting were good. which is when i noticed the "problem": the photos were full of dark saturated colors, and almost all of the green shades were on the "blue side". whereas the tray and the pink paislee butterfly garden papers i planned to use were much more faded in tone, with greens very much on the "yellow side". it didn't *CLASH* exactly, but it wasn't ideal. this is exactly why i test print; things can look quite different on the screen!

i used photoshop to adjust the saturation downwards, and change the hue from blue to more yellow. you can see the difference in the two screen shots above, but actually, irl, it was even more dramatic. something else i did in the "cropping" process was change the orientation of a couple of pictures to fit better in the frame. for example this rose, which i wanted to use in the top left corner was not only "portrait" orientation, the flower was on the right hand side, and i thought in this case i'd like to reverse that. i did so using the "flip: horizontal" command in the rotate menu.

and now, since the spaces in the tray are quite small, i thought you might like to see the originals of some of the pictures. again you can see that most of them only needed the color adjustments i talked about above, but a few needed to be cropped quite a bit to fit their "slots"

i found that when working with the small "frames" in the tray (the smallest being only 1.5" square!) it was best to stick with bold closeups, and crop them quite tightly.

for the slightly larger spaces, mid-ground shots worked well, although you'll notice again that i did at least a little cropping to fit.

the biggest spaces in the tray were nearly full-sized standard photo sized, and thus could be filled with almost anything, because at that size you can "read" a lot more detail!

i saved the most general photos for the pull-out booklet, since i knew they'd get the most attention and the closest looks. that gave me ten more 3.5 x 5" vertically oriented spaces to fill, but trust me, i have *PLENTY* of great shots yet, and at some point i'd like to compile them in a project that's more comprehensive. maybe a minibook of some sort?

in the meantime, you can see the whole tray in greater detail over at the pixie blog, i hope you will enjoy it! ♥

JB30: oh HOLE-y night! :)

ok, you have to know i LOVE this ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ prompt, just from the name, right? oh how i wish it was me who came up with it, but alas, the credit goes to my very clever & very generous blogging friend ros crawford, who graciously agreed to be our lovely guest star this week. she didn't just come up with the best title of the whole year, though... nuh-uh... she's got an equally cool CONCEPT to go with it: this week we're making APERTURE (aka "window") CARDS! so they are literally HOLE-y!!! awesome!!! :)

here's mine:

(patterned paper: tim holtz, dcwv; stickers: k&co; rub-on & brads: making memories; florals & leaves: prima; ink: colorbox; dies: nestabilities; adhesives: tombow monorunner, uhu gluestick, 3m foam tape)

for this card i used nesties to both cut the aperture into the cardbase, and also to make a frame for the resulting window, out of contrasting paper. i'm sure neither of these things is a challenge to anybody else... but i think i came up with a couple of ideas to make it easier; specifically in terms of making the dies STAY WHERE YOU WANT THEM for long enough to make the right cuts! here they are:

to easily make the aperture in your card:

position nestie on card

where you want the window, with the cutting surface against the cardstock, and secure using "fuzzy tape" (that you've pulled on and off your t-shirt a few times, so it will still stick, but not rip the paper when you take it off.)

flip the card with attached nestie

so that cardstock is at the top of the "cutting sandwich" under your "b" plate (this is for a cuttlebug; make the sandwich your specific die-cutting machine prefers)

carefully remove the die

and reveal a perfectly placed aperture!!!

to make a frame for the above:

roll a tiny bit of dryline glue

(such as from a tombow mono runner) on to one edge of the back of the same nestie used for your card's window, and also the next size up; position them carefully--evenly spaced inside each other--face up on your c-bug's "c" plate

place paper on top of nested dies

and cut as usual... you will get one large shape (the size of the smaller die) and one frame

affix frame to aperture in card

with the adhesive of your choice... it'll be exactly the right size!!!

nice, huh?! :)

and now i hope you'll take these ideas... or some of your own... and make a HOLE-y card that you'll link up at JINGLE BELLES between now and next wednesday evening! cannot wait to see what you will make! ♥

flutter by this month's pixie challenge...

...for a shot at a lovely prize! just create a project of your choice (layout, card, journal page, altered item) and include a butterfly; then post it at the pixie blog before august 5th. EASY PEASY!!!*

another very cool current challenge in the blogosphere is moxie fab world's "fanatical about botanical" for which we're asked to depict *realistic* plants and flowers, but in an interesting or innovative graphic style.

i told you the other day that once i had broken out my new pti poppy stamps i just could not get enough of stamping them in watercolory custom-blended inks and mists... and then going back with a brush and some regular water colors, smooch spritz, and black stickles to give the flowers depth and a sense of dimension. i hope you like the effect because i think i am HOOKED! my favorite part is how you can use so many of the exact same items and get a completely different look!

i'd say this card is about two thirds pixie dust kit leftovers from various months (most of the papers, signature crinkly ribbon, and the mme brad) and one third other stuff (the vintage tickets and rub-on, plus the flowery paper strip). i also matted the layers and die-cut the butterfly out of my beloved glossy black ranger cardstock. i love the way it both anchors all of the elements and makes everything just seem to pop off the page.

