snippets

Christmas photos

2011-12-07T22:12:00.001-08:00

So now that I can emerge from my report writing I finally get to start feeling more festive. Last night a friend and I went into the city to photograph the tree and was inspired to scrap it using a similar style to the fabulous Jana is using for her Daily December album.

Credits here

Sometimes it seems a shame to make photos small on a page. Lucky we still have the originals full size on the computer! Here's the reflection I took of myself in the bauble (just so no-one can ever say I don't take photos of myself!!).

Here's another reflection of me in a bauble - much bigger bauble, much smaller reflection :)

And a panorama (three photos) of the decorations in the front yard of a house on a nearby corner.

Christmas dinner out with friends tonight. The craziness has begun...!

Christmas is on its way!

2011-12-01T02:36:00.001-08:00

Suddenly the store is filling with decorations and the talk in all the scrapbooking forums is of Christmas kits and gift ideas and, of course, Days of December. So I thought I'd mention a few bargain digital scrapbooking goodies that you can pick up.Suzanne of Roadside Designs is giving away a free "25 days of Christmas" set of templates on her blog.

Like all of Suzanne's templates they are so well designed and beautifully shadowed. I am such a fan of her templates - pages come together so easily. It seems so funny when I look back at my early days of scrapping and thought that using templates was cheating! Now I use them all the time - scrapping is all about the memory keeping, after all!!

Here are a couple of pages I threw together.

Credits: Wondrous Full Kit by Creashens at Catscrap, green paper from Flashback by One Little Bird at Oscraps.

At Designer Digitals there are some absolutely beautiful Christmas kits being released and there are more bargain digital scrapbooking goodies start today with the Days of December promotion which includes a new 99c product each day.

Here's today's beautiful 99c product...

and this most exquisite Christmas kit (one of many!)

So this all leaves one in a quandary. Should a girl get the Christmas shopping done, tidy the house ready for guests in a few weeks' time, go hunting for all these beautiful bargains or scrap the days of December?!! It is such a busy, exciting time of the year!

We have turned 50

2011-10-31T04:42:00.000-07:00

My husband and I are only a month apart in age (yes we were high school sweet-hearts!!).
We have celebrated our significant birthdays with a joint party. Our 30th, 40th and 50th celebrations have all been at our current house.
So our 50th was last weekend. It is so special to have all your friends gathered together to celebrate. I only wish the evening could last longer. I gave my camera to one of my daughters during the speeches. She captured this shot. I think it speaks volumes...

(frame and wordart from Album of Memories LTs No1 by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals)

I love this man and the life we've had together. I am a very lucky person!

A Photo A Day project - and the weird responses!

2011-10-22T02:43:00.000-07:00

I am continuing with my Photo-A-Day project again this year. Actually it is a "Photo-A-Day (more or less)" project. It is often referred to as a "365 Project" but there is a little conundrum next year as it is a leap year it will become be a "366 Project"!
My daughters have become used to my camera appearing at awkward moments. They explain to their friends that I take a photo every day; making it sound like I have some some incurable disease!
Of course there are also very amusing comments from helpful members of the public...
Yesterday a family of ducks wandered into the school yard. We had to call wildlife rescue. I tried to get in close to capture their cute faces.

A helpful colleague kept suggesting I move away and photograph them from above. Can you imagine this shot taken from above? It would just not be the same!

Today I was in the supermarket whilst there was a torrential downpour outside (1" in a matter of minutes). I emerged to see the most amazing double rainbow. Luckily I always carry my point and shoot camera in my bag. There was a young trolley attendant nearby. He asked whether I could get the whole rainbow with just 10 megapixels. My mind went into spasms wondering how to respond:
a) ask what made him think my camera was 10 megapixels
b) explain that my camera was old and only 5 megapixels
c) explain that I was taking a panorama and would merge it in photoshop, or
d) mention that the field of view was nothing to do with megapixels and all to do with the lens...

I just said "oh yes".

He replied helpfully that there was a 15 megapixel camera on sale for $300 the other day.
That raised another whole series of questions in my mind.

I just said "oh really?"

But it got the better of me and I said
"I have a 19 megapixel camera at home but it's too big to fit in my bag."

He said no more!

More digital water colors :)

2011-10-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

I've been playing with this tutorial.
Here are some of my results:

Credits here at Designer Digitals

from a little excursion into the city yesterday

From a trip may years ago!

For the current Pioneer Woman Edit This competition.

Digital watercolors

2011-09-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have been inspired by beautiful digital watercolors by digital scrapbooker Agnes Granouillac. I don't have the brush skills or patience for such beautiful work so I went off searching for some tutorials that might help me achieve something a bit similar.
I found these: 15 artistic watercolor effects and tried the Easy Watercolor Painting Effect
With a little experimentation I produced this layout:

(full credits here)

I started with this photo of my daughter because of her mona-lisa smile and the plain background. It also is not very sharp so it's not much good on its own:

So I followed through the tutorial.
Here is the image after adding the 'cutout filter' layer with luminosity blend mode (step 6):

After adding the 'dry brush filter' layer with screen blend mode (step 8):

After adding the 'median filter' layer with soft light mode (step 8):

But I wasn't happy with it quite. I wanted some pencil/ink edges. So I added an 'accented edges filter' layer in pin light blend mode as follows:

to get this:

the difference is not clear at this resolution, but the eyes and eyebrows in particular look like they have been inked in.
In retrospect I could have added a sketch layer over the top a bit like this: portrait to sketch
I used these Designer Digitals products to make it look like it was painted on a canvas:

I clipped the photo to one of Katie's Watery Photo Masks which were blended to the linen texture paper in multiply mode so the texture showed through.

I added the watery splashes around and painted them with color (click the "lock transparency pixels" icon on the top left of the layers palette and then paint) inspired by this tutorial:brilliant matte dispersion effects in photoshop

(Of course, I'd be mortified if I was that messy with paint in real life!!)
And after adding the frame and background paper it was done :)

I want to try a few more of those 15 artistic watercolor effects tutorials, they look like so much fun!!

And here are a couple of other fun tutorials I'd love to to try:
puzzle
abstract watercolor wallpaper

Do you have any other tutorials that you've enjoyed? I'd love to know!

Remembering

2011-09-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

A significant photo of my daughter taken in New York City 20 years ago. Much has changed since then!

