Week in Life–some more pages

 

Really enjoyed the 2 long thin spaces on the 1st page – one horizontal and one vertical.  I looked at things differently to find good shots for these spaces – on Wednesday part of the inside of the fridge door and the supermarket trolley handle.  I intend to use these type of shots some more in Project Life in the coming months.

 

Liking the mix of detail shots and wide scene shots.  On Thursday I have the dining table and a close up from above of my dinner plate.  And the river scene plus a detail of swans.  Again something I need to remember to continue in Project Life

 

 

I decided on Monday that I was not going to write about the events of each day but to use the text space for details of something like the artists on my nano playlist or what I ate during the day.  Some relate to the day and some to life now. 

Overall the template I chose has worked well and I particularly like the mix of photo shapes.  Assigning some spaces for the same thing each day made the planning easier – I had 2 meals and a closeup of me on each page.  Most days I only took as many photos as I needed for the template and kept a note of which spaces I had filled throughout the day.  Creating each page the next morning worked for me.

I’m going to print each page A4 and put them in page protectors inside my Project Life album instead of a spread for this week.  I think I’ll do it again next year in another part of the year – late summer or autumn I think would be good.

Photo Art Friday–waves of inspiration

Our photo art challenge this week was to use one of Bonnie’s textures.  I chose her most recent one and then pulled several photos from the beach to play with. 

One layer of the painterly texture using colour burn blending mode

The painterly texture again this time on linear light blendign mode – love how much it looks like paint

On this one the blending mode is darken – a mode I rarely use but here it creates magic

This exercise was a good reminder that one texture layer can create wonders – something I need to remember. Thanks to Bonnie for the fabulous textures.  Check out what others have created here.

first days of my week in life project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m pleased with how the template is working and enjoying thinking about images to fit into the different shapes.  Decided to add prices where I can because they seem to change more than other details !

Originally i had thought that the bottom space on both pages would be for journaling about the day but halfway through Monday decided that I didn’t want to do that and instead will use one for details of one aspect of the day – Monday my radio and TV choices.

I was looking through my Week in Life album from 2010 and funnily enough one of the photos was of me watching The Big Bang Theory – which I had recently discovered – so I chose it for the photo of my TV.

I received my postal vote for the local council elections so included this unusual event as well as the routine components of my day.

I’m finding the photo planning easier by having some standard items – meals, weather and a bit of me – I hope to continue these all week.

leap into spring with blossom

Continuing with the photo challenge over on Project Alicia where the prompt for this week is blossom.  There is plenty of beautiful blossom on the trees on my regular riverside walk but my problem has been in capturing the gorgeousness in pixels.

First there is the problem of too much light and not enough contrast when using the sky as the background.

 

Lowering perspective and taking the flowers against the background of other blooms or the branches doesn’t work either – too busy

So I started hunting for blossoms growing in front of some better backgrounds.  This grey wall provided nice contrast

and I liked the doorway

but then I saw this against the yellow wall and it just popped. 

Now how do I go about ensuring more flowers grow in front of yellow walls??

Photo Art Friday–new life

I haven’t been able to resist all the blossom on the trees each time I go for a walk.  So my mass of photos of the flowers and trees was my starting point when I saw the suggested theme for Phot Art Friday this week is ‘new life’

This piece uses just two photos – one of the blossom and one of the trees.

I extracted the blossom, copied it twice so I had 3 layers of blossom.  I increased the size of the bottom level and used screen mode on 50% opacity.  The middle level is on normal and the top layer on screen.

The tree photo I copied once and used the difference mode on 50%.

And at that I point I was pleased with the contrast and colours so added the text (Papyrus font) and saved.

I’ve already had a peek at the Photo Art Friday gallery – lots of amazing work as usual.

Week in the life plans

I’ve made all my structural plans for Ali’s week in the life project next week.  When I last did it in 2010 I found that it was easier having the basic structure set before I started.

I’ve decide to:

• include it within my Project Life album
• create digital A4 pages to print out (Photobox) and put into page protectors
• use this template for each day – 2 page spread [evolved from Ali’s 2010 week in life pages]

• use the bottom sections on each page for text – Tahoma font
• use the Rub This font for the titles and captions
• use this Katie Pertiet doodle around captions that I print on some of the photos

Are you taking part and how is your planning going?

100 FOODS MEME

I’ve seen the list of 100 foods on several blogs recently and thought it looked fun, seeing as I enjoy food and trying different things.  There is some variation in the lists but I decided to go with the one here.

The instructions are to mark the ones you’ve eaten but my love of categorising led me to use 3 big categories – yum, yuk and not tasted and then to divide again within each.

[The paper is Neutral Cardstock from Audrey Neil; the cup stains are by P Springman]

I was pretty pleased with the divide between yum and yuk.  I was surprised there were so many that I was not familiar with, some because they are American and others are Asian dishes. And the 12 I’d like to taste also have a strong American contingent – is this the basis for a trip?

I’ve put this into my Project Life album – my intention is to use it to corral all the different things that I create.

have you done the list – what is your yuk to yum divide?

Photoart with words

I’m enjoying Bonnie’s prompts for a theme for Phot art Friday each week – I’m so busy at the moment that I find the disciplined focus of a theme means I actually create something rather than staring at several photos and the PSE screen.

