Write. Click. Scrapbook.

and the giveaway goes to...

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give.away.day. featuring The Twinery

 

Monika back with you here again today.

No fear, I'm not alone. This time, several members of The Twinery Design Team, where I am a Senior Designer, are joining me to share their own unique and creative projects. They're using, you guessed it, baker's twine from The Twinery. I'm sure that wasn't a surprise.

Julie Ranae begins our showcase today sharing her thoughtful and colorful card creations. When she's not creating, she's keeping The Twinery Design Team organized and informed where she serves as the team's Coordinator.

 

Kathy Skou is all ready for Fall in her layout using baker's twine to outline the leaf die cuts. 

 

 

Carolyn King has taken her baker's twine covered giraffe off the page, which only enhances its cuteness and emphasizes just how tall he really is!

 

 

And this beautiful card by Jessica Fick combines baker's twine, stamping and stitching that will make anyone smile.

 

I'm so pleased to have been able to introduce you all to a few of the members from The Twinery, where they have been sharing our members' creations all week as well. The Twinery has also kindly offered today's give.away.day. prize pack!

 

The Twinery Prize Pack

Three Spools in the Winner's Choice of Colors

{$42 retail value}

 

If you would like a chance to receive this amazing gift, please leave a comment sharing with us the name of your favorite shade of baker's twine from The Twinery. Comments will remain open throughout this evening. One lucky number will be chosen at random and posted in the morning. Please remember it is your responsiblity to check back and claim your lucky number by email before the clock strikes twelve on Saturday evening. To claim you number, simply email your name, address, and excitement :) to us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com.

Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to seeing if your favorite shade is the same as ours!

Jewelry featuring The Twinery

All this week, our write. click. scrapbook. members will be showcasing projects, layouts, cards and altered items featuring baker's twine from The Twinery. I've had a sneak at what will be featured and you're going to love it all! 

Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday from me, Monika, Alexandra and Marnie. We're triple-teaming you today with some out-of-the-box projects all created using baker's twine from The Twinery.

 

JEWELRY

At one time, I knew how to crochet, but have since forgotten. Too bad because these are so cute. Oh, Alexandra, are you available for one-on-one tutoring? 

Blossom

Cantaloupe

Denim

 

Using some Pink Sorbet twine and a button, I created this bracelet using a macrame tutorial I had Pinned and just knew I was going to give it a try. The bracelet has an adjustable closure so I can easily take it on and off by myself. I wear the gold ring bracelet every day, which has a length of Caribbean {one of my Top 3 favorite shades}.

 

 

CHRISTMAS CRAFTS

Marnie has created two fun holiday crafts that will add such an impact to her decor and even be great little projects to do with the kids during their break. Here, Marnie used a shower curtain ring, Maraschino baker's twine and a bit of ribbon. So cute.

 

 

The grouping of trees, using twigs from the yard in their mini "snow-filled" bowls, makes me smile. In the order they appear, Honeydew, Peapod and Seaweed rounds out this cute arrangement.

 

 

Is it ever too early to begin on Christmas cards? Monika used generally the same design, just changing the position of the metal-rimemd tags for each of her cards to help her craft quite a few cards in a short period of time.

 

YEAR ROUND DECOR

After designing her own art print, Marnie used The Twinery twine to embroider her rainbow and cloud, adding an extra bit of dimension and a big dose of adorable.

 

And her spool covered in Marigold baker's twine completes her vignette here perfectly.

 

 

AND ONE MORE

Alexandra's layouts always tell her story in such an artistic way. She's wrapped her paint swatches in a bit of Peapod.

 

 

And we have even more goodies for you tomorrow! 

 

write. click. scrapbook. is pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with The Twinery in creating our projects this week. Connect with The Twinery on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr.

The Twinery's twine is made from 100% cotton, it's eco-friendly and made in the USA. Whether you're gift wrapping, crafting or tying up baked goods to give to a friend, their baker's twine adds a fresh, yet nostalgic look to any project at hand! Baker's twine from The Twinery comes in 22 delicious colors and is uniquely twisted against a bright white hue, creating an eye-popping burst of color and a creative embellishment! And all that color lends to a fun, candy-striped look. 