Good design and inspiration

2011-09-03T20:11:00.000-07:00

When I first started scrapping, I could a photo or two I wanted to scrap and some pretty paper to match but then I was paralysed! So I approached it like a research project and spent countless hours

reading tutorials on balance (rule of thirds, white space, visual triangles), contrast, emphasis and repetition, leading the eye, focal points
analysing two page design techniques
collecting every page map by Becky Fleck
storing every page I saw online that was inspiring

But after all of that I found that the most motivating and practical way to learn was to join online challenges. In early 2007 I discovered an Ad Inspiration challenge at twopeasinabucket organised by Paula Gilarde. Paula has a gift for choosing Ads that are great examples of good design. Almost every week for the following 3 years I created a page based on one of the Ads she chose... then Paula took a well deserved break...
Now Paula has resumed her Ad Inspiration Challenge from her blog and last week she tempted me with this double page Ad:

Here is my take:

Credits here.
As usual, Paula's choice of Ad had just the right balance of contrast and repetition.
Some of my all-time favorite pages are from Paula's inspirational choices.
I hope you'll join me in one of Paula's Ad Inspiration Challenges!

ten things you might not know about me

2011-08-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Britgirl - my amazingly creative friend in the UK - has challenged me to come up with 10 things you didn't know about me. It takes some thinking!

I was an asthmatic child; pale and anaemic. I was hospitalised with pneumonia at 7. It took my parents 15 years to organise themselves to move from the cold, damp town I grew up in to somewhere with a better climate. I have been well ever since!
My great, great grandparents all arrived in Australia between 1840 and 1870 from all over the world. I am about 1/2 English, and the other half is a mix of Swiss-Italian, Cornish, Scottish, Northern Irish, Southern Irish, German and possibly Norwegian.
I met my husband when I joined an amateur athletic club. He competed in many places in Australia and at the World Fire Fighters games in New Zealand and in Las Vegas, USA.
I am a messy, indecisive procrastinator!
I have always looked young for my age. At 21 I could still get children's fares on public transport. I had my first child at 29 and yet people still say to me that I look too young to have a 20 year old daughter.
I have a degree in Geology and Mathematics. I enjoyed the statistical analysis involved in geology.
I wore my skivvy backwards all day yesterday before I noticed on the way home.
I try to leave a small footprint on the earth. We have a compost bin, a vegetable garden, we dry our clothes on a clothes line, we have solar hot water and recently installed solar panels that can generate 4Kwh (more than we use on a sunny day).
I was christened and confirmed in the Presbyterian Church.
Both of my parents were teachers. Most of their close relatives were teachers, too. Guess what I do for a living!! ;)

Now I tag fellow Aussie scrappers
Carol
and
Carolyn

And just to leave you with a few pages I've scrapped lately. There are some new Roadside Designs templates that are so beautifully clean and simple. You could use them for anything, but I stuck with the original inspiration and scrapped some wedding photos. See, there's a photo of my sisters and me - I'm the eldest. I was 22 when I was married, and I'm more than 3 years older than my next sister.

credits here

Parties galore

2011-07-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

The next 12 months sees every one of us having a significant birthday. First our middle daughter's 18th at the end of this month. Then a couple of 50ths for my husband and me. January sees our youngest turn 16 and in June our eldest turns 21! Now we're not usually party people, but I think the next year might see us having to stretch out of our comfort zone a little!
So our eldest turned 20 last month. She is not often home and she didn't want a party, but I felt I had to do something. I rustled up a few friends and they rustled up a few more and they all came for a lovely lunch. I sat inside and watched as they chatted. I thought how lovely her friends were and how she was growing up and felt happy and sad and nostalgic all at once!
I scrapped this page about it - with the lyrics from "Cat's in the cradle" which captured my emotions at the time.

I used a free template by Roadside Designs from her blog.
I also scrapped some joyful pages of the friends. I love how you can scrap the same photo and same event from different perspectives!

All products from Designer Digitals (credits here)

It also appears to be the birthday of a particular country today. Not that I'm very excited about another country's birthday but it is hard to resist a good birthday sale! So here's one from Roadside Designs:

So if you are having a significant birthday soon - happy birthday to you, too! In the meantime, enjoy some birthday shopping!

farewell to [ksharonkdesigns]!

2011-07-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

I almost fell off my chair when I saw this post on Sharon's blog yesterday:

I started digiscrapping in mid 2006 and discovered Sharon's goodies in early 2007. I was so inspired by her clean scrapping style. I looked forward each week to her new Friday freebie that she so generously shared. Sharon has been a big part of my digiscrapping journey and I want to thank her for the inspiration, the freebies, and for the opportunity to be part of her CT for a short time.
Here is a collage of some of the pages I have made with Sharon's templates and kits (made with shapecollage).

Thanks, Sharon, for taking us all on such a fun ride. I look forward to seeing where life takes you next!

I've become a Pie Lady!

2011-06-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

Forgive my long break between posts. I haven't had much I thought was worthy of sharing. But I thought you might be interested in my pie recipe. I NEVER thought I'd be sharing recipes on my blog!!

My mother does meat and 3 vege 'til the cow comes home. She occasionally gets particularly adventurous and does packet mixes. Rice-a-Riso was a childhood treat! Do you remember that one?!

Anyhow, with the help of google and the multitude of recipe sites out there (and the multitude of kind people who contribute to those sites) I've expanded my repertoir considerably of recent years.

And now that my recipes are all organized in simple binders like this, I'm on a roll!

(see also My daughter's recipe book )

Last month I was trying to work out what to do with some beef mince that needed using and some shortcrust pastry that my husband bought by mistake (why is it that men don't read the fine writing - "puff pastry is similar to shortcrust pastry isn't it?"!!).

So I found a recipe for small pies that proved such a hit with the family that I have made many batches since. My girls have taken them to school and had to share them with friends. The school headmaster even admired them. Perhaps we have so much international cuisine in our diets these days (italian, chinese, thai, indian, ...) that the humble pie has now become exotic!!

I made a couple of pages about it:

Credits here

And here is the text from the recipe (I do apologize that I have now lost the link to the original recipe). I have subsequently adapted it anyway with a change in quantities, the addition of zucchini and cornflour and sesame seeds.