So the theme was to include a favourite quote – I went with a saying that is integral to my approach to life, rather than a quote.  The other version of this idea that I use a lot is ‘how do you eat an elephant?’ – answer ‘one bite at a time’.

I decided to start with some photos (sun on water, grass and a bridge) and aim for something abstract that I like, rather than something that tied to the words.  I took an exploratory, evolutionary approach to this and didn’t record all the steps – all I can say is that I used filters and layer modes.

For more word inspired photo art check out Pixel Dust Photo Art

My Project Life–linking smaller photos

One of the techniques I’m liking for my Project Life album at the moment is having a title go across two photos in the 3 x 4 slots.  Particularly if I have several photos of the same thing – in this case two examples of our twice-daily workshop energizers. Or the next with two of the workshop posters. [Sorry about the poor photo quality with the light showing – no good daylight today].

I create the 3 x 4 photos in PSE by placing two onto a 4 x 6 canvas so adding the title across the two is easy – and then I cut the photos apart after I print them.  For these examples I added a background shape to make the words easier to read and to accentuate the strip across the 2 photos.

In this next one I used the white frame around the photos for the title that crossed across both

And last week I got carried away and have this waiting to print

3 photos to show that we had 3 days of beautiful, unseasonal weather.  The banner is from Katie Pertiet and I lengthened it to reach across all 3.  The hand written words are from Ali Edwards – I removed the segment I wanted from the square frames and then lined them up so the pen line seems to continue from one to the next.

This one I’m having to print on two 4 x 6 photos. 

While I’m at home near my paper supplies I must remember to try this using stickers too.

Sunlight on water

One of my favourite photo challenges when walking by the river is capturing the light as it plays over the water.

I took all of these on the same walk last week an put them together in a web storyboard from The Coffeshop Blog.

I’m linking up with the lastest fun seasonal photo challenge from Project Alicia – leaping into spring.

Hope the sun is shining on you this week.

Up close and artful

Plenty of signs of spring on my walk by the river yesterday.  The subject for Photo Art Friday is macro so I zoomed in and then cropped them even closer back on my computer.

I love the red on the new growth and buds.

In each case I duplicated the image and then went through the blending modes for one that I liked.

check out all the other macro photo art here.

My Project Life

I’ve been ‘doing’ Project Life since the beginning of the year but only consolidated all of the pieces into an album last week.

Back in December, when I was deciding to embark on this project, I knew that I would not be able to create the album each week.  For one I was in New Zealand throughout January and did not intend to carry the whole kit with me.  And then the page protectors were not available to purchase in the UK in December.  In the end I was away from home for another 5 weeks in February/ March so I needed a system that meant I could partially create each week on the go.

Creating the photos ready for inclusion was easy because I always travel with my laptop and I have PSE loaded onto it.  So each week I would choose the photos to use, add words and decoration and make any 3 x 4 items that I wanted. I wrote most of the notes that I wanted onto the photos or created a text piece digitally. I also took some 4 x 6 and 3 x 4 cards with me so that I could write some on the go.

I took my favourite elements from Ali Edwards and Cathy Z to use on these pieces. The top one uses Ali’s  Hand drawn thick frames and Cathy’s word art.  The bottom one uses Cathy’s tiny templates.

When I was sharing a story on this blog that I knew I would also include in Project Life, I created the Project Life image to use on my blog – rather than writing the blog and then incorporating it into the Project Life format.  One example is the glimpses of Bangladesh images which I created as square collages and then put into the Design E page which has 4 square pockets.

And I had a big envelope to collect ticket stubs, menus, brochures etc for inclusion too.

I used a rough sketch in a notebook to record what I intended to cover on each page and to note which I had already created, ready for printing.   

Putting it all together once I was back home was easy and then I added some decoration here and there – like these foam letters I stuck on the outside of the pockets.

Mostly I have one side per week, rather than the 2 sides of a double spread that most people do.  But I don’t always stick to the week divide, depending on what I am doing.  So when I was visiting friends in New Zealand I have a side per visit, whether it was 4 days or 8 days. For the two week workshop I used 2 sides but had no chronological order across the pages.  I have also included some inserts for traditional scrapbook layouts and to include full documents, like my e-ticket.

I don’t intend to share each week as I create it, because most of the items appear as posts anyway, like the last 2 posts – March in numbers, and Storytelling Sunday.  Instead I think I’ll post on techniques or subjects that I’m enjoying using – look out for my next project Life post on using banners across several photos.

Summing up March

Another month end and another summary in numbers.  I’m really enjoying these summaries and including them in my Project Life album, printed out as a 6 x 4 photo.

I’m linking up with Julie’s month in numbers again – I enjoying the varied ways that people are presenting their month in numbers – check them out at Notes on Paper

[The number stack is from Penny Springman’s New Year word jumble]

The story of our huge sandpit

Sian’s Storytelling Sunday has come around again. Her addition this year of a story told with a photo and a few words suits my story-telling style so that’s that I’m posting.  I enjoy the mix amongst the stories others post, some with a photo, some not, some long and some short, check them out here.

To my story – I was looking through old photos that Dad scanned and picked out the ones where a story immediately came to mind for use over the next few months.  I’ve created the story on a 4 x 6 so that I can include it in my Project Life album as well as here.

I didn’t texture the photo – the original had been damaged by water when my parents’ house flooded (but that’s a different story).