Ingenious Inkling

New York Memories

This week's SCS Inspiration Challenge comes from the wonderful artisan's gallery found at Handscapes Gallery.   Gail MacFadden recommended the site because her sister & brother-in-law enjoy finding art at this wonderful store in Beuford, North Carolina.

I chose the beautiful LIthic Tiles of Anna Quinn to inspire my cards.

I picked out several photos from my NYC trip that I thought captured a similar feel of the tile designs.  I converted them to Black & White (or sepia) and printed out the images.  The first one is a sepia rendering of my view of the Empire State Building from the sidewalk below.

I stamped a Penny Black sentiment in light brown & framed with coordinating cardstock to complete.

The second one is a black & white night-time shot as we were walking back to our hotel after supper.  I Loved all of the different sources of light & the general busyness of it all.

The sentiment from Unity Stamp's Authentic Man was stamped in India INk and clear embossed to help it stand out a bit against the sidewalk background.

I love having a set of cards that reminds me of my awesome trip.

Spring in Iowa

My morning started with this ...

Thankfully, I had the Photo Pro Macro Photography Day at the Noelridge Park Greenhouse to fill my morning with spring.  Here are a few of my favorite shots of the spring plants.

Macro shot of the center of a large marigold-like bloom.

Love how you can see the hairs on the leaves ... some of my favorite colors for the garden.

A cool water feature in the touring part of the greenhouse.

Love these in hanging baskets.

And a little neglected leaf that turned out pretty cool.

Hope you enjoyed your day.

Batty Halloween

The PaperCrafts Magazine blog is Challenging readers to use one of their Simple Sentiments for a quick & easy card design.  I can't believe I never realized they had all of these fun free downloads.

I used a Halloween sentiment from the September/October 2010 downloads for my card.  I started by cutting it from the sentiment sheet in PhotoShop Elements and erasing the white background.  Next I layered it over some beautiful digital paper from Vinnie Pearce that I colorized a spooky purple.

After printing it out, I stamped the bats from Artistic Outpost's Haunted Halloween multiple times around the edge of the card (love that versatile image).  I layered it to my card base & then decided to add a few sprays of Old Lace Glimmer Mist for a spooky sparkle.  I wasn't thinking about how the Mist would interact with the printed digital paper ... but it turned out to be one of those happy accidents where I loved the aged water-damaged sort of effect it gives. 

More Family Photoshop Fun

I finally took the time to go through the rest of the free classes from my Jessica Sprague Photoshop class.  I love learning new techniques to help improve my photos, and her videos are a wonderful way to learn.

The first lesson was adding type to photos that coordinates with colors in the photo (I chose the brown of his jacket).  We also added two texture layers to add some more interest.  How cute is my brother and his little man.

 

The next class was how to use a gradient mask to add burned edges to a photo, so the focus is on the central image.  We also added selecting masking (for me, I did it on the tour guide) when we wanted other parts of the photo to shine through.

  

We also did the same technique with a black and white photo.  I really like how it worked with this one.

 

The next lesson was a start-to-finish project combining several of the techniques we covered to date.

 

I've always wanted to know how to colorize a black and white photo, and now I can do it.  I loved the effect on the red rocks of Sedona.

 

Then I was amazed and how easy she made creating a story board ... such a fun way to showcase multiple pictures.

 

And my favorite lesson was the nine-photo collage.  My dad has old-school photo collages lining the hallways at his house  that capture a year-by-year history of our family.  It's always one of the first places I go spent time when we travel home to visit.  I love being able to create the same effect digitally.  We added brushes around the edges that help tie the photos together.

Photo Editing Class

I finally had some time today to work through the week of lessons from Jessica Sprague's Photo Editing Class.  I'm so thrilled with the things I've learned.  Here are some of my samples from the class.

The first is a picture of my adorable niece MiMi.  This one incorporated PNG files.

 

The second picture uses a special set of Brushes that were included with the class materials.

 

The third class was vintage tinting.  I couldn't find a very good picture in my stash for this technique, but I can certainly tell the difference in this picture of me and my Gran when I look at the original.

 

The fourth lesson was Clipping Masks, which was one of my favorites.  I love the effect.  This is my adorable nephew Kolby.

 

Lesson five combined multiple textures with a clipping mask.  Lots of fun to be had with these.

 

The final lesson this week was to create an old school Through the Viewfinder (TTV) effect.  I used a square vintage photo of my brother, me, and our cat Charmin for this one.  Very fun.

Embracing Sharpness

I am really enjoying Lisa's Challenges on how to improve my PhotoShop skills.  I've picked up a few tips on how to use it along the way, but I know that I haven't even scratched the surface of what it can do.

This week's Look Sharp! tutorial was on using the sharpening tool.  Since my cards are primarily mailable without tons of bumpy dimension, I've had a difficult time noticing a lot of difference. 

Today's card (inspired by the fabulous Featured Stamper Christy S's card Crushed Curry Swap ... I love her tilted layers) has a wavy tag, so I thought I would give it a try.

Here's the before picture right out of the camera:

 

Here's how it looks after applying her levels technique:

 

And here's the effect after sharpening the image:

 

Not a lot of difference, but I notice it mostly around the dimensional tag.

The stamps are from Unity's June Kit of the Month & Bevy Of Butterflies.  The background is stamped with CHF Fine Finials (retired) & paper is Basic Gray Ambrosia. 

I colored the blooms with an aqua painter and chalk inks (I just dab the ink onto an acrylic block and pick it up with the painter).  I used a heart punch to shape the end of my tag and attached it with glue dots for dimension.