Mini Pies
Makes 20
Ingredients

1 white onion, diced finely
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
500g premium beef mince
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 cup diced tomatoes
½ carrot, peeled and grated
1 stick celery, diced finely
1 small zucchini, diced finely
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp dried Italian herbs
2 sheets low-fat shortcrust pastry
1 egg, beaten
1 Tbsp cornflour
1 pkt 5 sheets shortcrust pastry
sesame seeds

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C. Combine the onion, garlic and olive oil in a saucepan over a medium heat and fry for 2 minutes, until softened. Add the mince and cook for 4 minutes, until browned. Mix in the tomato paste and cook until dry, then fold in the diced tomatoes.
Fold in the carrot, celery, zucchini, Worcestershire sauce, cornflour and dried Italian herbs, then set aside to cool. Cut discs of shortcrust pastry to line 20 ½ cup muffin tins, then fill with the beef mixture.
Cut pastry discs to top, then arrange on top and press to seal. Brush the tops with egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds, cut a small vent hole, then bake for 25 minutes, until golden.

If you do happen to make some I'd love to hear what you think!!

Old Photos

2011-04-19T19:38:00.000-07:00

My old albums have been languishing in cupboards. The photos have slowly been going yellow, or green, or blue.. whatever!
I always wondered if I was a bit silly keeping my negatives, but I did. And now I've spent months scanning them all and am in the process of naming them. Which means I have to revisit those old photos - and hope that I wrote something about each one on the back!
This has become all consuming! I've revisited so many great times. I've dug out diaries and newspaper clippings and souvenirs and letters which I am now trying to put together (more about what I'm doing in a later post).
But for now, here is a beautiful shot of waterlilies from a trip to Darwin in 1985:

the original photo in my album

the scanned negative, edited in photoshop

What a fun journey of re-discovery this is!

Some more about my 365 album...

2011-03-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

I had a word to Sharon of [ksharonkdesigns] about the template I used. It was an old freebie but I found it worked so well that it was such a pity it was no longer available. She kindly put it back in the shop and added a bonus template. So here it is:

I had modified the template in a few ways:

rotated and mirrored the template a number of ways to suit the orientation of the photo.
re-sized the 12x12 template to about 7x7.
added a mat around the photo to make it the right page size for my Blurb album.

Here are some individual pages from my book:

I love having my photos looking big like this and it was very simple to keep up-to-date with such a simple template design.
I am doing a similar thing this year. I'll show you that in a future post!

My 365 album arrived

2011-03-14T04:31:00.000-07:00

Actually it arrived a few weeks ago, bad blogger I am! I printed it with Blurb because that was the only one that allowed anything like 365 pages. In fact Blurb will print to 440 pages. This is an 8x10" book.
I was surprised how compact 365 pages could be. I love my album! My family each sat down and poured over the pages. Then they each told me of the four typos I made!! I figure that if I'm going to aim for perfection I'll never get the book done.
So here it is...
The cover:

The photos are quite vivid:

This is how thick 365 pages looks:

And here is my eldest daughter transfixed:

A very worthwhile project I reckon!

twolittlepixels third birthday celebration

2011-02-04T00:33:00.000-08:00

Happy third birthday to twolittlepixels!!!

To celebrate, the designers and creative team invite you to celebrate with by joining in their blog hop!
There are gorgeous minikits and quickpages up for grabs that co-ordinate into one fabulous BIG collab kit, called Reflections.

Here is a preview of the Reflections Collab ...

and here is a page I created with the template by Roadside Designs and some other goodies from the kit:

The blog hop begins at [ksharonkdesigns]

And there is more to come with the birthday...

Have fun hopping!!

A day at the tennis

2011-01-23T02:29:00.000-08:00

We often head down to Melbourne at this time of year to watch some matches.
I DID mean to check the entry conditions - like whether I could take in my camera. I NOW know that telephoto camera lenses with a focal length capacity greater than 200mm are not allowed. Luckily as my bag was inspected at the gate I had my Tamron 28-75 on the camera, yet later I saw dozens of other people with 300 zoom lenses on their cameras. My point and shoot has a 10x zoom anyhow - it is obviously very difficult to effectively police these things, but the very big lenses are definitely for the professionals!

The best place for up-close photos in on the outside courts. I got to watch Roddick practicing.

I'm not sure if we're getting out of touch or whether it's just that are just more Eastern European players these days but I don't seem to know many of the players. We watched Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of RUS vs Iveta Benesova (below) of CZE, a very impressive game and I enjoyed taking photos regardless!

Zoe had a friend to keep her company.

So one way or another we all kept ourselves entertained!

Planning a photobook

2011-01-12T03:10:00.000-08:00

I have just returned from a week at the beach and am just now planning a photobook of the photos.I have created a photobook for our annual holiday for each of the past four years. I love the size of the project because it is so achievable.
Here are the stages I go through:

1. Choosing the photos

Of the 350 or so photos I took I'll put about 100 of them in the photobook. I have already picked them out and put copies in a separate folder.

2. Assigning photos to pages

This is where I cheat and use software by Momento to organise the photos. I have printed books with Momento before and I love how their software auto arranges photos on a page. It is so quick. Not only does it help me figure out which photos go on each page but it gives me ideas on how to arrange them. Here is a snapshot of the pdf I can export from Momento:

3. Choosing the kits to use

Oh what fun this is! I tag my kits using ACDSee so I usually create a new tag for my album and apply that tag to all the potential goodies like so (this screen shot shows elements tagged for my "queenscliffe" album which I have finished a year ago):

4. Create a theme template

Then I create a full sized page (this one is A4) that includes the standard elements I think I'll use. This way I can check that they'll work together. I choose my font sizes and jot any other notes that are relevant on this template. Here's the theme template for the album I'm planning:

Oh my I love this stage! It all looks quite a clutter but I love how they work together! Kits I plan to use are:

5. Create the pages

I start with a copy of the template that has only the background paper, the title and the body text in position and any other fixed elements like a keyline or stitched border.

I just have to drag any elements I want to use from this template page or add anything extra from my stash.So I now know what photos go where and have a good idea how they should be arranged. The most time consuming task at this stage is to tweak the photos (especially the brightness and sharpness) and compose the journaling (and check the spelling!).

6. Design the cover

I usually leave that until last because it is the culmination of the pages within. I find the cover is the most fun of all!

7. Print

I plan to have this printed with MyReflections which is another Australian company. But I've also used Blurb and Shutterfly. In my experience the cost is a good indication of the quality of the final product. MyReflections compares favorably with Shutterfly for price and quality.

