Little Flower Girl

My friend Robin sent me this lovely photo of herself from when she was a little girl, acting as a flower girl for a private girl's high school graduation. She scanned it from a slide, so the bones are really good. One of the biggest adjustments I've had to make since going back to work, is the lack of creative time I have- so when I get a chance to do something fun with Photoshop, I grab it! When Robin emailed this to me last night, I just had to play with it. As much as I'd love to turn it into a lovely layout, I think I will simply post it with the before & after.

First I ran an action on it, that I created myself- which pops the color, and gives it an ethereal look. then I duplicated it, and ran a diffuse glow & a bit of a gaussian blur, then pulled down the opacity. I think it looks pretty good for an amateur.

Robin says she remembers that it was horribly hot, and that her shoes were tight and uncomfortable. Must have been worth it, because this is just one of the sweetest photos I've seen. The graduate, named Nadine, looks like a contestant for Miss America. What a beauty!

Fashionphile

This is my fabulous niece Sarah, who owns a business reselling luxury handbags. Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermes, Gucci- if you want them, she has them! She started buying designer label clothing at thrift stores and used clothing shops, and selling them on eBay, to pay for law school back in 1999. That evolved into the largest pre-owned luxury handbag business in the United States. Today Sarah's brother Jesse, sister-in-law Julia, sister Emily, brother-in-law Ben, and her parents-in-law, all run the business from their offices in Beverly Hills. Sarah, husband Steve and four kids, live in England where Steve is a doctor in the US Air Force. I'm so proud of my family- I wish a little of their enterprise and innovation would rub off on me! You can check out her website here!

Same Place, New Day

It's getting to be a habit.... drive drive drive down Pacific Coast Highway in the morning... see a stunning seascape, pull into the parking lot of a seafood restaurant with a great view, snap another scenic ocean vista. This is the exact same place I took the photos from the layout "Coastal Fog" below, but this morning there was no fog. Instead, it was cloudy, and in the distance the sun was trying valiantly to poke through the cloud cover. You can see a bright spot on the water, and the faint rays of the sun against the gray-blue of the sky. Churning waves complete the photo. Just another beautiful morning in Paradise.

Bart's Books *Weekly Bright Idea

Maybe I should make this my Weekly Bright Idea... OK! DONE!
One of the things I've learned after nearly 3 years of digital scrapping is to find joy and interest in the ordinary and mundane world around me. Since my kids are pretty much grown, I don't have all of those little daily photo ops, like silly faces, new teeth, potty training (thank heaven!), so I have to resort to creating something interesting to scrap about from my daily life. My layouts tend to be about things I do and see, rather than events and occasions. I'm more likely to have my camera in the car than in the house! Hey, if I'm out & about it's much harder to go home & get the camera, than if the reverse is true. I can easily walk outside & retrieve the camera from the car! So, I'm likely to find myself snapping photos of a beautiful sunset, the beach, an amazing hillside, a flower garden. We Old Folks have to find things to keep us amused since the kids seem to have their own lives! So the bright idea is keep your camera with you when you go out- if you are lucky enough to have two cameras, keep one in the car and one at home. You'll be so glad you didn't miss that great shot of a beautiful spring day.

I created this layout for the 2Ps weekly digital challenge- this one was to create a custom shadow. I use this technique all the time, I found it much more tedious to extract the bicycle, complete with lots of spokes! Perhaps not an earth-shattering layout, but the odd juxtaposition of an old rusty bike and a bookstore might seem strange. But Bart's Books in Ojai, CA is a study in contradictions. Old, musty books mixed in with valuable first editions. Outdoor bookshelves next to a lovely indoor section complete with easy chairs and cozy lighting. A lemon tree growing smack in the middle. And yes, an old rusty bike just leaning against a box full of weeds. Picnic tables, a chess game. These are just a few of the delights found in Bart's. (I used the Soft Light blending mode on the background photo- in case you wondered!)

Coastal Fog

I must be channeling my friend Heather T, who writes beautiful poetry for her layouts. As I was putting this together, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite poems by Carl Sandburg. It seemed to work perfectly. Nothing else needed.

Actually, this layout is 2 separate photos, I just thought it needed a bit extra pizazz than the simple background could give.

Seventy

I created this layout for the color challenge over at Color Combos Galore. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about the combination, but I ended up loving it! I used the Hard Light blending mode on the background, and I loved how it popped the deep red. Aren't these ladies beautiful? That's my Mom and my daughter. They may be seventy years apart in age (97 and 27) but they act like best friends. They go to lunch, go shopping, and just hang out together. They laugh together like teenagers. I love being around them- it makes me feel young!

