Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Hipstamatic Photos - cards and a Mini-Book

Hello Dear Friends! This is alexandra and today we're looking at cards and a mini book all showcasing Hipstamatic shots.

 

 

 

 

Here is a first card I made using two Hipstamatic pictures:

and this one with an off-centered glittered frame...

and to finish off this week of posts on the magic of Hipstamatic shots, here is a crazy mini. The idea behind it is a portrait of each member of the family (minus DD#1 who is away at University) coupled with a manuscript journaling of their favorite things in life! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Avital for providing the journaling cards used in this mini-album.

Thank you for your visits and comments! I've enjoyed being your host this week. Happy Scrapping everyone!

Hipstamatic Photos - lay-outs

Hello Dear Friends! This is alexandra again and today we're going to take a look at the Hipstamatic pictures on lay-outs.

These pictures are a lot easier to use than one might think. Depending on the effect chosen, they can convey a dream-like state, a sense of innocence or create a bold contrast and really catching the attention...

 

 

This page is about the joy of winter. The saturated blues accentuate the idea of cold weather and make a nice contrast with the whimsical banner.

On this page, what would have been common pictures had they been taken with a regular camera actually appear to be magical with that white glare in the middle.

I often feel that Hipstamatic shots are a truer translation of how we remember a moment. For instance, that moment in Paris when we sat at the Jardin du Palais Royal to enjoy an esquisite pastry from Ladurée actually looks like that in my memory!

For the project "2011 in 52 pages" that my co-host Pascale and Virginie are helping me conduct at Scrap Rendez-Vous, I have often mixed Hipstamatic photos with regular pictures...

or even used a photo collage of Hipstamatic shots as the base for my page...

here is another page with a majority of hipstamatic shots...

On this page, I layered several shots on top of each other and attached them with a brad...

I hope this has given you some ideas on how to mix and match hipstamatic shots on your pages. In my next post, we'll see how one can make fun cards using Hipstamatic pictures and I'll also have a very fun new mini to share.

click.

Hi there! Welcome to Click. Saturday! I thought we´d go on with the topic of this week; design. Emily has done such a great job showing us the principles of design that I thought the photo challenges would go with that. 

Now, design can, of course be of different characters: paper/fabric, architecture, design as in home decor.

 

Design Around Town

The first photo challenge is to go out in your neighbourhood or town and take photos of some typical architecture.

 Don´t forget the detail shots! 

 

Marnie accepted the challenge, took a few shots, and added them to a layout based upon a Becky Fleck sketch.

Home Design

Challenge number 2 is to look in your home/house where you can find design. Maybe it is special pieces of furniture or colors. Or perhaps your house has some funky features on the outside?! 

And here are the photographs incorporated into a layout.

 

This is an older layout I did to highlight our home decor style.

Paige shares a page giving us a glimpse of her home. Such a beautiful page!

 

Such photos and layouts can also include our outdoor spaces. Alexandra created a darling layout about her new backyard makeover!

Fashion Design

The third photo challenge is to take a look in your wardrobe. Do you have a specific style of clothes?

These are the sorts of photos that, while we might not think them important, will be fun to look back on and remember. And I promise, it's more than just the clothes you will remember when  you look back on a picture like this!!

And while you are in the mood and have a photo in hand, take a minute and scrap it. No time like the present!!

 

Marnie was excited to document her love of stripes. What a great season to shop for a stripe lover!

 

Here are the challenges again:

1. Go out in your neighbourhood, town, or city (wherever you may live!) and capture the specific design/styles of the buildings. Maybe there is some public art somewhere?
2. Once home, head inside and see if you can capture the style in the architecture of your house. Is there anything inside your home that shows a specific style?
3. Head into your closet. Look in your wardrobe; just take a photo of your clothes hanging for example. Do you have a style of clothes that you love? A favorite designer perhaps?

Please feel free to share your photos and layouts with us. We would love to see what you come up with!

☺Lisa O

My Creative Process Day 3: Photos

 

 

 

So…I take photos. At times, lots of photos. You would think that I have thousands of photos on memorycards and all over my computer. And you would be right up until a few years ago. Since 2007 or so I use a system for my picture taking + saving.

I go through my memorycard almost daily and especially if I have shot an event or anything like that. When I say go through I mean I check all of the photos and edit them if they need to be edited. I usually only adjust some contast and downsize them in PSE. Recently (the past year or so) I have done some post processing using picnik.com I love that site!

I save my photos in a jpeg format, I am used to it and it works for me. I have monthly folders on my computer. For example; my May folder holds the photos I took and wanted to save that month + subfolders with my scrapping layouts + the simple things. The monthly system is great! When I am looking for something I usually remember roughly which month I took the photo!