So there you have it! My aim is to spend less time creating the book than I spent on holidays!

What do you do? Do you do something similar? Or do you have a different system?

Making my wall calendar

2010-12-09T01:04:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd show some pics of my wall calendar made up.
I've been making these for about 15 years for my parents. It started with the artwork of my eldest daughter. I used to trim the art and glue it to A4 cardstock and then laminate it. Then I'd print the calendar pages with family dates on them and bind it all together.
I even organised it as a fundraiser at our local primary school for many years. The parents would send in their child's artwork and we'd laminate it and bind it with some calendar pages. It was a terrific fundraiser. It was great fun, too, except when we had a disaster with the laminator or bound the picture upside-down!
In recent years I've done family heritage pages instead, with a different picture for each month. Here's my 2009 version (yes, that's me on the left with my tongue sticking out!):

This year I'm using templates by Roadside Designs at Two Little Pixels (see earlier post).
I haven't finished all of the pages yet, but I've bound a few of them to show you how it looks:

I used to bind them with white combs but I was very happy to find clear combs at our local office supplier a few years ago.

To use these combs you need a comb binder like this:

I'm lucky that we have one at work. If you are not so lucky I imagine your local office supplier would offer a comb binding service. Here's a link to instructions about how to use a comb binding machine.

I love making calendars for the family. My family don't necessarily "get" scrapbooking, but they certainly enjoy the calendars. And it has been such a terrific way to share photos that are otherwise hidden away in old albums or slide boxes. I will never finish scanning old slides and documenting our family history but I CAN finish a calendar!

25 Days of Christmas

2010-12-04T02:45:00.000-08:00

Oh my! This time of year always comes around so quickly and I am NEVER ready!
I've been doing a photo-a-day and some how have fallen one month behind. Aagh!
To get me started on December I'm using these sweet templates by Roadside Designs. As a bonus they are free on her blog - one each day!

It has been a particularly busy week for me with a trip to Melbourne for a conference, apartment hunting with my eldest daughter, shopping, a school awards night, a progressive dinner with dessert at my house.

So you can imagine how handy these templates have been!

There is a story to the photos of the awards ceremony. We were very proud that our daughter was elected prefect. And very proud that it is something she really wants to do and will do well. So of course I needed to take photos. But in the chaos that as characterized this week I left my camera at home! By the time I'd retrieved it (and navigated through traffic jams and flooding...!!) we were already late for the ceremony and had to be escorted in. And what a shame that the few remaining seats were right in the middle near the front. Of course we made a bit of a spectacle trying to sneak in, but I got my photos and that's all that matters, right?! ;)

Apartment Hunting

2010-12-02T16:27:00.000-08:00

My eldest daughter has had a year in student accommodation in the big city and is itching to move out. This week we took a trip to the city and met a friend she plans to share with. What a big adventure!

We were hunting in the "leafy suburbs". Some places would do just nicely, thank you. Some places just made me cringe. Funny how different they could look from the online photos! This was one place that took the girls' fancy:

And we had to stop for refreshments

And they had to update their friends about their progress

Apparently phones are good not only for communication but also navigation. And maps are SO old hat. And the mother was allowed to come as long as she sat in the back seat and didn't navigate and didn't say any "I told you so!"s.

So I sat in the back and looked at the map and watched in silence as we took many wrong turns.

TOLD YOU SO!

But it was a lesson in holding back and watching my young lady growing up and making her own decisions. And a lesson in letting her make her own mistakes and feel free to say "Whoops, sorry Mum" without being nagged. Which she did. And I am proud.

I think we both learned something very valuable this day!

2011 Wall Calendar

2010-11-26T01:09:00.000-08:00

I'm working on these calendars as gifts for my family. I have done this every year for years. This year I've gone for a theme of "Three Little Girls...". Each page is a picture of my sisters and me somewhere together - from the late '60s and early '70s. I've used templates by Roadside Designs at Two Little Pixels. Her templates are perfect for someone patterned-paper-and-clustered-embellishments-challenged like me. I'm very lucky to be on her creative team!

This page created using the kit Simplicity by Sabrina Creations at Two Little Pixels.

This page was also created using the kit Simplicity by Sabrina Creations at Two Little Pixels.

This page created using the kit Dainty by Creashens at CatScrap.

If you haven't tried one of her templates, here's your chance. Starting 30th November there will be a download a Day for 25 Days . . . Details announced on Nov. 30 . . . on Roadside Designs blog

I've had a sneak preview and I love them!

Don't miss out!

{inter}National Digital Scrapbooking Day

2010-11-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Well, for digital scrappers this is a busy weekend with online chats and blog hop freebies. The dilemma for us in Australia is whether we can bare to sleep and miss the online chats!
Anyhow, at twolittlepixels there is a collab kit that you can pick up for free any time this weekend if you spend $10 in the store:

I have used it for a couple of pages:

And the party continues all weekend with 30% off...

Enjoy your weekend :)

Change

2010-11-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

They say a change is as good as a holiday, and heaven knows I'm easily bored. So here are some changes at my place:

computer upgrade

My computer died. It had some malware. I knew the minute that little window popped up saying I had viruses that it was a big fat lie and closed the window. Trick is that closing the window INSTALLS the malware. And then it disables all of the malware detecting software that one has installed on the computer. Whoever makes up these insidious pieces of code?!
So I asked the experts to clean it up for me, and install heaps more RAM and an extra terabyte drive and superfast 64 bit Windows whilst they were at it - turn a negative into a positive, yes?!

another year older

I had a birthday. Not a significant one (that's next year {sigh}), but it was lovely. We celebrated by having dinner out in our new patio on our new table and chairs. My eldest daughter bought me the jug for my birthday. My birthday candle served a dual purpose - it's a citronella candle. I need to stock up on those!

exam time

Middle daughter is studying like crazy for exams. Her determination and disciplin are amazing. She doesn't take after me or her elder sister. She is growing up so fast.

new cupboards

My youngest has complained that she couldn't keep her room tidy because she needed better cupboards. So now she has them! We shall see if this makes a *real* change to her room!

(credits here)

new CT call at twolittlepixels

And there are changes a-foot at the twolittlepixels digital scrapping site, too. It has a new blog and is putting together a new dynamic team. Here's the call:

Lots of opportunity there! I'll be staying on as one of the site CT members. It's a lovely community.