so what are *YOU* going to make? can't wait to see, darlings! ♥

*lemon squeezy!!! :)

a different (weirder!) kind of travel book

i don't scrapbook, as such. i do make travel books, which mainly consist of souvenirs, brochures and photos collected from a vacation, punched & held together with a bookring. they have a sort of loose handwritten narrative that i work on each night whilst on the trip, mostly it's an outline of what we did each day, plus any funny stories i want to remember, or details i think would come in handy on a return trip. usually i make them myself from chipboard and patterned paper, and until now they have been finite, covering one trip-- from start to finish and then ending. this works for me, and i really enjoy both making and then owning those keepsakes.

but when it came to new york, i was kind of stumped. because, living in central new jersey, i'm lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time in the city, and i have an accumulation of cool things i've been collecting for years. ...but... we're talking about day trips, with maybe a few overnights; and the "documentation" is sketchy at best. and you can't make a travel book full of completely random, non-chronological and utterly unrelated junk!!

...ummmmmmmmmmm... who says??!?!

actually, the dictionary definition of a scrapbook is, "a blank book used for the mounting and preserving of pictures, clippings and mementos". DUDE!!! that's totally what i *HAVE*!!! :)

the other thing that's different about this book is that i built it around a ready-made volume. i got this beautiful desk calendar for like $1 at borders in march. i was going to use the abundance of gorgeous b&w new york photos in artwork or... something... but about a month ago it occurred to me that it would make an excellent home for the NYC stuff!

the problem was, sometimes i had loads of "stuff" (tickets, photos, postcards, museum badges, business cards, etc) but no photos. sometimes i had photos--but they're snaps i took b/c they looked cool and don't really relate to anything significant that we did. sometimes i just have stories and nothing at all to go with them.

then i had another problem: if i was using a ready-made book, i'd need to work chronologically, wouldn't i?! b/c i wouldn't be able to go back and add or subtract pages! any my stuff is SCATTERY to say the least! some is from 2 weeks ago, some from years gone by, and i don't necessarily know the dates of ANYTHING.

...but again... why does it have to be in a particular order? up until now everything has been in a couple of hanging files that i'd occasionally take out and flip through. and i still enjoyed taking it out and flipping through it! if i put it all in a book at least i wouldn't have to worry about dropping the file and having stuff go EVERYWHERE, right?! ;)

the more i thought about the idea of making everything into a book... however weird and non-traditional that book might turn out to be... the more excited i was about the idea. so i decided to just WING IT. and i did. and i looooooooooove what i came up with!

when i had things/photos that related to a particular day, i grouped them together and labelled them, and wrote as much or as little as i remembered from that outing. i deliberately spaced these throughout the book, leaving gaps in between, so that if more are found, they can go anywhere at all.

when i didn't have any kind of chronology, i worked thematically. for example, a few years back, my mom asked if i'd take her to see the the xmas spectacular at radio city music hall, which she remembered as a very special treat when she was a girl. that trip spawned other holiday adventures, and now we go every december, to check out the department store windows, have a nice lunch, do some shopping, etc. it's a day we both look forward to each year, and i have loads of stories, but honestly, i could not tell you what happened when, and i don't have many pictures.

whilst i was puzzling what to do, i found some cool radio city images in a guidebook. and some text about the rink at rockefeller center, and the department stores in a brochure. and i did a google image search and found some GORGEOUS photos! in the end the 4-5 pages i put together capture a WHOLE BUNCH memories, and look cool, too.

sometimes i have things that are too big to fit, but i want to save them, anyhow. like the "itinerary" i (ALREADY!) made for this year's xmas trip, with as yet un-visited venues i found while looking for the photos i used above. or the national geographic article my friend kim read, that made her want to go in to the city and walk the disused elevated railway through the meatpacking district, called the highline--one of new york's newest and most inventive city parks! (this turned out to be a WONDERFUL day, which i'll blog about it in more detail later!) in these cases i sewed transparent pockets into the book to hold my "treasures".

i had (& still have) plenty of photos-- either in a natural state or which i have altered--that i adore, but they just don't go with anything. which didn't stop me from wanting them in the book. i arranged a bunch into a grid for my title page (shown several shots above), and i made a "farewell" page at the end. i expect to fill in here and there with more of these shots. at the same time, i'm keeping in all of the beautiful b&w photographs by christopher bliss. afterall, they are what made me want the book in the first place.

i've also got things like old letterman "top ten lists", and a digi LO i made last year, and funny new york cartoons, newspaper clippings, etc. if i like it, and it's "new yorky" it's going in!!! :)

at the very end of this "preliminary session" i made the cover. i very nearly psyched myself out because suddenly, it really MATTERED to me that it should come out well. but by this point i was having soooooo much fun, i don't think i could've made something i didn't love, and i love this:

so what's my point in telling you all this, or i am just showing off?! well, yeah, i am a bit! ;) but also, i think there's maybe a bit of a moral here: sometimes, we make things harder than they need to be. sometimes, we get so fixated on problems that we don't stop and consider possibilities. and SOMETIMES if we just trust our instincts a little bit, forget what everyone else is doing, and work only to please ourselves, things turn out really, REALLY cool! ♥♥♥

ps: many thanks, yet again, to the ineffable bruce mau and his incomplete manifesto; especially point #3!!! (process *IS* more important than outcome!) (definitely!) :)

another triple play?!

