In week 3 of social distancing my tip for you all is to make an effort to keep your social contacts alive. Make that (video) call, especially when you’re introverted and don’t necessarily feel that need! Do it anyway.
The bible verse I’m reading this week is Psalm 6.
And the image was digitally collaged & edited by me, showing our Lord coming to our rescue and chasing away our enemy – in this case the pandemic. š
May the Lord bless you all and keep you safe.
In my second week I’m finding something akin to a new rhythm, and thanks to some helpful rearrangements in my schedule, I’m feeling far less isolated than last week. In the video I’m sharing with you what steps I took, and the tips that I distilled from that.
Of course there’s also a bible verse that comes with that, this time from Jeremiah 29.
May God keep you all safe in these bizarre times.
Hello all, in these bizar times of the corona pandemic, I’m considering a new series of vlogs, Words of Encouragement, and if I go through with this idea, then this would be
part 1.
The video is basically just me, talking to you about readjusting, finding a new normal, feelings of isolation. But most of all to share encouragement, this time by way of Psalm 23, NIV:
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
May God keep you all safe.
Remember the little autumn-themed ultra mini album I showed youĀ a couple of blog posts ago? I had created itĀ with the leftover scraps of a larger, regular-sized mini album that I was working on. Well, I’veĀ finished that oneĀ and I’m very happy to shareĀ the results! š
This 6×6 mini album is Cinch-bound, itĀ has TEN page assemblies with 42 (!) photo layouts, a lot of diecuts by me, plus a lot of extra embellishments. The page construction was very very simple, so I’ve incorporated a short page tutorial as well.
The paper collection I used is Autumn Song by Bo Bunny – of which I totally forgot to film a walkthrough beforeĀ I started the project, but there’s a link to Amazon below should you be interested in this collection, which is absolutely gorgeous and perfectĀ for this time of year!
This mini album is all about Shalem, my French lop who passed away two years ago. So I decoratedĀ the front cover of the album with a pictureĀ of him, but before I had the photo printed, I did some digital editing first! I cut Shalem from his original background (the grass in my garden) and then pasted him into a fantasy fall landscape that I found on the internet somewhere. In the lower right corner I digitally wrote his name and dates of birth/death. So before we go to the video, here’s a close-up of the album’s front cover:
So enjoy the video and please leave a comment to let me know what you think! Also, click theĀ LikeĀ buttonā¦. š
This cute little gatefold pocket card went straight into the altered gift box I showed you in my previous blog post. I designed it myself, using Graphic 45’s gorgeously colorful Bohemian Bazaar design paper, on hot blue cardstock. You’ll also see some of my scrap mats again, in fact, this card is the end result of the project I was actually working on in my scrap mat tutorial, so check it out!
Thanks to its multiple pockets, this gatefold card will also serve great as a gift card holder as well.
For a tutorial on how to make this gatefold card, check out this blogpost here.
Thank you for liking and subscribing, and please let me know what you think!
In the video I mention my tutorial on how to print text on small tags or scraps of your design paper, you can find said tutorialĀ here.
Note on video quality: Most of my videos are 720p; the rest is 540p. If you don’t get one of these resolutions while viewing the video on this blog but instead have to make due with some rather unsharp videos, you should be able to adjust video quality by clicking the gear iconĀ in the bottom right corner of the video player, and selecting your preferred quality.Ā If you don’t have the gear icon, then click the Youtube sign, also in the bottom right corner of the video player. This will take you directly to Youtube, where you’ll be able to change the video quality with the gear icon after all. Hope this helps.
Sometimes the objects in our pictures look good, but yet there seems to be missing something. Something that would make this photo really stand out, showcasing its object with flair. If you encounter such a picture in your camera roll, have you ever considered changing the background, and exchanging it for something different altogether?
For instance, here’s a picture of our choir with a fun enhanced background:
Below is the original: it was taken under less than ideal lighting conditions due to our low-lit practice room and a “snap-shot camera”. The room itself had nothing but dark colors and had little else to catch one’s attention in a favorable way. And yet, at the moment it was the only photo we had with all of us present. So, I changed our background to liven it up a bit. Here’s another variation with a digital background:
Of course you don’t have to use abstract digital art – a nice landscape will do just as well! š
These changes don’t make it a beautiful picture all of a sudden – but, it does add at least some “pizzazz”…
Another example. I love photographing my cute little long-haired guinea pigs. They make for ideal top models by the way: they hardly move once they notice that thing you keep pointing at them (what could it be?!) and they even let you change small things in their poses, like lifting their chins a little bit, or stretching their legs just so. š
Take Sh’eilah for instance. I took a picture of her which is lovely in and of itself – mostly because she is lovely no matter how or where you take her picture ;-).