But I think all that is enough change for me for a while! I'm looking forward to getting back into a groove (with a new computer ;) ).

Typical Saturdays

2010-09-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

I enjoy just relaxing and catching up on Saturdays. We are still busy with an on-going house project - a covered pergola which we are building ourselves. I am the site manager or spectator depending on your point of view. I'm also the official photographer ;)
Last weekend I took a bunch of "typical Saturday" photos which I hope to make into a multi-photo scrap page when I find some inspiration. I really like those photos of everyday life.
It is lovely to take some time out on a Saturday. I have been inspired to scrap a couple of photos from recent weekends.
One was of one of those rare times when my husband and I go to spend some time together away from all the distractions. As the girls are getting older we are able to do this more often.

(template by Roadside Designs from the Sugar Hill Blog Train, papers from Wishing and Hoping Kit by Sabrina's Creations

My youngest has taken to baking all sorts of sweet temptations. I'm not complaining!

(template Crossroads Maps 5 and 6 by Roadside Designs, papers from the Sugar Hill Blog Train)

If you'd like these papers or a couple of Roadside Designs' templates you can grab them yourself THIS Saturday at Sugar Hill. Here's a sneak peak of the entire kit - it is HUGE and very, very SWEET!

What do you have planned this Saturday? Perhaps you could photograph some "typical Saturday" moments.

A possum comes to visit

2010-09-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

On Monday one of my colleagues found this scared little fellow wet and cold. He was trying to cuddle up to a pipe in the school corridor. Poor fellow had lost his mother and was much too young to fend for himself!

We thought he looked a bit like Alf - remember Alf?! Anyhow, we wrapped him in teatowels and popped him in a photocopy paper box where it was nice and dark and cozy! We called a lovely lady who does wildlife rescue who came to pick him up and mollycoddle him. She thinks he would only be a few months old.

Anyhow, there's a template challenge on the twolittlepixels blog where you can pick up this template for free:

I used it and a new kit "Wishing and Hoping Kit" which is a collaboration between Sebrina's Creations and Kelley Mickus Designs to create this page of my sweet little visitor:

The template challenge goes for another week, so grab your template and enter for a chance to receive a $5.00 coupon to the RainyDayz store (or don't, and give me a better chance of winning, hah! ;) )

Scammers strike again

2010-08-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

This time my 14yo daughter answered the phone. Luckily she was aware of the previous phone call and has already developed a strategy for hanging up on unsolicited callers with Indian voices.
This time the caller claimed that there was a virus on our computer that was stopping their computers from operating correctly.
She hung up.
And laughed at the proposterous notion.

I feel so bad for the people who will inevitably be caught out by these scammers.

Now for something more tasty. The caramel slice my daughter was making when interrupted by the caller!

Recipe here .

Beware of the scammers ...

2010-08-23T04:21:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a phone call. There was a man with an Indian accent on the other end. I'm afraid that we get so many phone calls from Indians trying to sell things that I'm instantly on guard. The conversation went something like this

"Esther A.......?"

"Yeess"

"You have a computer?" Darn stupid question I thought.

"Yeess"

"Our company work for Microsoft and your computer has been sending many warning messages. You know that computers send warning messages, right? And they tell me that your computer is full of viruses and malware and trogans..." (there was a whole lot of other mumbo jumbo in there that was unintelligible because of the poor line and his accent and my impatience)

"Can you turn your computer on, please."

"It is." (but I disconnected it from the Internet just in case)
"Can you tell me what operating system you use?" (here alarm bells started going off)

"You should know from the error message"

"Madam, your computer is sending error messages and they tell me that your computer is full of........" (more mumbo jumbo that went on and on and most of which was unintelligible)

"Madam, I just want to show you the viruses and trojans and malware that you have on your computer. Can you hold down the Windows button and press R for me."

"Have you done that?"

"Yeees"

"Can you see a text box you can type into?" (of course, how stupid does he think I am?)

"Now type 'prefetch'"

"What?"

"P R E F E T C H"

"Was that 'REACH'?"

"No, P for Paul, R for Roger, E for Elephant...." ...I think you get the idea.
He had me there, I don't know what prefetch does and I was starting to feel stupid. He claimed it showed me errors but they didn't look like errors to me. Then got me to do the same with 'eventvwr'. Supposedly more evidence of errors.

Then (and call me slow, but this is where alarm bells were going off madly) he asked me to type
a www.... into the run dialog box. I told him that there was no way I would do that. I expect he was trying to trick me into running some malicious program.
Since I was starting to get obstinate he warned me that these viruses and malware and trojans were damaging my computer and needed the help of an expert to remove. He gave me the http://www.fullpcsupport.com/ website as their contact point.
Aha! They wanted me to pay big dollars to repair a problem I didn't have.
At that time I politely said I needed to think about it, took a name and phone number an hung up.
So, David Jones, of 02 09 1234 784, I will NOT be availing myself of your services.
In fact after a 1 minute search of the web (is Google the most amazing and empowering invention of the decade or what?!) I was able to ascertain that this was, indeed, all a scam - I was even able to match the spiel he was giving me.

I felt ill for the rest of the day. But I did run some extra virus scans and did fresh backups just in case. What sort of insane world do we live in that people do this?!!

Find out for yourself - and beware!
police-act-shut-cold-call-scam
pc-support-phone-call-scam
TelephoneComputerSupportWarning
phone-phishing-attacks-increase

Another opportunity...!

2010-08-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

There is another CT call at twolittlepixels, this one by Designs by Anita. Anita creates gorgeous kits and you can find them here.

Good luck!

Meantime it has been so wet and cold here. It seems like we haven't had a proper winter for years. It certainly hasn't rained this much for a very long time, probably for the entire life time of my youngest daughter (who is 14)!! It has even been raining INSIDE the house - something we DON'T need! Note to self: Must phone plumber!

Up for a digital scrapbooking challenge?

2010-08-15T03:24:00.000-07:00

There is a new blog at twolittlepixels. I'm quite excited about that because it already has freebies and challenges. There is a template challenge using this fabulous template that you can grab for free:

and a scraplift challenge to lift this gorgeous page:

Hmm, so much inspiration, so little time! I think I need to retire!!
So add http://www.twolittlepixels.com/blog/ to your google reader.

CT opportunity with Scooty's Designs

2010-08-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

Interested in joining a digital scrapping creative team? Here's a great opportunity. You can see Scooty's Designs here at twolittlepixels.

