Oh So Silly!

As part of my new venture to learn how to take better photographs and use my camera (Canon EOS 450D) to a fuller capacity I have been reading various blogs, websites & forums as well as taking a few classes at Big Picture. There are so many resources out there once you start looking.

One of my favourites so far is the I Heart Faces community. They run a fun challenge each week and this weeks theme is ‘Oh So Silly’ – who can I get to model of me for this one I wonder  ?. .  . . .   Yep!  It has to be Joe.  My number one silly son.  I have chosen this photo to enter. Its not so silly really rather just him pulling a face but I love how his eyes look.

This is my first time at entering a photo in one of the challenges – the entries over there are amazing and can be quite intimidating to us novices with so much to learn, but I thought ‘why not’ – its all a learning curve and loads of fun after all! 

To see everyone’s entries just click on the I Heart Faces link at the bottom of this post.

This photo was submitted to the I Heart Faces photo challenge – www.iheartfaces.com

The New Hair Do!

OMG its me on a LO!  It doesn't happen often and its only happened because of the weekly challenge last week on UKS. The criteria for the challenge was to use purple & turquoise, a photo of ourselves and butterflies.

Here’s mine:


To create the frame for the page I stamped and embossed onto purple cardstock and then mounted it onto some plain black – I told you I am hooked on framing my pages like this at the moment!

The photo was converted into black and white so that it didn’t clash with the colour scheme.

I do love these colours together!

Its almost time for the Sketch & Scrap team reveal and Im pleased to report that my LO is all done and photographed ready for uploading. Wow! I cant believe it is the 1st of February tomorrow and that Spring is just around the corner.

52 Walks–weeks 3& 4 . . . .

Well what would you know, Im all caught up with this just in time for the week 5 prompt!  Its only January and already I had fallen behind . . .   what does that tell you!

So here are my photo’s for weeks 3 & 4. Taken on the same day (Thursday January 26th 2012)

The prompt for week 3 was ‘Reflections’. This is a photo of the Malin Bridge in Malin Town, Co Donegal. Not quite a ‘walk’ to be honest, more of a drive as we were en route to the school to drop Amy off for the School Talent Show (she was watching not performing!) 

I have tried many times to get a decent photo of this bridge at night and failed miserably on all occasions. This is the best one I have managed to get to date so I was very pleased, although there is still a lot of scope for improvement . . . .  I wont be branching out into a photography career just yet!  So there you have my interpretation for ‘Reflections’ – the beautiful green lights under the bridge.

Now the photo’s for week 4 were taken whilst on a walk. Eugene and I went walking down at the Glenevin Waterfall which is just outside Clonmany.  Just before the entrance to the watefall walk is the derelict church of St Columba’s.

From inside the church I managed to get these fab shots through the windows which are perfect for the week 4 prompt – Framed :



I took some from the larger windows too but preferred to use the one from the smaller window for my 52 Walks Album as I like the scenery with the sheep better. This was the view from the larger window:



I think I will have to go back and re-take these photo’s on a better day when we have a blue sky.

Bring on week 5!

Friday Photo - Beautiful Biscuit

My beautiful Whisker Biscuit is the subject of this weeks Friday Photo. I was taking photo’s of some of the cats whilst they were playing in the sunroom and snapped this one just by chance as Whiskers popped her head out from behind the blinds.

Have a Great Weekend!

Sit, Rest, Pose!

My kids think nothing to having a camera pointed at them 24 /7 which is great but then we end up with lots of ‘posed’ photo’s and silly shots (which are fun but not always what I want). I love those photo’s you get when no-one knows you are taking their photo. I snapped this one of Tony at a rest stop during our hike through the Glenveagh National Park back in 2009.  He was so tired when he sat down on the tree stump and the look on his face says to me ‘relief’. Then he saw the camera!  So now came the silly, fun, posing shots.

I used this sketch from Sketchabilities which I really liked:

I didn’t change much about the LO sticking pretty much to the original sketch as I liked everything about it. I wanted the branches and leaves on the page to compliment the forest feel of the photo’s without too much emphasis on flowers so I toned mine down a bit.