 

Now, I know there are several services for organising your photos, tagging them etc. and I am sure they work just fine. But I like my system and as long as it is working…yeah you get the picture (pun intended!).

As I am editing + saving almost right away and continuously erase all my other photos (the doubletakes and/or the bad ones) I don´t have thousands of photos each month!

In my folders I have both the photos I want to use in my scrapbooking and photos I just want to keep for any other reason. When I decide to sit down to scrap I just print a bunch of the recent photos and of I go. I almost always have a few photos + memories waiting for me on my desk!



 

Here are just a few examples of pages where I show my use of photos.

Multiple Photos

One of my favorite ways to include lots of photos from an event or trip is to make photomosaics. I usually use picnik.com or big huge labs for that. I use a variety of mosaics for different kinds of pages. Here below I crammed in a whopping 30 photos on one 8,5 x 11" layout!

{together} more about this layout here

more about this layout here

Sometimes I just print a few copies of the same photo like above. I don't make mosaics for them (but you certainly can!), I just print them from a Word document so that they almost look like a photostrip from a photobooth.

 Single Photos

 A single photo layout can be very striking, don´t you think?!

more about this layout here

On the above layout I prepared the photo with some digital brushes before I printed it.

 

more about this layout here

As you can see, I use all sorts of formats on my photos (even though they are mostly 4 x 6 as I said before). 

I hope you are enjoying this week's posts! Friday, the last day, I will end with my scrapbooking process! But be sure to check in here tomorrow for giveawayday!

☺Lisa O

Autumn is Awesome - Photo Day

Welcome to my very first hostessing week on Write. Click. Scrapbook! I am thrilled (and rather nervous) to be with you all week! I chose "Awesome Autumn" as my theme, and I will be covering photos, layouts, cards, and altered projects throughout the week. So many dreamy autumn projects to share with you in the coming days, which leads me to...

A few things you should know about me:

1) Autumn is my favourite season.

2) My love of autumn inspiried me to choose the end of September for my wedding in 2006, and to engineer the conception of my first child to give birth at the beginning of October.

3) It's not "Fall", it's "Autumn". Got it? (Tomorrow you will see a whole layout dedicated to THAT topic!)

 

As I said, throughout the week I will be sharing Awesome Autumn ideas in a few scrapalicious categories. Note, though, that I'm choosing to focus on autumn as a season, rather than the holidays that fall within it. We've got lots of time in October and November for that!

 

Today we are looking at Autumn Photos

Autumn is my very favourite time of year to shoot. The light is amazing, the colours are vibrant, and the clothes are cozy and textured. I can't get enough of fall photography!

Now, I'm not necessarily the best one to explain the techniques of photography-- I'm learning every day! I did find a quick tutorial on autumn photography that you can read in two minutes flat right here, on the Digital Photography School website. Great tips there that I look forward to trying myself!

There are a few things that I like to try and photograph this time of year. Start by getting your kids (or friends) outside and into a park with lots of fall foliage. For the photoshoot below, I was at a local farm when I saw the most amazing light coming through the trees. I immediately promised my kids chocolate chips when they got home if they would pose for me. (Bribery works. Use it when needed.)

My very first click?

Come on! Okay, the kids are a little blurry, but boy that tree is just lit up with autumn sunshine!

 

Like any shoot, play with angles and perspective. For the one below, I placed Audrey with the sun behind her and focused on her face.

 

Next I took some from above, making the leaves the star of the show:

 

...and then some down on my knees at Lily's level to get the world from her perspective:

 

I love autumn detail shots! Our house gets pelted with acorns for weeks every autumn. There are times when people run down the street with newspapers over their heads to protect themselves.  Up close, though, they don't look quite so menacaing:

 

Oh, those autumn crafts. So beautiful, so plenteous-- in fact, way too plenteous to keep them all. So, photograph them instead! Audrey was very attached to her turkey in autumn 2008. In fact, he sat on the Thanksgiving dinner table that year:

 

Oh, and my poor pumpkin. I thought it was so romantic to have pumpkins sitting on the stoop. Apparently some little critter thought it would be a romantic home:

 

Don't forget autumn attire. Like I said, I love the autumn wardrobe-- Corduroy! Tweed! Suede!

The photo below was taken with my iphone-- I use my phone to capture the season all the time:

 

Or how about a favourite autumn outfit captured from the front:

AND the back?

These photos are some of my favourites, and you will see layouts to go with pretty much all of them tomorrow.

 

Before I go, I want to share some photos from collective member, Lisa Ottosson. She has a standing date each year with her daughter for an outdoor autumn photo shoot. I LOVE that! I am totally going to do that with my girls as they grow:

Aren't those lovely? See the rest of Lisa's photoshoot with her daughter here!

