A Result of Stumbling

Remember my first stumble site on Wednesday? It was a chess board with circles in each square from the Oh Gizmo! website. With it being the holiday weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to make a card to celebrate, so here's my interpretation of the inspiration:
I love those letter stamps, almost all of them fit into a 1" circle punch. How cool! And I'm a little addicted to the balloon stamp. It has nothing to do with the 4th of July, but it works. :)

So Happy Fourth of July to all you citizens of the United States (and a belated Happy Canada Day to my Canadian friends!). I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

stumbling through the member gallery

Okay, so first off....I'm obsessed with stumbleupon.com now. Thanks Emily for encouraging us to stumble this week. Watch out this weekend for layouts inspired by stumbling!

So, secondly, I'm quite inspired by the huge amount of layouts in the member gallery using the Soda Fountain Kit!! I stumbled through it looking for inspiring bits. There are 23 pages of gallery entries, check it out :D

I love how twinzmom used the spinner!!
I loved the spinner, and love to see someone use it!

I was drawn in to valerieb's layout by the apple paper and cute title!
Notice how she added that apple to her title. Adorable!

I just love that cascade of flowers/circles that meganklauer added to this layout. The titlework is spectacular also :D

OH MY GOSH, I just discovered Lynn Ghahary's gallery. I love her style.
Notice the circle of blue pearls around the strawberry!

This layout by Houston is just perfect.
I so so love how she used the Nadiya stamps.
I don't think I've seen a better use of them :D
That little grouping of chipboard accents is brilliant!

The titlework on Erin B's layout is just fantastic. I <3 it!

I'm totally inspired by the way samasmom added photos to the middle of the Collage Press labels. Hmmmm, where can I use this technique?

I really love the way Astrid stacked her paper strips, and the little doodled frame just sets off the photo perfectly!

2H Design rocked the tags in this dope layout.
I love how she layered the tags and that mist work is tres gorgeous!

This is my favorite layout this week.
JustEm added too many good things: a) precious baby face b) bright colors
c) doodlebug loppy letters d) red accents and dress

How She Stumbles

So I'm going to let you peek into my brain for this post. But first, since Joy posted her Documentary favorites, I thought I'd post my favorite from her gallery too. It's only fair.

I loved how she did this shadow box, it's so unique and there's so many cool details in such a small little space. My hat is off to you Joy!

And now...

I thought it would be fun to show you how I pull inspiration from my stumbles. A peek into my thought processes.

First stumble: this page about vacuum tube chess sets and how to make them. Honestly it stumped me. Then I noticed the cool texture of the chess board. How cool would it be to make a checked background and add a circle to each one of a different paper? I also liked the ad for downloading books. A bunch of pictures at the top of your page, then cut a check mark shape out from the bottom of them. Very graphic!

Second stumble: OK, I admit this one had me puzzled as well, but then I remembered I really should do a page about how much my family, sans the mamma, loves Star Wars. I'm not sure how I will go about creating such a page, but now it's in my subconscious mind, stewing. Another thing that caught my eye was the middle picture of the Fox News Videos, the one of the top of someone's head. All those circles? That could totally be a page background--make it into a circle, even better!
Third stumble: Totally cool background effect on this page about England's musical history. I'm all about collaging lately and I loved all the texture going on here. You can click on a link and the map goes in to a greater detailed one. Reminds me of the Making Memories transparency... I could do a "You Are Here" page, must think on that one. I also loved the splattered paint look of the title in the upper left corner. Makes me want to pull out the paint and straw, remember that technique from grade school?

Fourth stumble: Self-watering rhubarb plants, nothing is coming to mind. I'm digging deep and finding nothing. The picture of Stephan Hawking reminds me of a date my husband and I went on while he was in graduate school. I used precious funds to buy him the new Stephan Hawking book, I thought he'd be so interested to read it. A few years later, I donated the book to Goodwill, it had never been opened. I didn't read the situation quite right. Not sure that it's a layout idea. Not every page you're going to find Stumbling will yield results. :)
And one last stumble for you: A page about playing with your food. Not much text. This one was hard, but then I realized how happy the colors were making me. So there you have it, if nothing else, go with the colors! But now that I'm thinking about it, I do have a picture that would totally work with the idea of playing with your food... See? Stumbling can get your creative juices flowing!

stumbling through the july kit

I love love love looking through the DT offerings each month and stumbling over all the little genius details that each of the girls add. Join me as we stumble through this months offerings :D





I love how emily used her hole punch to punch out the edges of the stamp stamp.