Keeping it simple

2010-08-09T05:10:00.000-07:00

I love all the gorgeous digital product that is out there. I find it SO hard to resist. And you know, $2 here, $3 there... less than a cup of coffee (or so the voice tells me!). Yet I prefer the minimalist pages I've created to the ones with lots of embellishment.
This leaves me somewhat in a state of turmoil!

I have a quite a few minimalist templates by [ksharonkdesigns]. Here's one page I created using one of her templates with hardly any embellishment, just some photos I was a bit proud of, a background paper and some leaf elements blended into the background.

(credits here)

Many of the scrappers I admire most do pages that are far more minimalist than that! They also often have amazing photos. (I wonder what they do with their less-than-amazing photos. No one can take amazing photos ALL of the time, can they?!)

I recently stumbled upon a bunch of freebie, ultra simple templates on a blog by Julie Designs. I love the simple LOs. Here is an example:

But they are just photos on white backgrounds. You'd think that a person would not need a template to do that, yet I'm so inspired by the designs that I can't resist collecting them! And I do use them. Sometimes they sit in my stash for years. My 2010 POTD album is ultrasimple and I'm so happy how it's turning out. It is based on an older freebie template by [ksharonkdesigns] that sat in my stash for years...

I don't manage to get a photo I'm proud of every day, but it surprises me how well they scrub up when I pop them into this simple template.

I'll be printing these with blurb like I did for my 2009 POTD album. Can't wait!

So, to embellish or not to embellish... that is the question!

UPDATE: I just found a Margote's blog where she used those simple templates for her POTD. Love it! I think I may just have found my format for 2011 POTD!!

Grab Bags Galore!

2010-07-23T04:14:00.000-07:00

I am on the Creative Team at twolittlepixels.com and what a privilege that is! This week is ultra special because all of the designers there have released grab bags. That's 19 grab bags to choose from!!

I was lucky enough to see what was in the grab bags of [ksharonkdesigns], Roadside Designs and cherpea designs, and they are ALL well worth the $3. Below are a few LOs I've made with goodies from the grab bags (just to tempt you!)

These two pages use grabbag goodies: paper by Roadside Designs, alpha and frames by [ksharonkdesigns], tape and staples from cherpea designs. I also used the Simple Sets #50 template and stitches from collections [stitches 1] both by [ksharonkdesigns].

And another double page spread using paper from Roadside Designs' grabbag. I also used ExpresswayMap7 by Roadside Designs. Her templates come ready embellished - and included the ribbon, flowers and buttons. You'll find more amazing templates in her grabbag!
So do yourself a favor and pick up a bargain!

Things are happening

2010-06-06T01:21:00.000-07:00

Can you guess what we're up to at our house?!

The elusive blue wren

2010-06-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

I have tried to photograph superb blue wrens so many times as they move through the yard with their harem. The only real success I've had is with an almost dead female wren. Not quite the same. Today I spied them flitting though and grabbed my 300 zoom lens as I dashed outside.
Here are my photos:

I swear he was there when I pressed the button. They are so quick!

Ah, there he is, see? That blue blur. Now if only I could sort out this manual focus before he disappears again...

...This is how it usually goes and I end up with a bunch of useless photos.

And then a miracle happened. He popped up on top of the bush right in front of me, and showed off is plumage in the sun.

See how handsome he is?!

Oh yes, you're handsome from that angle, too.

And then he was gone.

Some things to make you drool

2010-05-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

My sister kindly gave my husband and I vouchers for a "Chocoholic Tour" of the city for Christmas. It is actually a cunning plot on her behalf to get us to come to visit. It works! We finally booked our tour for this morning.
The tour not only included delicious chocolate...

...that we enjoyed with coffee and hot... (can you guess?)... chocolate (are you drooling yet)...

.. but we enjoyed it in some of the most beautiful settings in the city!

We learned interesting snippets about the history of the architecture (and a few juicy tidbits). We spent some time in an arcade that is my favorite part of the city. So much to photograph there. I was even tempted to take a macro shot of a pot plant but thought better of it - only to find myself surrounded by people with DSLRs taking photos of potplants and ceilings and floors and us. So I went ahead and pretended I was part of the photography class, too :)

So that was my morning. Doesn't get much better than that, does it?
But wait...
For digi-scrappers I have more... (well, yes this is a plug, but in digital scrapbooking land it can get quite confusing following designers from one store to another and I've been excited to see so many new designers joining the twolittlepixels crew).
New designers to twolittlepxiels this weekend ... A-liya, Siamese Studio, Blue Flower Art, SAS Designs, EljjDorado Design, Maue Designs, AnjaJ Designs, and Avdesigns. Check out this week's twolittlepixels newsletter to see a selection of their products. Gorgeous!!

My 2009 Blurb book arrived

2010-04-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a Photo-A-Day this year. I'm making an album with one photo per page. It was working so well I decided to go back to 2009 and do the same with whatever photos I took that year. I went with Blurb because most of the other printers are limited to 100 or so pages. I struggled to limit my book to 160 pages. Blurb will print up to 440 pages, but that is with thinner, poorer quality paper.

The wrap around cover looks great:

The pages are fine, but lack a crisp black compared to Shutterfly and Momento books that I've printed previously.

This is how thick 160 pages looks:

It was fine. They will print up to 440 pages but only in their thinner paper. I'm not sure how thick such a book would be, but that's how many pages I expect my 2010 album to have!

And here's the spine. The last thing I looked at when my book arrived. The thing I obviously forgot to check before sending for print!!!

Oh well!

Some observations (that I've added in response to Katrina's comment below):
I did "Standard landscape" which is 8 1/4"x10" (actual page image sizes are 9.6" x 8.2"). The trim guides and bleed areas are very clearly indicated and it was accurately trimmed. When you mouse over the photo area it pops up the exact pixel dimensions which is great. I was able to assemble all of my pages in a folder (named with the date - mm dd.jpg) and ran an automatic import into the book. So quick! The software was VERY easy to use. The dust cover was trimmed about 2mm (1/8") shorter than the book - and that is not right!

So, if you're doing a photo-a-day, what are you going to do with them?!
Has anyone printed a book thicker than 160 pages?!

Esther.

Family resemblances

2010-02-27T23:22:00.000-08:00

We went to visit my Dad this weekend. He's just turned 75 AND had his knee replaced in the past week! Of course he is looking rather tired but doing very well. It goes without saying that I took a few photos. But when I got them home I was struck by some family resemblances. Do you see them?