See you for some Autumn layout love tomorrow!

click.

 

We hope that you enjoyed the journaling prompts last week. This week, we are focusing on photography. Once again, please know that we would love to have you play along and load your photos or layouts to the Flickr gallery! If you want to guide us to your layout, leave us a comment telling us where to find it! Thank you!!

This month we are excited to challenge you to have a little change in perspective. September is such a wonderful background for changes--seasons, schedules, activities--even if you are no longer in school or do not have school-aged children, somehow September remains a time of renewal.

For our perspective challenges this month, here are three things we hope you might try:

1. take a photograph from above looking down,
2. take a photograph from below looking up, and,
3. hand the camera to someone else and have them snap some photos from their perspective. (This is especially delightful if you are a bit of a camera hog!!)

I try to not issue a challenge that I am not willing to do myself, so here are my three layouts showcasing my three photograph challenges.

 

From Above Looking Down

I took hundreds of these sorts of photos when my babies were tiny, but I must admit it has been awhile. I was a caught off guard by the flood of emotion I felt looking down at my middle's no-longer-so-tiny face.

 

From Below Looking Up

I live in the land of grey. Day after day the skies are filled with grey skies. Dark grey, light grey, blue grey, grey grey. But so. much. grey. When the blue sky shone, finally, it took only a moment to grab my camera and hold it upwards to capture the magic of a late summer blue sky.

 

 

Someone Else's Perspective

Back in the film-age (oh, now I feel old!) it was so hard to hand over the camera knowing how expensive it would be for a toddler to burn through a roll of film. But nowadays, it is just a matter of hard drive space and now I love handing off my camera. (As long as it is not pointed toward me! teehee!!) I find it interesting to see what my kids see.

Thank you so very much for stopping! Here's hoping that you enjoy your change in perspective!! Can't wait to see your photos!

Digi Scrap 102: Day Three - Actions

Hey there! I'm back and today we are going to take action! Well, okay we are really only going to talk a bit about Photoshop Actions. Photoshop Actions are basically just a recorded set of steps that you can run when you want to perform a task. (Don't you wish there was a action that would do the laundry?) Most scrappers use Photoshop Actions on their photos to convert to black and white or add a cool effect. There are other actions as well though. For instance, there are actions that resize and sharpen pages to put on the web. Text actions can change text into cool looking epoxies or chipboard. There are even actions that will literally scrap a page for you step by step!

Do you have a task that you perform repetitively in Photoshop CS? You can record custom actions. For instance, I recorded an Unsharp Mask action that uses Scott Kelby's recommended settings (Amount: 85% Radius: 1 Threshold: 4) and I use it on almost every photo I edit, quite a time saver. Unfortunately, Photoshop Elements does not have the custom actions feature.

However, you can run actions in either Photoshop CS or Elements. You just have to be sure that the action you are downloading is compatible with the program you have. I'm going to share a few of my favorite free actions here with you. Give them a whirl!

 

Actions for Photography

Pioneer Woman Actions (PS & PSE) - we've mentioned these actions time and time again here because they are truly amazing!

TIP: When the action is finished running, you can select the layer the action is on and use the drop down next to the word Opacity to lessen the effect. I find I run the Pioneer Woman's Boost at about 60% when I use it. The same with Seventies - one of my favorite actions in her sets!

 

Coffee Shop (PS & PSE) - Rita at the Coffee Shop offers a wide array of actions in both PSE and PS formats. I simply adore her Butterscotch Vintage action. It's just stunning! Be sure to check out her black and whites too!

Texas Chicks (PSE) - this site offers a few great Photoshop tools in action form. I use the Defog action and the Noise Reduced all the time. Worth signing up for the newsletter to get access!

Instagram (PS) -  I live in the dark ages and don't have an iPhone or even a smart phone. I have this really old flip phone with no keyboard or anything. So I can't take photos with my phone and use the app Instagram. Well now I can simulate that! This set of actions will take your photo and create similar effects to Instagram! Fun!

Rob Carr's Black & White Action (PS) - This was hard to find. I downloaded this action years ago and it is my favorite black and white conversion method. It really creates crisp, stunning black and white conversions. The action stops you in places and let's you tweak the conversion. Really cool!


Digital Scrapbooking Tools

Resize & Sharpen for Web - when posting layouts or photographs online it's important to sharpen them correctly. As well, using this action will easily resize your image to the size you wish.

Polaroid Frames - Polaroid frames are so retro and add interest too. This action set easily converts your image to have a Polaroid frame!