as someone who is generally not a great combiner of more than one challenge, please forgive me for being excited that i've managed it again! to wit, i have taken this week's magnificent offering from sketchy thursdays:

along with challenge #70--"flower power" at the shabby tea room, for which we're to use both flowers generally and the color scheme of the inspiration photo:

and this week's brief at shopping our stash (#8) which is to use either our really old stuff or our brand spankin' new stuff:

(patterned papers: old: sei (pink dot) and creative imaginations (notebook); new: kaiser (decoratively punched mat layers); cardstock: ranger (of medium age); poppy stamps: pti; inks: ranger di's, glimmer mist, smooch spritz, colorbox chalks; "celebrate" sticker (which came over on the mayflower!): bo bunny; fabric flower: kirsty vittetoe; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m doublestick tape)

for the last, i've done a bit of both, having mixed elederly sei & creative imaginations papers (that i still love) with a just-got-it-friday kaiser paper pad. the clear sentiment sticker is also old enough for a bus pass, not to mention the scalloppy scissors, which i think were my very first papercrafting tool purchase back in the day. whereas the poppy stamp only arrived this week, and not only is this is my first time "test driving" it, i also tried a new technique in which i stamped the base image and then, a little frustrated that i was not getting the right "mix" of distress inks and mists i had blended on my craft sheet, i went back with a little brush to darken the centers. (later i added some black stickles, in the very middle, for seeds.)

i'd love to take credit for the amazing rolled fabric rose-n-bow combination, but that was created by my lovely friend kirsty vittetoe, it came on my birthday present! at the very end of the card, when it needed one more thing, i spotted that gorgeous bit of ribbony goodness and literally "tied one on!!!" :)

i have to say i am pretty pleased with this one, so much so that i immediately used the exact same stamp (& a few of these papers, as well--unheard of!) on a completely different-looking card for this month's pixie dust paperie challenge that will begin on 7-20. i can't wait to show it to you on wednesday! ♥

ETA 24 hours later: many thanks to miss diana for the head's up with regard to moxie fab world's "fanatical about botanical" where they are looking for realistic, but graphically innovative interpretations of the botanical style... which i think this is, actually, and as it was created during the challenge i feel ok about "retrofitting" it by one day! :)

wear your party hat, sister!

ok, not to be conceited, but I LOVE THIS ONE!!! admittedly, it's kind of weird... which, me being me, only makes me love it all the more! :)

it's a card made with this month's pixie dust paperie kit MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM... which is utterly luscious, by the way, just jammed with papery goodness from girls' paperie, melissa frances, pink paislee and glitz; fabulous embellies & trimmings from pebbles, webster's pages and girls' paperie... including the stickers i used to make the sentiment here:

it's *UNIQUE* don't you think???!! my young friend allison marie, who graduated from college in june... (HOW did that happen?! she was A BABY like five minutes ago!!!) ...received it for her graduation card, i'm pretty sure she won't have gotten TWO of these! :)

more photos on the PDP blog, plus loads more projects all month from my fellow pixies!!! ♥

JB29: reindeer games!!!

i don't think it's news to anyone that pink and girly is sort of my "default card". but apparently that is now even true of holiday cards, even one for this week's prompt at JINGLE BELLES, "reindeer games" in which we are asking you to incorporate your favorite holiday critters, whether those be actual reindeer or...well... penguins, polar bears, chris-MOOSE, cardinals, or heck, even cats, dogs or mice in santa hats! anything goes, just work in a sweet holiday-themed animal in some way!

now back to my card: i knew i was going to use my favorite tim holtz reindeer die. i thought i was going to do something super-traditional, but then i found the journaling card that i think came in a sticker grab-bag i bought from kelly kilmer last month. anyway, despite it being pink and shabby chic and so forth, when i saw the sentiment, "dream of magical things" i suddenly thought, "hey! that could be TOTALLY christmassy!" and i think i was right! :)

(patterned paper: laura ashley, paper co; metallic bronze cardstock from jam paper; reindeer die: tim holtz; journaling card: unknown... but COOOOOL! :) flowers: stolen from aunt!* ribbon: may arts; buttons: making memories; bling: oriental trading; ink: colorbox; adhesives: tombow monorunner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine)

so why not collect *YOUR* favorite holiday critters--remember you don't have to use reindeer unless you want to!-- and join us at JINGLE BELLES by next wednesday, june 2oth for the REINDEER GAMES!!! ♥

*no seriously, my aunt--who is always giving me crafty "odds and ends"--had a branch of these pretty glittery silver flowers sitting on her dining room table one day, next to a book i had lent to her, so naturally i THOUGHT they were for me, grabbed them up enthusiastically, took them home and started ripping them off the stem to use on cards. later that night, she called and asked if i had seen the stem of flowers she was planning to use for... something... ??!?! ummmmmmmmmmm... those weren't for ME??!?! sorry!!! IOU some flowers, k?! :) :) :)