Im still getting to grips with all these layers on a LO – which I love and want to do more of. I like the look and feel you get with so many layers.

In between scrapping I have also been doing a self-paced coure on Photoshop Elements and couldn’t resist the chance to practice my latest achievement of adding different border effects to my photo’s – what do you think ?  I quite like this fuzzy edge border.

Amy x

At the Frozen North crop a couple of weeks ago I started this LO using some of the Websters Pages Winters Fairy Tale that I got in my My Creative Scrapbook LE kit this month.

When I started out with it I didn’t have much of an idea of what I wanted to do – I just cut out the flowers, butterflies and fairies and placed them around the photography. Well, needless to say it all went a bit pear shaped!  I had originally drawn a border around the photography in pink pen which then smudged. The LO was doomed. Ordinarily I would have ‘binned it’ and started over, but all the lush elements were just too precious to throw away. So here we have it – the resurrected LO.  The framing around the photograph was placed to hide the pink pen disaster and I know its a little wonky!  It doesn’t look too bad in real life but once I photographed it it became more apparent. Oh well, after everything else that went wrong with this it just adds to ‘the story’ . . lol

The original LO was going to be on plain white cardstock but that got creased and battered in my crop bag so I cut it down to about 10 inches squared and framed it using some more of the papers from the Winters Fairy Tale range. I’ve come to realise that I really like framing my LO in this way and it may well become a habit!

I loved these little fairies that were on one of the sheets – I coloured them in with watercolours to co-ordinate with the pinks and greens of the LO and added some stickles to their wings.

Lots of lessons were learnt during the making of this LO – one of which is I seriously need to work on my sewing skills!

Week 2–Blue

My participation in the 52 Walks is running just a little bit behind!  The weather here has been awfully wet and windy so not the best for going out walking with my camera!  I did manage to get a week 2 photo but its looking as weeks 3 & 4 are going to come as a 2 in 1 package . . lol

So here is Week 2 and the theme for the week was Blue -

These lorries were parked in a row at the back of the yard so I had to use my zoom lens to get the photo and do it quick too in case I was spotted lurking around the locked gates with my camera. 

This walk was on the Dumfries to Buncrana road and I didnt actually think I was going to find anything to interpret the theme to be honest so I was very happy to come across these lorries with their bright blue fronts.

So lets hope the weather plays nicely so I can get and do weeks 3 & 4. It would be nice to be caught up in time to start of the month of February.

SUDS!

The weekly challenge on UKS this week really was a challenge for me. One of the criteria was to scrap in shades of one colour and I find this really restricting. I have used white (assuming as white is neutral it doesn’t count as a colour in this instance) and a pinky shade of purple. A pinky shade of purple ?  Did I just type that . . lol   Well you get the idea!

SUDS!

The photo is of Joe when he was 14. He was desperate to have facial hair but it just wasn’t growing so one evening while he was on washing up duty (yes – I make my kids wash up!) he came into the craftroom to show me his beard! He is such a clown! 

As the background colour of the photo is that lovely shade of pinky purple I chose to use that colour for my LO. Matching the cardstock was pretty easy but I didnt have any papers that were just the right shade so I created my background using paint and masks.

Friday Photo - Squish!

Here I go again – starting off something that I think is a good idea but knowing that I will probably not keep it up!  Well Im going to do it anyway, Im making no promises that there will be a Friday Photo post every week mind you . . lol

Lately I have been reading lots of photography blogs, websites, online classes etc. as I really want to get back to taking lots of photo’s but hopefully with a little more expertise than I previously had. I’ve noticed a few photographers featuring their favourite photography of the week and thought this would be a good idea. I’ve already been out and about with my camera, as well as a few ‘photo shoots’ in our own back yard so now is a good a time as any to start with my first favourite photo.