Anyway, the background was a bit dull, so I removed it all together – or rather, I cut Sh’eilah from her original background and pasted her onto a green digital abstract. This makes the pic rather more flamboyant – and its object a true Top Model, imho.
When I want to copy the object in one photo and paste it into the next (always create a new layer!), I make sure my selection tool “leaves some room” between the selection I drew – this way I create kind of a “blurry” selection line, which makes it way more easy to blend the object in with its new background.
And last but not least, you can combine digital photo editing with scrapbooking or making cards, by making sure you choose photo backgrounds that will match with the color scheme of your design paper stack. Like I did with the pictures for my Tag card in Red. I already showed you the example below in that post; if you want to see how the rest of the pictures turned out, go check out that blog post (of deze in het Nederlands) and watch the video!
By the way, I’m using Paintshop Pro XI for these kind of edits.
Season’s greetings!
Wishing you all a glorious Easter, reflected each spring in the lovely colors the Lord paints our beautiful Earth with,Ā celebrating the New Life conquered for us by Jesus’s death and resurrection! (in case you forgot Easter’s true meaning due to all the distractions of Easter eggs & bunnies š )
I tried to capture a fraction of this colorful Glory in this picture, which I edited with Paintshop Pro XI. Of course featuring one of my very own top model guinea piggies – her name is Queen Ester, and isn’t she gorgeous! š (Meanwhile, she’s grown into aĀ curly-haired beauty)
Enjoy a blessed Easter!
Je zou het niet zeggen, maar het is Lente! Tijd om te genieten van de mooie voorjaarskleuren waarmee God onze aarde elk jaar schildert, kleuren die het Nieuwe Leven uitdrukken dat Jezus voor ons heeft veroverd door Zijn dood en opstanding! (voor het geval je door alle paaseieren en paashazen de echte betekenis van Pasen vergeten was š )
Ik heb een fractie van die kleurenpracht proberen te vangen in deze bewerkte foto, bewerkt met Paintshop Pro XI – met in de hoofdrol trouwens een echt caafje, mijn eigen Queen Ester! (Inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een prachtige langharige dame)
Ik wens iedereen een vrolijk en gezegend Pasen!
Although a t-shirt is not necessarily a fashion statement in and of itself, you still want it to express something of your unique personality. Sometimes the shirts that wait for you in your local fashion shop just won’t do. They are either ridiculously expensive ($70,= for what in the end still isĀ a t-shirt?!) or they have a silly image, logo or text that simply doesn’t appeal to you at all.
That is why now and then I customize, by choosing or creating an image to my own liking and having it printed on a shirt,Ā hoodie orĀ tank top.
Of course a holiday picture or a photo of my family wouldn’t do, but… there are other options. How about picking a painting or piece of artĀ that you like – or better yet: created yourself – or a text that you love, or, like me, scenes from your favorite comics!
So here’s six pieces of clothing that I had customized, plus two more that I did myself. I edited every image by giving them nice frames, and sometimes blending them with another image or adding a different background.Ā Then I had them printed on pieces of clothing.
Black hoodie + black t-shirt
Green Lantern comics fans will recognize the picture I used here as the logos of eachĀ of the Lantern corpsĀ (except the Black). Being an ardent comics fan, I’m very pleased with how this one turned out and I actually wear this thing a lot – and I never wear hoodies! š
Again a Green Lantern theme, although more subtle than the previous one:Ā the Green Lantern logo blended with a fantasy landscape, which I did with Paintshop Pro XI:
White t-shirt 1
AĀ sceneĀ from Nonplayer this time – with digitally customized borders – this is such a fan-tas-tic comic I don’t know where to begin to describe it!Ā (apologies for the frumpy look: I searched and searched for this darned little tee, and finally recovered it – from the laundry hamper! :oops:)
White t-shirt 2
Back toĀ Green Lantern, with a view from Odym:
Black t-shirt
An underwater action shot fromĀ Fathom:
(image from the website’s cart right before I ordered)
The print turned out nice enough even though the colors were too blue, but theĀ shirt itself wasn’t quite as lovely as shown on the site, due to its straightness and lack of waist. Bummer. So there’s a risk when ordering online…
White t-shirt 3 – bought a white shirt in a store, then took it to a sportswear printing company and mailed them the image. This turned out to be one of the cheaper options, although I had to drive there twice (once to deliver my shirt to them, the second time a couple of days later to pick it up).
