Digital Fun and Christmas Presents

It's a bit like London buses.  Nothing for a while and then two (posts) come along in one day!  We have had a very quiet Christmas but it has been a chance to take things slowly.  My Mum is still staying with us and will be for a few more weeks yet.  She finds it very hard to concentrate for more than a few minutes so we haven't got far with occupational therapy.  She is managing a little knitting, just 11 stitches to a row but she will only work one row or maybe 2 and has then had enough.  One big improvement though is that she no longer needs the zimmer frame to walk round the house and is managing with a stick.  I find it doubtful, though, that Mum will be able to live on her own in the future so some difficult decisions may well have to be made soon.

While Mum has been snoozing I have found time to play some more with Photoshop Elements and am continuing with my lessons with Kim Klassen.

This first image has been constructed using a texture of distressed flooring that Kim supplied.  The finished image has been made into a brush which I can now use to add texture to other images.  I shall have to play with that and show you how it works.

I am very excited by this image above which has been made with a brush that I made myself out of a few lines of text.  I got the idea from Judi Hurwitt's blog where she has been playing with stacked text in preparation for the Sketchbook Challenge that will start on 1 January.  ( I would very much like to do this new challenge but I don't want to give myself too many commitments next year, especially as I am sure to have a lot of sorting out to do for mum.)  I am going to work some more with this stacked text and making brushes in Photoshop as I can see great potential for it in fabric design.  Hopefully I will get more adept and imaginative in making my designs.  I can't thank Kim Klassen enough for the knowledge I am gaining by doing her courses.   

Christmas was a bit of a non event with us, although we did have a pleasant day, but I did have several very thoughtful presents. 

I was both surprised and delighted to receive this lovely book which is a sourcebook of fabric designs from my stepson.  Who would think that a young man would put so much thought into a gift?  This book will keep me happy for hours!  You can tell by the colours of the scrim and thread on the right that a special friend knows me very well!  The wool that came with this present is already being used in a knitting project.  Mum is knitting me a scarf............eventually! ;-)

Just a couple of pages from the Swatches book.

My other stepson surprised us by bringing us gingerbread figures and bourbon truffles that he had made himself!  We didn't know he could cook!  Clever young man.  He is a member of two Indie bands and is beginning to get airplay on the radio.


Red Shoe Diaries - Indietracks 2010 Teaser from Red Shoe Diaries on Vimeo.

He's the one with the beard on bass guitar!  (The band lineup has changed slightly since the recording was made)

I had another very thoughtful gift from a very special blogging friend who, despite her own considerable problems caring for her own mum at the moment, found the time to think of me and send me a beautiful gift.

Somebody else who knows me well!  This is a fantastic book with so much inspiration inside and is a joy to read even if you never made anything from it, which is hardly likely! 

Helena's beautiful inscription really touched me and I will treasure this book all the more for that.  Thank you Helena for your very generous gift.  I am unworthy.  Helena also sent me a very pretty little babouschka doll which I forgot to photograph because she's sitting in our little Christmas tree but she is delightful and will be pinned to a jacket or bag after Christmas.  Helena blogs as herself and for her alter egos Bob T Bear Esq and Dilly .  Dilly and Bob are typical brother and sister and their adventures always make me smile and cheer me up when I am feeling low. 

Digital Playing

Earlier this week my blogging friend Ju-north put a beautiful snow photo on her blog which she then played with in Paint Shop.  With my new found skills from working with Kim Klassen's wonderful digital manipulation classes I thought 'Ooh!  I think I can do that!'  Well I had to have a go and this is my version above. It's different from Julia's, as it should be, but I am so pleased that I actually understood what she had done and was able to follow the steps through myself. 

This is what the photo looked like to start with.

This soft focus image of tulips is another manipulation from Kim's class making full use of layer adjustments.  You probably need to click on it to see the effect.  

This image is all my own work!  Ir started as an image from an icy puddle with a texture of mouldy wood layered over and a swirl applied.  Then I used a stamp on a further adjustment layer and tweaked all the opacities.  Oh, I forgot, I also turned the image to black &white.  I am thinking that I may be able to use this as a texture in a future piece.

Finally, apologies if I've shown this before but this is another image from Kim's class which had an overlaid texture and lots of labels.  I think this digital thing could be very addictive.

Did I say finally?  I lied!  Finally:

I'm sure everyone is getting very busy with last minute preparations and travel (even I am going to do some baking as Mum is diabetic and I need to reduce her sugar!) so may I wish everyone out there a very Merry Christmas and a Healthy and Peaceful New Year.  We are having a quiet Christmas at home so I'll be popping up online from time to time.  Thank you too to all my followers for your interest over the past year and beyond.  I hope I haven't bored you too much! ;-)

Merry Christmas and

A Happy New Year

Kim Klassen's Skinny Mini Course

While Mum has been sleeping and I have been feeling lousy with the cold of the year (!) I have been working through Kim's excellent Photoshop course.  If you have missed out on this round you have another chance to do the course as Kim is running it again at the beginning of December so just click on Kim's button at the top of my right hand sidebar.  It is a video based course and Kim keeps the videos short so they don't take forever to do and I have to say it's becoming more and more addictive.