Dad yesterday and my daughter last week.

Dad yesterday and his grandmother (in 1962, aged 88).This was not the best shot of him, and it seems unfair to compare him to his grandmother who was another 13 years older but there are certain family traits that run strongly!!

Or what about this one of my Dad from that 1962 photo and his father in 1929.

Here's the complete photo from 1962 with me, dad, his father and grandmother.

These old photos are so precious! I love studying them!!

Big events and great photographs (not!) .... thank goodness for kind strangers!

2010-02-22T19:46:00.000-08:00

What is it with big events and photographs?! I was SO looking forward to last weekend for some great, meaningful photo opportunities. But between low light and malicious camera-confiscating security guards (OK, I know he was only doing his job...) and my own ineptitude I didn't get a single one. Instead I have a bunch of mostly poorly focused, grainy, camera-shake photos.
Firstly DH and I had tickets to an outdoor concert featuring Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald of Doobie Brothers fame. I excitedly packed my DSLR and started taking photos as we walked from the carpark to the venue. This is the last photo I got to take:

Why, oh why, didn't I pack my point-and-shoot camera as a backup?!!
So I made do with my DH's phone. I'd never used it before. Whilst the light was still good I took a series of 5 photos to stitch together as a panorama of the event. Grainy photos, some were blurry, but I was able to piece them together in Photoshop OK:

I also took a few other photos whilst the light was good. It was such a lovely evening and quintessentially Australian setting. Quite special!
The row of dunnies:

The sunset:

But once it was dark the phone camera was hopeless. The kind couple sitting next to us had their Lumix camera and very kindly emailed me some photos and here's one of Boz:

The next day we took our eldest DD to the big city to settle into her hostel ready to start her Uni course. Lots to photograph, I thought! My photographer's eye (at least I thought I was developing one) completely deserted me. I tried a few lame shots.
The view of the city as we arrived:

The luggage in the back of the car - you can see her "L" plates, her bike and her pinboard of photos/memories:

This was a very significant day for my DD. We helped her move into her room (I took a bad photo of it) met so many other lovely parents and had a lovely lunch (took a bad photo of that, too). Perhaps I was too caught up in the events and emotion of the day to take proper shots. Then I met a wonderful man who is coincidentally in my local Camera Club. We compared cameras (my Canon 1000D vs his Canon 5D) and lenses (all I know was that his were BIG and HEAVY), then before I knew it he'd taken THIS shot:

Doesn't that just blow you away?! You'd swear it was taken in a studio with those light-reflecting umbrella thingies and a lovely blue backdrop, but it's just the natural light and the carpet! If you would like to see his gallery it is here: leedingedge.

So I am very thankful to these kind new friends for giving me some wonderful photos of thismomentous weekend!! And I realize how much more I have to learn! I think I'll have to join the local Camera Club, too!

Digital Scrapbooking

2010-02-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

I've loved collecting images and telling stories since I was 10. I used to keep diaries of holidays and collect newspaper clippings. In the 38 years since I've tried all sorts of ways to record the memories (I might blog more about that another time.) But now I've found my niche. I love manipulating digital photos, scanned mementos and journaling in photoshop. And I love all the pretties that are out there to complement the colors of the photos or theme of my story. I love the whole online world of digital scrapping that has built up around the shops that sell these digital supplies and have made some special friends from all over the world!

Over the last 6 months I've been very lucky to be on a number of teams for the designers of these pretties and have had so much fun using their products. I am currently on the Core Creative Team for twolittlepixels. You might like to check out the designer of the month of February at twolittlepixels … the lovely Miss Cheryl. Head on over to her blog for some fun and did someone say a freebie?

Here are some of the pages I've made using pretties from her kits:

Using Dreaming ... in black and white papers
and Dreaming ... in black and white alpha

Paper and alpha from "I love my girls"

White paper from Dreaming in Black and White, blue paper from B.A.D. Paper Pack
Sewing embellishments and alpha from I Love My Girls kit
Journaling lines from Write About It

Mostly from Sea Dreams kit

So if you'd like some of Cheryl's pretties, this is the month to get some!

Spiders

2010-02-08T03:27:00.000-08:00

It seems to have been great web weaving weather! First Allan had to be careful to avoid this web as he went to hang out the washing in the evening (he's a good fella, isn't he?!!).

It was tricky getting the right focus and exposure on this. I had to resort to fully manual settings.

The last couple of mornings the sun has shone through the window in the garage and made the messy webs of the daddy long legs sparkle in the light.

Looks like it's time to give the garage a bit of a clean!

The next day I noticed this garden orb spider by our water tank.

This time it was the setting sun that added a sparkle to the web.

Luckily these spiders are all quite harmless and we only need to suffer the inconvenience of their webs.

I'm sure I could find some lovely poisonous redback spiders to photograph, but I'm not particularly keen to get close enough for a macro shot!

.
.
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Well, I'm updating this to post a photo I just took!

First Full Moon of the Year

2010-01-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

The moon was beautiful a couple of nights ago. I figured I may as well get out the camera and try to photograph it as part of my Photo-A-Day project. I'm really enjoying how this project gives the incentive to have a play! Anyhow, after 20 tries I got this:

I have actually edited this a little - sharpened and cropped. It was OK. I've seen better. But maybe those photos weren't taken with a base model DSLR and cheap lens like mine?! :)

It was fascinating to zoom in on my shot (you can click the above image to zoom in) and make out a number of craters. I then went hunting and learned more about Lunar Craters on Wikipedia. I also discovered that this first full moon was a significant one. In the USA they call it the Wolf Moon and the moon was also the closest it will be to the earth all year. You can read about that on the National Geographic Daily News .

So if you'd like to take a photo of the moon, you can follow these instructions that amazing photographer and all-round wonderful person, Katrina Kennedy, has left on her blog!

Here's what the moon looks like when you let the camera choose the exposure:

I quite liked this, too. You can't make out any details of the moon but it has an atmosphere about it. Perhaps what I need to do is play with High Dynamic Range photography (HDR tutorial, HDR Tutorials Roundup ). Wouldn't that be fun?! It will have to wait for another day (or year ...!).