Layouts featuring The Twinery

All this week, our write. click. scrapbook. members will be showcasing projects, layouts, cards and altered items featuring baker's twine from The Twinery. I've had a sneak at what will be featured and you're going to love it all! 

 

It seems that we're not the only ones in love with baker's twine from The Twinery. Happy Tuesday...Monika back again today with my teammates Amy Sorensen and Katie Ehmann. Goodness, do we have some goodies to share today.

 

LAYOUTS 

 

What's not to love about Katie's layout. Not only did she highlight the photo of her sweet daugheters, she used baker's twine as part of her title treatment and as extra splashes of color. Buttercream is used on the button, Mandarin is wrapping the journaling cards and Charcoal is used to spell the word Love.

Using what I think is all 22 shades of The Twinery baker's twine, and attaching the strands with tiny staples, Katie allowed her journling cards to do her journaling for her. Clever. Unless she's hidden her journaling on the shipping tag and isn't telling us!

 

 

Amy always weaves perfectly composed journaling into her layouts. Her commitment to telling her family's story is evident in every page she creates. Again, a rainbow of baker's twine on this layout. Says Amy, "I used the twine in one of my favorite current ways, which is filling in a big space with contoured rows of twine. I started by drawing a wave shape with glue, and then just started adding twine and glue, twine and glue, until the wave was filled. I also did this with the round spot on the yellow square." Perfection.

 

 

Here, Monika simply wrapped strands of Denim, Marschino, Marigold and Peapod around her cardstock border sticker.  

CARDS

Katie has featured one of The Twinery's newest shades, Strawberry, in a card that has so many uses. Hurry, pull out all your 1 inch wide scraps and whip up a few cards so you'll be prepared when it counts. 

 

And here are a few cards that Monika created. They both use Buttercream baker's twine. The first example has the twine wrapped around a punched scallop shape. 

 

AND ONE MORE

Amy has created a fantastic project that is just so perfect for the Season...how darling are these sugar-crystal pumpkins, wow! And what's even better is that her daughter created the friendship bracelet stem on the tall pumpkin. I do love a mother-daughter craft project! Amy's also an exceptional quilter and I bet she made the quilt featured in her photo.

 

 

Amy is featuring a tutorial for her sugar-crystal pumpkins on her blog today, just for you. 

 

Until tomorrow,

 

 

 

write. click. scrapbook. is pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with The Twinery in creating our projects this week. Connect with The Twinery on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr.

The Twinery's twine is made from 100% cotton, it's eco-friendly and made in the USA. Whether you're gift wrapping, crafting or tying up baked goods to give to a friend, their baker's twine adds a fresh, yet nostalgic look to any project at hand! Baker's twine from The Twinery comes in 22 delicious colors and is uniquely twisted against a bright white hue, creating an eye-popping burst of color and a creative embellishment! And all that color lends to a fun, candy-striped look. 

Home Decor featuring The Twinery

All this week, our write.click.scrapbook. members will be showcasing projects, layouts, cards and altered items featuring baker's twine from The Twinery. I've had a sneak at what will be featured and you're going to love it all! 

 Hi, I'm Monika and today Kelly and I will be your hosts. You'll be seeing some amazing projects all this week from other write. click. scrapbook. team members all using baker's twine...a trend that has quickly become a go-to item for crafters, scrapbookers and card makers.

 

HOME DECOR

With the 22 colors of baker's twine available from The Twinery, it's not difficult to find a shade that coordinates perfectly with your home decor. Here, Kelly Jeppson has embellished a soup can with pencils, burlap, a book page flower and Mandarin baker's twine to add an extra splash of color. She also used a bit of Stone on the button.

 

As The Twinery adds new colors to their inventory, I add a new styrofoam covered twine ball to my vase. Looks like I need to add a few more balls and get a larger vase! Sometimes I display it in my studio and other times I move it into the family room for a pop of color. Either way, it makes me smile.

Here's the super-sized version, where I used Carribean and Marigold. It helped that I began with a styrofoam ball form, but be prepared to put a dent into your baker's twine collection with this project.

 

This is one of my newest projects and I kinda sorta have a crush on it. I wrapped bendable wire with Strawberry twine and added it to a painted canvas to inspire me in my studio. You can see my tutorial here.