Malibu Mystery

I love a good murder. (I'm sure I wouldn't feel the same way if I were the victim, but I digress...) I read tons of murder mysteries. Bruce often comments that he's sure I'm storing up lots of information about how to commit the perfect murder on him, but I wouldn't do that. He's cute! (And he cooks. And cleans).
As I drive up and down Pacific Coast Highway every day, I always pass a beautiful Moorish-style (or is it Spanish Style? I'm not sure) building that was built in the 1930s. It was once the home of the famous Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe restaurant. In case you aren't an aficionado of old movie legends, Thelma Todd was once a Hollywood beauty- starring with the likes of the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy in the late '20s and early 30s. This building now houses the Paulist Productions, but was once a lively restaurant and nightclub, until the untimely death of Miss Todd. She was known as 'the Ice Cream Blonde', or 'Hot Toddy', which really suited her personality. No one knows exactly what transpired the night of December 16, 1935. She was found dead inside her car, parked in the garage of a friend, just behind the restaurant and her apartment. Death came as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, but whether by her own hand, or that of another, it has never been solved. This is my second murder layout. Perhaps I could make a nice living documenting mayhem and ingrigue.

Weekly Bright Idea!

Has anyone noticed it's been at least three weeks since I posted my last weekly bright idea? I haven't gotten any emails or emergency phone calls bringing this obvious omission to my attention. No telegram, FaceBook message, or text message has alerted me that my bright ideas are missed. Therefore, I have to come to the unmistakable conclusion that no one notices or cares. But, that's totally ok. I am going to continue anyway, because I have SO many bright ideas! In fact, if you Google the term (in quotation marks) "Weekly Bright Idea", only my blog shows up. (Ok, to be perfectly honest, two others Weekly Bright Ideas show up too, but one has a comma after 'Weekly', and the other has a colon). In my mind, that means I am the only person in the known universe that publishes online, a Weekly Bright Idea. So I take this whole thing very seriously.

So, here it is, (drumroll please) my WEEKLY BRIGHT IDEA: Save! Save! Save! I'm sure all of you have endured the frustration and disappointment of losing hours of work because you forgot to save your layout, photo, or other design. Computer crash, program freeze, power failure, spilled drink, FATAL ERROR message.... all of these things have happened, or will happen to you! (Unless you have a Mac like I do, which is a different story- even Macs aren't immune from the occasional program freeze).

Here are some ideas to help you remember to save often:
1. Attach a sticky note to your computer screen with the words SAVE NOW! on it.
2. Every time you get up to go to the bathroom or get something to eat, SAVE before you go.
3. BEFORE you use the type tool, save. I can't tell you how many times just loading my 50,000 fonts has caused a little 'blip' to my CS3.
4. Save now!

*Edited to add: Just as I was about to post this, my computer did a little mini-freeze- good thing I had saved this! See?

Morning Dew

I am valiantly trying to make up for all the lost scrapping... it looks like Saturday is going to be my catch-up day for layouts & other creative enterprises. I have been guilty of taking a few too many photos on my daily commute. Mostly because I'm convinced that the drive through Malibu Canyon, and up & down Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu to Santa Monica, is one of the prettiest places on earth. But it might just be me! There's one beautiful spot I see each day, and I've stopped twice to photograph it. The first day I horribly overexposed the photos, so I stopped again yesterday, and did a bit better job. I'm no photography pro, but I think the scene was pretty amazing. There's an old barn or something in the background, but when I used the telephoto, it just lost some of the charm. But what struck me most of all was how the long, wild grass looked covered in dew. The color of the grass was a bluish green, and the tiny dewdrops looked like a little fur coat for each blade.

A BOY!

Well the news is here, The Happy Couple (aka son Alec & daughter-in-law Alicia) are going to have a BOY! (See post here)
The Babe of the Year will arrive in early August. I'm sure you'll be hearing lots more about him, and them.

The image here is the artwork I created for Alec's birth announcement almost 24 years ago.

That's My Girl!

Our older daughter Amy just spent a fabulous 10 days in Peru with her sweetie Jake. They camped, surfed (ok, the boys surfed & kayaked while Amy got a tan) and traveled from Lima to Cusco, and then to Machu Picchu. I've taught her well- her photos are fantastic! Amy is currently living and working in Salt Lake, but spent a few days with us on the last leg of her journey. Sunday we sadly had to take her to the airport for her trip home. I got lots of photos of Amy with her sun-darkened skin. She definitely didn't inherit the Clark genes! Here's the last photo, taken as we dropped her off at LAX, complete with the largest backpack I have ever seen. Wouldn't it be great to be that young & beautiful? I love you sweetie! (And you too, Bruce!)