To be fair to Kim I can't detail the steps I took but here are the results of my labours

 Above is the original photograph and below the altered copy (click on the altered one to see the details).  The aim was to change the image to black and white and then add adjustment layers to get the desired effect.

This photograph of the Magnolia Yellowbird was taken at Alnwick Gradens in Northumberland and the aim of this lesson was to reduce the strength of colour and add a texture to make a bit of a dreamy atmosphere.  I decided to add some text too and changed the colour of the text.

This was the original photograph of St Ives rooftops on which I altered the saturation and added adjustment layers. I then added a photograph of nets to which I applied more adjustment layers.  I think I would have liked the net lines to be dark where they're light and vice versa so I need to have another play with this.

I have paid a very nominal $5 to have continuing access to the instructional videos and still have 3 more to work with including how to make brushes which I glimpsed today and which I have done a little of previously.  There is still a mountain of stuff to learn but in terms of finding my way around Photoshop this course has been wonderful.  I'm going to play some more!

MIA, a little digital and a new website

This could turn into a bit of a long post so you may want to make a cuppa before you start!  You may have noticed that I have been conspicuous by my absence over the last few weeks.  Despite the fact that my foot is still causing me problems, that wasn't the reason for being away.  At the end of October my Mum went on a longed-for cruise to America for three weeks and 2 days before the end of the cruise she woke up with a numb arm.  To cut a long story short she had had a stroke so DH and I headed down to Essex to be there for when she got home.  After a 5 day stay in hospital and some recovery time at home Mum is now staying with us until we can see what sort of recovery she is going to make.  Fortunately it is just Mum's right hand and arm that are affected and she does have movement in it but no feeling so fine movement is tricky.  She says she will bounce back and as she is a fighter I'm sure she will.

We have had some laughs in all this because Mum's speech was slightly affected in as much as she kept mixing up her words.  DH is now referred to as her 'un-in-slaw'!  She was talking to my brother today about 'ruvuccas' (verrucas) so the sounds are all there, just a bit mixed up. :)

Just before our dash to Essex I had signed up to Kim Klassen's Skinny Mini Photoshop workshop and couldn't start it until we got back home.  Kim is offering this class again in December and from what I have seen so far it is an excellent class to learn the fundamentals of Photoshop Elements, especially with the use of layers.  I have already learned a lot and had fun making the changes to these images. 

 This daisy image is one of Kim's and I think all I did was add the text and change the colour of it.

 Using the daisy image again this had a solid colour layer added and an adjustment layer.

This dandelion that I had photographed  has been cropped and text added.  The colour of the text was altered by colour picking from the stone in the background.

This image above is one of my favourite images from Barbara Hepworth's garden in St Ives and I used and adjustment layer (hard mix), added text, changed its colour and then warped the text.

This final image is one of Kim's and includes a texture layer and some judicial use of brushes.  

The best thing so far is that Kim is teaching some very useful habits to get into and I now appreciate why you should save photo files as PSDs once you have manipulated them.  With a PSD you get to save all the layers you have made so you can come back and work into it more later if you wish.  Magic!  

I'm at least a week behind on the course so I hope to get a few more lessons done over the next few days while Mum is resting.  Anyone who is a veteran at Photoshop will realise these are only baby steps in manipulation but that's what I need, a good grounding to demystify the process.

Some of you may know that I am a member of the Quilters Guild of Great Britain and within the Guild I am a member of the Contemporary Quilt Group.  This group has been invaluable to me since I joined and has been a constant source of friendship, inspiration and knowledge.  My main point of contact and chat has been the CQ Yahoo group but now we have our very own website!  

The site includes information about the group, images of members work and contact details for anyone who is interested in becoming a member.  The site is in its infancy but it already looks exciting and will be added to over time.  If I can manage it I will put a button on my sidebar.

Needless to say, crafting is taking a bit of a back seat at the moment.  Journal Quilts are waiting to be finished (3 still to do for this year), Stay Home Round Robin coming up in December, An A4 quilt for Another Little Quilt Swap.  Although my sewing table is now vaguely accessible in our bedroom I don't feel very inclined to get to grips with anything too complicated so I am handsewing some laminated fabric I was experimenting and may well end up handsewing my remaining projects this year.  Watch this space!  (My little Fantasy Bird has progressed but I keep forgetting to photograph it).

I can't go without showing you our gorgeous great nephew who is now almost 9 months old and who has just been to Australia and back to his uncle's wedding (in company with Mum and Dad and grandparents).

This little man charmed all the stewards on the flights to and from Australia and all the guests at the wedding.  He's learned to blow bubbles too and I can't wait to have another cuddle!

Digital Playing

I have been promising myself for ages that I will make the effort and get to grips with digital photo manipulation as I want to incorporate my own images into an art quilt.  In the course of my blog hopping I have been following Linda Matthews' blog and she is very generous with her tutorials.  This evening I finally got round to tinkering with one of the tutorials on her blog.

I took this photo along with the following two,

having decided to use my own images, although the text image came from the site Linda links to. (It think).

The result, after a couple of attempts is this

It's not perfect and I couldn't do it again without Linda's instructions but I am chuffed with myself and I shall be trying a few more.  :)  Baby steps!