Happy Australia Day

2010-01-26T03:16:00.000-08:00

Just my photo of the day:

This is my dear husband (with a friend of ours) volunteering at the Rotary organized Australia Day festivities. The weather was perfect. He sold a lot of icecreams! We've been so busy with the girls for so many years there's been little time for volunteering. He used to do so much with the fire-brigade and other worthy causes. We're thinking it's time to do a little more for the community again...

Day 26 of the year and I have still managed to take a photo each day. Just 340 or so days to go ;) I've been learning so much more about my camera and about processing the photos in Lightroom. It's been a lot of fun. But I must admit I haven't done much of anything else!

The slideshow of my previous post will keep updating with my POTD as I add them. I should add a link to it on my side bar somehow. Hmm...

Taking a photo every day

2010-01-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

I've had the luxury of being on holidays for the past few weeks. I have achieved almost nothing in that time; the house is still a mess, I haven't completed a single project, we haven't even gone away! However I have been having fun trying out a few new things with my camera and participating in the Designer Digitals Photo-a-Day group on Flickr. I've certainly found that a lot of settings I understood but had to think about have now become more automatic.
I've placed a slideshow of the photos I've taken so far on my sidebar.
So the next quandary is what to do with these photos. I'd like to print them. The possibilities range from

print a photo book with each photo on a singe page (but 365 is too many pages!)
combining a week's worth of photos into a digital template (but that seems to cause people a bit of burnout)
combining a month's worth on a double page spread (but the photos end up a bit small)

I've gone for the third option because I don't have a lot of spare time during the school year. I've designed a template to use. I made the photo spaces portrait shaped rather than square because it seems to fit more of each photo without too much cropping.
Here is my template half completed for January. I've numbered the days going down the columns - what do you think about that?! Usually calendars number each row, but they have 7 in a row and this template has 8!

I'd be happy to share that template if anyone can tell me how to do that!

The joy of giving "handmade" gifts

2009-12-26T02:06:00.000-08:00

Well, my girls were delighted with my labors of love.
Megan enjoyed looking through her family recipe book (see my previous post: My daughter's recipe book). I think its purpose will really hit next year when she moves to the big city to live.
Amy was totally surprised and delighted by her camp photo book. It's not often you can sneak something under her radar! There were photos in the book that her teacher had sent me after I emailed him requesting the camp itinerary. As she flicked through the book she kept saying "What's this photo?! WHERE did you get it from?! How did you know?!"
You can view the book here (minus a few pages): Amy's Camp

And both grandmothers were delighted with their mugs sporting Megan's artwork (see How things have changed - or not?!). Neither of the grandmothers realized at first that the mugs sported my daughter's artwork and both thought we'd bought the mugs specifically because the hair style resembled their own wild gray hair!
I may have spend a ridiculous number of hours on these projects, but gosh it's lovely to be able to give a labor of love and be able to see it received with such delight!

Merry Christmas

2009-12-23T13:10:00.000-08:00

Decorations up - check

Presents all wrapped and under the tree - check

House tidied - check (well sortof, just don't look in the garage, OK?)

Food purchased - check (but I keep thinking of more!)

Parents arrived - check

It's all go!

Merry Christmas to you all!

My daughter's recipe book

2009-12-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

I've been working on this on and off during the year.

I bought an A5 ring binder and A5 plastic pockets. It is supposed to be a recipe book that grows. The A5 pockets seemed a good size for the handwritten recipes and clippings from magazines that she might collect.
I've printed a number of favorite recipes for her. There's a mix of her favorites, basic recipes and family recipes - from her aunts, grandparents and great grandparents. I've scrapped some with actual photos and original handwriting, some are from the Internet that I then downloaded and scrapped, some were just scanned newspapers articles and magazines. I've left out the ones that were just copied from elsewhere!
The cover is created using Wordle - I just pasted the text from a few of the recipes.
The dividers are from digital kraft papers by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals. The food decorations are mostly Microsoft wordArt, except the one with cakes is my DD's art. I've laminated the dividers so the tags stick out.
There is a big mix of products so I'm not going to list them all. But email me if you have a question!
Now to keep her off my computer until Christmas..!!!

How things have changed - or not?!

2009-12-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

A parcel arrived a couple of days ago. I'd scanned some of my 18yo daughter's art work and ordered some cards online with VistaPrint. But their upselling got to me and I thought, what the heck... So I ordered mugs and a notebook and keyring as well. Great presents for grandparents and teachers.

So here they are, all the way from The Netherlands in only a few weeks. I was thinking how much things have changed, and that we could never have done this just a few years ago. And then I remembered these plates...

These were a Heinz promotion from about 40 years ago! I remember my mother unpacking the art paper and textas and my two sisters and I sat down to do our best art.

That I still have these plates is testament to their durability and my inability to throw things away! I wonder if my daughter will still have her mug in 40 years' time!

Creating a font from your handwriting

2009-12-05T15:43:00.000-08:00

A while ago I made my handwriting into a font. I've used it for scrapbook pages and for personal notes. It took a little work but it's been fun to use! My youngest daughter also made a font that I've used on some pages about her.

I used a free site: www.yourfonts.com (I found the link at pickleberrypop)
First I made a printed version:

I wasn't 100% happy with it and I want to try to create a cursive script font. Cursive fonts are a bit harder to do because the tails on the letters need to lead on to the next letter. This is how it looks:

(The text is from the MOM song - sing it to the William Tell Overture - see here youtube. Love it!)

They provide you with a template you can print out, write your alpha on, then scan back in. You then upload the template and your font is created almost instantly. It is amazing!

Because I never do things the way they're supposed to be done, I wrote my letters on another sheet. I wrote each letter of the alphabet out between an "a" and an "e" to make sure they flowed like this:

you can see how messy I was.
Then I scanned that sheet, picked the best example of each letter, and used PhotoShop to place them on the template they provided and edited it a little.

You can also see that cheated by using PhotoShop to type a cursive font that I liked (Lucida Handwriting) onto the sheet (in blue). I used that font as a guide so I could edit my letters to make them similar in size and make similar tails. Then I hid my blue layers before saving as a jpeg to upload to the site. It sounds like a lot of work but this way it was so easy to go back and tweak a few letters to get it just right.

I'm quite happy with this! :-) It looks very much like my writing but much neater! The letters are spaced out a little more than I'd like, but it's easy to change the spacing between letters (leading) in Word and in PhotoShop CS.

And here's a page with my daughter's handwriting font on it:

Credits here

Esther