This image is from Seven Warriors (a great comic!), which I edited by giving it some customized borders with Paintshop Pro XI, creatingĀ the “wiping”Ā effect you can see here:
Of course there is always an alternative option:
D.I.Y.!
Use your home printer to print your image on special photo transfer paper, cut it to size (following the image borders as close as you can!) and then simply iron it onto your t-shirt.
This is relatively cheap, but I consider this more of a one-time-use solution because usually after only one or two laundry sessions your image will start to crack or fade, or both.
The examples below show pictures ofĀ two ofĀ the guinea pigs from my caviary, that I digitally gave new backgrounds; I usually wear these only once or twice a year, when I go to a cavy show ;-):
So who says that customizing your t-shirt is only for family happenings or company team building sessions?!Ā Be your own unique self and start customizing thoseĀ boring whiteĀ t-shirts in your closet!
Voor Nederlandse versie klik hier
A tag card is a card that features, well…. tags. I’ve discovered that scrapbookers use the term rather loosely: to them it basically stands for any piece of paper or chipboard that you can either write on or glue a photo onto, that is not glued to something else itself. I’ve seen people call huge sheets of paper “tags”, and I’ve noticed them applying the same notion to the tiniest of scraps. As for me, I simply find the whole concept fascinating – who knew that such simple things as tags could be used in so many creative ways!
For this, my very first tag card, I got my inspiration from Elsa Justafew’s Father’s Day tag card on Youtube – you can find a link to her video in the description of my video on Youtube. Mine was a birthday card – also: gift card holder – for one of my dear girlfriends who turned an undisclosed age last February 1st š
I also added something of myself to this design: digital photo editing. To have every picture that I used fit the design and color scheme of this tag card perfectly, I digitally altered them and gave each character a gorgeous new background. Like with my friend’s cute doggie:
It was quite some extra work, but I’m very pleased with the effect.
So, have fun watching the video – and do let me know what you think!
Oh, and don’t forget to check out my Mediterranean variation on this card!
English language blog post: click here.
In de wereld van het scrapbooken zijn “tags” een bekend fenomeen. Tags zijn in eerste instantie bedoeld als een soort los etiket (tag in het Engels), maar volgens mij staat het bij scrapbooken inmiddels voor een ruimĀ assortiment aan losse kaartjes die allerlei vormen en kleuren kunnen aannemen, van ansichtkaartformaat of groter, tot de kleinste friemelbriefjes. Ze worden gebruikt om op te schrijven, maar ook om foto’s op te plakken.
Een tag-kaart is, tja, hoe zal ik het zeggen… een kaart met tags! Dat kun je natuurlijk ook weer op 1001 manieren doen – waarvan ik er nu eentje heb ontdekt en uitgeprobeerd.
Het idee deed ik op van een Amerikaanse scrapster die haar Vaderdag tag-kaart deelde op Youtube – in de beschrijving van mijn filmpje op Youtube vind je ook een link naar haar video.
Ik heb er natuurlijk mijn eigen draai aan gegeven, en er ook een nieuw element aan toegevoegd: digitale fotobewerking. Ik heb nl. eerst nieuwe digitale achtergrondjes toegevoegd aan de foto’s zodat alles nog mooier bij het ontwerp van de kaart zou passen. Zo is het geheel in de ogen van een kleurenfanaat als ik echt “af” en mooi in evenwicht! Neem bijv. Hond van Jarige Vriendin:
Tis wel wat meer werk natuurlijk… maar dan heb je ook wat.
Veel kijkplezier, en ik hoor graag wat je ervan vindt!
Leuk? Kijk dan ook eens naar mijn Mediterraanse variant op deze kaart!