LAYOUTS

Kelly also embellished this layout highlighting the fun birthday Luau for her daughter with a rainbow of baker's twine from The Twinery. I spy Pink Sorbet, Lilac, Honeydew, Mandarin and Denim. The pom pom's are just adorable and add such a festive flair.

For this layout about our youngest daughter's first days of Kindergarten last year, I used Cappuccino baker's twine to serve as lines for my journaling and to embellish the die cut.

AND ONE MORE

I adore how Kelly used the burlap scraps from her vase project and designed a rosette flower hair clip for her darling daughter.

Looking forward to a fun week and a super awesome give.away.day. on Thursday!

 

write. click. scrapbook. is pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with The Twinery in creating our projects this week. Connect with The Twinery on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr. 

The Twinery's twine is made from 100% cotton, it's eco-friendly and made in the USA. Whether you're gift wrapping, crafting or tying up baked goods to give to a friend, their baker's twine adds a fresh, yet nostalgic look to any project at hand! Baker's twine from The Twinery comes in 22 delicious colors and is uniquely twisted against a bright white hue, creating an eye-popping burst of color and a creative embellishment! And all that color lends to a fun, candy-striped look.

Sunday Photo + Words

one in a million

 

Click.

Hi there! After Francine's awesome week of phototips and tricks it is only right that we continue into the weekend!

 

Today I want to link you up to some of the monthly/weekly photo projects I have been seeing on the internet lately. You know where you would get a prompt each day during a month or you set out to take a certain kind of photos over a month or week.

Why would you want to do these kinds of projects? Well, I feel it is a very good way to pratice your photography and you will discover things that you otherwise wouldn´t see. And the new friends you might get while you are in a project with other people are just icing on the cake! It really helps me focus and see the world with a different eye.

I have done a few myself. One year I took photos everyday of where I had been i.e my feet! I am doing that again this month! 

Me and Monika started our own weekly photo project last year and we are doing our second year now. In this group we have prompts each week for 52 weeks. 

Chantelle of the Fat mum slim blog has free montly prompt lists for you and they are great!

WCS alumni Rebecca Cooper hosts a beautiful weekly photo challenge called The simple things, where you are incouraged to take some time each week and capture something that made you happy, feel good. I did this for an entire year and I love how it made me slow down and choose a moment each week I was extra grateful for. 

Talking about gratitude, last November I did a 30 days of gratitude photo project. The link goes to one of many groups on Flickr where you can share your gratitude photos. I shared a photo each day and just a sentence or two of what I was grateful for that day.

Every year Poppytalk hosts Color weeks in the spring and autumn. I just found out today that this year the Autumn color week begins on October 17th! Boy, it so much fun to see the Flickr group  each day because it is just filled up with one color! Amazing! 

I hope that you get inspired to take on a challenge!

Go.Shoot.Now | Photo Challenges

Good Friday morning! Are you ready to go out there and shoot some photos? well good, because I have some assignments for you. Just over a year ago I wrote this post about shooting from varying angles, and today I am challenging you to do just that. 

 

 

1. Capture the details

I talked about this in my post from yesterday. I really love zooming in on the details of an activity or my surroundings. These are the photos that make for great introspective journaling, because you can use the photo as a symbol of something bigger. Here is one that I took this summer

When I scrap this photo I can talk about not only this specific cheesecake, but also my love for cheesecake in general. Or maybe about how making cheesecakes used to be my specialty, but lately my husband has been the one making them and wowing everyone!

Here is a layout that Deb made using a close up shot of her favorite summer treat.

2. Shooting from above

Taking a portrait from above gives such a different perspective of your little one. In this case it showed just how little he still was just one year ago.

This is the layout I made using it (you might remember seeing it here)

If your little one isn't that little anymore, you can always achieve this by standing on a chair. Or how about the window upstairs like I did in this shot of my guys having breakfast outside?

3. Shooting from below

Steps are great for getting this kind of shot.

Here's one that Christa took of her daughter

 

4. Quirky Family/Group shot.

What do you do when you want to take a family shot but don't have a remote or a friend to help out? Find a mirror of course! This is still one of my favourites from last year

You can see how I used it in a layout here in our gallery from August.

Here are two more

 

So go crazy and look for reflective surfaces everywhere!