Installing Actions

Now you are probably wondering, I've downloaded all these actions now what do I do? You'll need to install them. I could go on and on for pages and pages here, but it's probably better to send you over to Wendy Zines' tutorial to get you started! Once you have the action loaded. You can open the Actions palette and click on it to run it.

I'll be back on Friday with some random tips and tricks. Be sure to stop by tomorrow for an awesome giveaway!

 

Welcome, September!

September is here and brings with it a few changes. But before we tell you the news, we first must say goodbye.

 

Moon is leaving us. She is a wonderful lady who will be sorely missed. Moon's pages are witty, well designed, and executed flawlessly. Her sense of humor oozes from her pages and her self-deprecating style help us all to remember to not take life quite so seriously. Thank you, Moon, for spending the last couple of years with us!

 

And now, for the changes. As our summer draws to a close, our summertime dailies are also ending this week. Please leave us a comment and let us know if you enjoyed the daily posts. And further, if you would like to see the feature return again next summer.

Next week, we return to week long author posts. Each author's week will be shortened by one day with Saturdays now becoming editorial days. Beginning next week, our Saturdays will emphasize our three pronged approach to scrapbooking: journaling (Write.), photography (Click.) and design (Scrapbook.) Saturdays will now feature journaling and photography prompts and challenges, sketches, printables, and Flickr tours. We hope to enhance your experience with us by providing you with additional reasons to scrapbook!! Because at the end of the day, that's what we are hoping for for you--inspiration to scrapbook and permission to do it simply.

We look forward to hearing your response to the new feature when it launches!! Please let us know.

 

Giveaways will return next Thursday. At which time we will return to the former schedule: comments closing Thursday evenings, lucky numbers posting Friday mornings, and the time to claim the lucky number expiring Saturday at midnight.

 

 

But for now, we are here with a brand new gallery. Please put your hands together for our new gallery, Books & Reading--a bit of a roundabout back-to-school celebration. Our team has put together an amazing set of layouts. You may see them here. Please enjoy!

Take a Different Angle

As I'm sure you can imagine I take a ridiculous number of photos of my 2 year old Kieran. Because I love photography and new approaches, lately I have been trying to mix it up by taking photos from different angles instead of the usual face on portrait. If you'd like to get some new looking photos of your kids (and renewed inspiration for scrapping said photos) then maybe you can use some of these tips!

 

Capture Details

I took lots of photos of Kieran splashing in the stream this summer, but my absolute favourite was this one capturing just his lower body.

I really wanted to a good shot of him in his rubber boots and this one was it!

 

Go High

These two photos were actually taken by my husband, since with the 50mm lens on my camera I wasn't tall enough to acheive this!

To acheive the nice blurry background (bokeh) the camera was used in aperture priority with a f/1.8 setting.

 

Go Low

For a fun effect that makes your kid look like a giant, go low!

I stood at the foot of the stairs as he walked down and shot upwards to get these two.

 

Family Fun

Finally, here's a fun shot including the entire family. As we headed off to a road trip I took this "family portrait" in the side view mirror of the car.

Thanks to my friend Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks for the idea.

 

I hope these tips have sparked some ideas of cool photo angles you can use next time you pick up the camera. There's still a bit of summer left for experimenting!

give.away.day. featuring TRACEY CLARK

When a photograph captivates you and stirs your soul, you know it instinctively. You not only see the image, you feel it. But how do you capture shots like that with your own camera? How do you make your photographs worth the proverbial thousand words?

From portraits to landscapes, still-lifes to documentary shots, Expressive Photography will not only show you why certain images sing, it will also teach you how to create your own compelling photographic images--one click at a time. 

Visually stunning and unique in its collaborative approach, this book brings the spirit of the immensely popular Shutter Sisters' blog to the printed page through the voice and photography of its founding members.

Here is what Cool Mom Picks had to say:

It's such a relaxing, enjoyable book, I find that I keep going back to the book and leafing through it. Bring it to a cafe on a rainy day while you're sipping a hot beverage, or wrap it up for the holidays and give it to your favorite photographer. If you end up with photos even half as good as what's in here, you won't regret it.

And with Tracey's new Big Picture Class, The Art of Composition, starting soon, this book will be a terrific way to help prepare your photographer's eye for what is to come.

If you would like a chance to take this book home for our

please leave us a comment telling us the first time you saw a picture that made you realize the power of the camera. Was it Ansel Adams, or a snapshot on your mother's dresser? Or was it one you took yourself? Oh, the power of the image. What a thrill to realize that we can become better at capturing the magic.

Comments will remain open until Friday and one lucky number will be chosen at random and posted Saturday. Please remember it is your responsibility to check back and claim your lucky number before midnight Monday. Thanks for stopping by!