Oh My Gosh! I'm in LOVE!

Bruce- I love you the most, really I do! But I get to use the most amazing digital tool at work- it's a Wacom tablet on steroids: The Wacom Cintiq 21UX. It retails for about $2000, so it isn't something that I'll be buying for myself anytime soon. It's a combination monitor/ Wacom interface, where you draw right on the screen, rather than a tablet. It has all the customizable features of the Intuous, but has the touch and feel of really drawing on paper. The action is slightly delayed... and I mean slightly. But it's smooth, fast, and totally amazing! I'm having fun learning how to move smoothly from drawing to controls, and I'll learn to set up the controls soon. The cool thing is that I won't have to deal with sketching then scanning, then cleaning it up. With layers, I can create an undersketch, then with a new layer, I can do the tight drawing. Plus, I can even use my ruler and elliptical templates. I'm in heaven!

Calm

I have no idea what inspired me to do this layout, other than the fact that I love this photo that I took the other day in Malibu. I took quite a few of the waves crashing against the rocks, but ended up liking this one the best- where the waters were calm and soft. I just experimented with using various aspects of the photo for the border, blend, and font work.

Once Upon a Church

Well, aren't I the busy scrapper? I was looking through some of my photos from the end of 2008, looking for pictures I hadn't scrapped. When I came upon these beautiful photos of an old church in Fillmore, I had to create a layout. That blue sky just took my breath away, against the contrast of the white church tower.
Actually, this church is no longer a church, but is a private home and artist's studio. They did a marvelous job on the landscaping- the entire front is covered in succulents and palm trees.

Commute from Heaven, Commute from Hell

Since I've started commuting, I've had my camera near by while I drive the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu to Santa Monica, and back every day. Usually it's an incredibly beautiful and exhilarating drive with the sun either coming or going- the waves crashing, dramatic light on the ocean. But today was the Drive from Hell- it took me 2 1/2 hours to drive the 50 miles. Who knows why? Good thing I had my trusty shutter buddy! (Not all these photos were taken today, but they were all taken in the last week!)

Photo Colorizing Tutorial

I was asked by Scrapbooking.com to do a simplified tutorial of my photo colorizing method for this month's online edition... you can find it here.
I really enjoy creating tutorials and trying out new ways to do things... there's always a sense of accomplishment in 'doing it oneself', and figuring out what works best for you! This isn't really a beginning-level tutorial, but with patience, you can successfully colorize a black and white photo. Here's a larger version of the final colorized photo since it shows up quite small on the website. If you've been following my blog for awhile, you will recognize the Lovely Luella!

Almost Famous ;)

I was thrilled to be featured in this month's issue of the e-zine DigiShopTalk Insider. Not for my digital scrapbooking, but for my illustrious career! They gave me free reign to go on and on, and the article ended up being 3 pages long! What a treat! Thanks to Kelleigh Ratzlaff for this wonderful opportunity to spread it a little thick! It starts on page 47.
Here's the link to download the PDF, you need to sign up at DigiShopTalk, but it's free.

Missing Home

I loved the house I grew up in. Our family moved in when I was 5 years old, so all of my school years were spent there. Although I did go away to college, and a couple of apartments of my own, I pretty much lived in the 'Meridian house' until I was married. My folks stayed there until the late '80s when the upkeep got to be too much for my Dad. It broke my heart when they sold it. It was an interesting house- there was no front yard to speak of. It was built on a hillside, so the small backyard was terraced. That meant that I didn't have a yard to run and play in. BUT I had something else even better! Not 25 feet from our property line was the gate that led to the high school stadium. A huge football field to play in! A full-sized track for running and jumping! An enormous grandstand to climb! Tennis Courts! Long-jumping pits! But I digress...
Not long ago I found some negatives from about the time we moved into the house in 1956. It's probably the only one I have of the entire front of the house. Amazing how we take so many pictures but fail to take some of the most important ones! Since it was a teeny tiny negative, and so old & scratched, the quality wasn't the best. But I scanned it & used it here as my background. (with a few filters). I found some old photos of me taken in front of the house in various places, and just added them to the general area where they were taken.

I've been back to see our old house many times, but unfortunately the new owner removed the pretty white railings on the balcony, and added those 'lovely' decorative iron bars on the french doors. It has been painted a boring gray instead of the two-tone green I knew and loved. And they took out all the trees in the front. It's just not home anymore!