 

5. Wide Angle Landscape

Have you heard about the Rule of Thirds? 

The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.^[2] Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would

Say what? Basically you imagine your viewfinder to be divided up like a tic tac toe game, and use the lines or the intersection of those lines, to position the focal point of your photo.

Source

For landscapes this means not placing your horizon line in the middle of the photos, as we are naturally inclined to do, but along one of the lines as above.

 

Before I say good bye, I want to link to two of my favourite photography resources. The first is a standard photography book: Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. This is the book that really helped me understand shooting in manual. If you want to learn more you should definitely check it out. The author does a much better job of explaining it than I did!

The other is more scrapbooking related: Real.Life. Photography by Rebecca Cooper, available from Ella Publishing.

One last thing: I didn't touch on photo editing at all because it is such a large topic. But if this is something you would like to learn more about, let us know so that we can address it separately in a future photography week!

Thanks for hanging out with me. And Go.Shoot.Now!

Tips for Getting the Photos You Want

Good morning! I hope that some of this information is starting to sink in and that you are seeing some results? Today I want to move on to sharing some more practical tips that I have picked up over the years. I'll focus on the two main areas we scrapbookers take photos: everyday life and special moments. At least those are the ones I document the most!

 

 Some general tips

• First, keep your camera handy. I pretty much take mine with me every where I go. And I try to remember to keep it close by when at home.
• If you'll be taking lots of photos at home get familiar with the lighting and best settings for indoor photos. My most used settings for photos indoors during the day are : ISO 400; white balance : daylight; and I use Aperture Priority mode with an aperture of 3.5 or less. This works for my house but you will have to experiment to see what works best for yours. 
• Take lots of photos! In this digital age it is possible to take lots of shots because there's no film development cost. 

Events and Special Moments

I am not a huge event or seasonal scrapper, but I do take lots of photos of those occassions to share with friends and family. This is especially true for Kieran's birthday parties. My approach is to take lots of broad photos to tell the story, but I also make sure to zoom in on little details as well.

In this photo I tried to capture the entire scene of his second birthday party. I also wanted to capture details of the decor. Tip: Do this part before the guests arrive!

Also be sure to hand your camera off to someone (or have a photo savvy friend also taking photos) so that you get to be in some photos too! In the former case I will adjust the settings on the camera first, usually leaving it in Aperture Priority.

Of course you have to get in close for those epic moments! The following photo is from his thrid birthday party.

To see even more photos from this party you can hop over to my personal blog.

Kieran started school last week, so that was another special moment to capture. I made sure to get a couple of broader type photos like these

But also some classic "all dressed and ready to go" shots in front of our door.

 

Everyday Life

Hands down, my favourite kind of photos to take are those that capture everyday life. There's no real formula for this, as everyone's life is different, but keeping your camera close by and ready to go is the key. By ready to go I mean making sure it is already on your most useful settings, so that when you grab it to capture something, you can click away without worrying too much about fiddling with buttons. My advice is to use either Aperture or Shutter priority depending on what's going on. When my son is just playing with his toys or eating, or some other relatively calm activity I will use Aperture Priority. If he is chasing cars and trucks around or we are outside I will use Shutter priority because I know he'll be moving around quite quickly!

Once again, I try to take broader as well as detailed shots

(I stood on a chair to take this one)

 

While it is fun to see this shot that includes a good bit of the living room,

what I really wanted to capture was Kieran inside the tub, so I zoomed in (actually since I was using my 50mm fixed lens, I moved closer to him)

This is most likely the photo that I will scrapbook to tell the story.

Sometimes I even get closer in

I love taking photos of little hands in action!

There are times when you have to move fast. You just grab your camera, keep clicking and hope for the best. Like this day when Kieran "raced" his Papa home on bicycles.

 

 

• 
• 
• 
• 
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 (Click each thumbnail to see the series)

When I realised what was happening I ran for the camera, and put it on continuous shooting mode. Most modern digital cameras have this option which comes in handy when you want to take a series of fast moving photos. In this mode you simply hold the shutter release button down and the camera will fire off a series of shots as fast as it can. Check your manual to see how to find this setting on your camera. These are certainly not the best photos I have ever taken but I wouldn't have missed having them for the world!