I chose this one:

Bruno, Mia Pinkerton & Jackson all squished up trying to get the best view from the back of the van!  Not necessarily the ‘best’ photo I’ve taken this week but its my favourite by far. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Two Cute

I have finally finished one of the few LO’s that I started at my first Frozen North Crop last weekend. It was a fabulous weekend and great to be able to get together with so many of my UKS teamies, The Ric Rac Ravers. There were 7 (out of a possible 10) of us there including our new teamie Clare.

(L – R) Suzy, Julie, Lesley, Clare, Debbie, Me & our Team Leader Heather

And of course we had to have ‘The Silly' Photo’ didn’t we . . lol x

Thanks to Pam for being our photography x

So back to my finished LO:

TWO CUTE

This is Amy with one of our kittens Miley Moonbeam. I really love this photo – I took it whilst practicing some of the class elements from a recent Elisha Snow course.

Im working at rectifying a mistake / mess I made of one of the LO’s from the crop in the hope that I can salvage it – if not its going in the bin and I’ll have to start over!

52 Walks with my camera . . . . .

Having previously said that this year I was not going to sign up to any year long projects (as I never stick to them and then feel bad when I dont complete them!) I have decided I will try to play along with the 52 Walks prompts on the Scrapbook Challenges website I wont be scrapping my photo’s though, I am just going to keep them in a 6 x 4 flip album. For me the main focus of this is getting out and about with my camera and it will be nice to have the prompts to inspire me. How long will I keep this up ?  Who knows . . lol

The Week 1. prompt is ‘Out of Context’. Well I didn’t have far to walk to get this photo, just out of the driveway to be exact! 

After the hurricane force winds we had last week this sheet of black plastic got caught up on the telephone cables. When it blows in the wind it looks just like a Dementor from the Harry Potter films. 

The theme for Week 2. is ‘Blue’  . . . .  watch this space!

Freckle Face

In early December I joined a scrapbooking community called Scrapbook Challenges. Inspiration, sketches, contests and friendly chatter.  I signed up for my first challenge with a group of ladies to play something called a Telephone Relay – but instead we played it via email! Basically its a chinese whisper – the first person starts off by doing a LO which then gets emailed to the next person who interprets the LO to do one of their own and so on. You can see the reveal all of the LO’s here in the order they were done – its amazing how much they changed!

I was in Team 2 and this is my LO:

FRECKLE FACE

The photo is of Tony with his gorgeous blue eyes and freckles. The journaling on the bottom reads – “freckles run in the family, we all have them but Tony’s are by far the cutest freckles of them all x”

My first LO of 2012!

The first weekly challenge of 2012 on UKS is a nice easy one to get us scrapping again after a break over the holiday period. Use old stash (and we’ve all got plenty of that!), rings or circles and doodling. A perfect combination for a fun LO! Here’s mine:

THUMB’S UP!

This cute little man is our Tony aged 4½. Whenever we said ‘smile’ to take a photo we always got a thumb’s up to go with it and as a consequence I have tons of photo’s with thumb’s up on them . . lol. 
OK, the MOJO is flowing now . . . . . .    I have the urge to scrap!

Thanks for stopping by!
Dee
X

Another Chance to Win!

After a 3 month long contest on the My Creative Sketches Blog we are being given another chance to win a very generous prize. To qualify for the draw you had to have completed a LO for each of the 3 sketches over the last 3 months – these are my LO’s:

Sketch 1 – A Natural Beauty

Sketch 2 – Country Life

Sketch 3 – Happy Faces

Its a random drawing to win the big prize so to win it you have to be in it! My fingers are firmly crossed x

Those Irish Eyes are Smiling . . .

My Sketch & Scrap LO for December 2011.  This photo of Joe was taken at the bowling alley in Derry back in 2009 while we were there celebrating Amy & Tony’s birthday.  Although the photo is very dark I like it, it shows off Joe’s face so well.

Suzy chose this sketch for us to work with in December:

And this is my take on it:

The papers are a mix from my ‘old’ stash and are mainly Sassafrass.