 

Do you have any questions about any of these photos, or would like to know something about getting a certain kind of shot? Please ask away in the comments. And start studying up, because tomorrow I will issue my final assignment!

More about ISO and the Exposure Triangle

So, you're back? I'm taking this to mean that you had some fun yesterday and you're rearing to go to learn more? Did you try playing with the different settings, including the ISO to see what happened? Today I'll talk a bit more about ISO, then I will move on to showing some photo examples.

If you tried changing your ISO while keeping your aperture the same, you might have noticed that it affected the shutter speed. Remember on Monday I said that ISO measures light sensitivity? To explain it in practical terms you can think of ISO as your light gatherers, bringing the light into the camera. An ISO of 200 would be twice as many light gatherers as an ISO of 100. This means that you will need the aperture to be open half as long, which means your shutter speed would be half what it was at ISO 100.Still with me?

This is why you use a higher ISO in low light conditions.When the light is low, you need as many light gatherers as possible in order to use the fastest shutter speed possible, otherwise you will end up with blurry photos, (remember that a slow shutter speed can't freeze the motion and you will see motion blur). Conversely on a bright sunny day you use a low ISO such as 100 (some cameras even go as low as 64!) because with the abundance of light, you don't need as many light gatherers and you will be able to have a pretty fast shutter speed to get a correct exposure (and avoid blur).

At this point it is also useful to remind you that you also control the amount of light entering your camera with the aperture - how wide the door is open. In low light you usually want to have the lens as wide open as it will go. Ironically this corresponds to a LOW aperture number (the technical name is an f-stop but I never think in these terms so I am avoiding using it!). So you would set your aperture to the lowest it can go. This would depend on your lens. If you are using a standard kit lens the lowest available is usually 3.5, with the lens zoomed out as far as possible. My favourite 50mm lens will go as wide open as 1.8.

I urge you to take your camera and go out to practise. It takes time for this part of it to click, and it will only truly click with lots of trial and error. Believe me, I have lots of very blurry and dark photos to prove it!

Now for some examples to illustrate.

Shutter Speed

One of the ways I love to use to see the effect of changing shutter speeds is to take photos of flowing water. I do this everytime I am near to a river or stream! This summer I took these two shots.

High (fast) shutter speed

In this shot my shutter speed was 1600 (technically 1/1600) and you can see that it practically froze the water. You can almost see the drops splashing up!

In this second shot I slowed it down to 1/10 and now the movement of the water is blurred, giving that milky white appearance.

A couple weeks ago at the park Kieran amused himself by running laps around me. I just had to try to capture his enjoyment. My first few shots were a wash, with too low a shutter speed 1/60

It's kind of cool because you can definitely tell that he was moving, but it wasn't exactly what I was going for. So I upped the shutter speed to 1/160

You can still tell that he is moving, because there is still some slight blurring, but this photo really captured what I wanted.

Just so you know I took over 30 shots in this five minute period and most of them were bad. But I was able to get this awesome one in between as he flew by me and gave me a happy grin.

Totally worth it sitting there shooting like a maniac while people looked at me like I was crazy.

Aperture

Here are a few examples illustrating what you should expect with changing apertures. Apart from the aperture controlling how much light gets into the lens, it also plays in role in what your background will look like. The technical term for this is Depth of Field (DoF). A wide depth of field means that pretty much everything in the shot is in focus, that's what you get with a high aperture value like 16. A narrow depth of field means that only very little is in focus - the result of a low aperture number.

To illustrate

 
(Click on the photo to see it larger)

In the photo on the left, with the aperture set at 6.3 most of the strawberries are in focus. In the photo on the right with the aperture set to 3.5 you can see that the starwberries towards the back are softly blurred.

Here are some photos of Kieran at the park. The aperture changes from 8.0 to 3.5 to 2.2.

Can you see how the grass in the background changes while he remains in focus? In the first photo, you can actually make out blades of grass, but not in the last one. And in case you're wondering my other settings were: ISO 200, White Balance - Shade, and Shutter Speeds 1/80, 1/320 and 1/800 respectively.

So, still with me? Now it's your turn to go and play some more! Tomorrow I will share some of my tips for shooting in various circumstances, including everyday shots and events. Is there an area you'd like me touch on? let me know in the comments! And as always feel free to ask any questions you might have.