April made the genius move of connecting her photos with the apron punch. I also love how she cut out her title from the MM acetate paper.



I had to look at this layout twice in order to figure out what scarlet did with her letters. I am going to HAVE to try this technique out ASAP.





I just loved the little "scene" that Dav made with her title, and then I saw the stitching on the clouds....just amazing!!



I totally stumbled over the holes that Emily made and sewed through on her layout! Genius!



I love the stitching on this layout! But even more than that, I just love how she doubled up her cardstock, and rounded just that ONE corner!



I love how kelly painted the woodgrained letters, red. It totally took the layout in a different direction.



In this mini album, Kirsty used doodled squares to her pages. I love the added interest these make without overpowering anything!



I love what Maggie did with the K&Co. animal alphabet. Such a great idea!





Nik H. professed hardship over this 2 page layout, but you can't tell by looking at it. I LOVE the little strips of paper on the edges. But even more than that, I love how she traced the MM number over and over and used it for her title!





I really love how Nic S. created a bunch of flowers on this girlie page with very few REAL flowers.





Stephanie rocked this sweet layout about her husband's military career! I love the way she punched out the stars, especially the ones out of cork letters.



I love how Tina A. cut out the circle paper, and added the brads! Perfecto!



Both Tina's rocked the brads. I just love how Tina C. placed her brads, random, but perfectly!

july g's picks

this was by far the most fun i've had yet, selecting and arranging g's picks. hope you likey.

Stumbling

My sister called me one day and said she'd been spending a lot of time stumbling that week. I had to admit I laughed. She's not necessarily a clumsy person, but I have saved her life a few times from passing cars, so that's what I imagined had been happening that past week.

She asked if I had been to www.stumbleupon.com and proceeded to explain to me the idea behind the website, I'll just quote them directly,

StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 6 million+ other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.

It sounded like a good idea, she said it was highly addicting, but at the TIME SINK red flag went up and I never thought further on the subject.

Until last week...

I needed a kick start. I remembered how she'd explained StumbleUpon and thought I'd give it a try, hoping that I'd see something that might give my creativity a boost. It was really easy to sign up and get started, I thought I'd walk you through the process.

First thing you'll do is sign up for an account with user name and password, then you'll be directed to pick your areas of interest. There are over 200 and some of them overlap, you'll start to notice. I just started clicking the boxes, here's a screen shot to prove it :)


I was almost done with the categories when this drop down window appeared. You can only choose 127 areas of interest, so be judicious in your selection :)


Once I'd made sure I liked my 127 selections, I hit the "Save Now & Stumble" button and away I went. This was the first page that showed up and I was a little confused. So I just started clicking the green squares, they'd pop up just a bit and the tune that was playing would change slightly. I realized it was probably a result of my interest in "music." Sure enough, I could create musical patterns just by popping up or flattening the green blocks. It was fun, but not the inspiration I was looking for at the moment (i.e. TIME SINK).


So in the upper left corner of the screen, there's a button that says, "Stumble." I figured that's the button I needed to push to move on. This page came up next, a result of my interest in nutrition I'm sure. I bet you could come up with a layout using this inspiration, but it didn't jump start me, although I did eat much healthier on Friday. :)

I pushed the "Stumble" button again, and it took me to a blog called "The Positivity Blog." It was at this point I realized I could definitely use this as a scrapbooking tool. Lots of amazing ideas from this blog alone could translate themselves into pages. AND there was a really cool graphic element on the page that I stashed away in my head to use one day as well. Very much worth the time spent.

I stumbled again and found a blog where they superimposed WWII photos onto modern-day ones of the exact same scene. Pretty interesting, but I decided to stumble one more time and found a website of creative advertisements, one of which I pulled off for your view pleasure. This is an entrance/exit for a train station in Switzerland (recognize it Hera?) where they've made life sized replica of a Mini Cooper that looks like a whole bunch of people are coming out of it. Clever!

Total time spent: less than 15 minutes.
Ideas: numerous.

StumbleUpon records all your stumbles, so if you want to go back you can easily find what you were looking for the next time. There are tutorials on how to use the application, I am sure I haven't even skimmed the surface.

Joy and I will be doing some stumbling this week and we're asking you to join us. While you're waiting for your July kits, we challenge you to use StumbleUpon to find some sort of inspiration and create a layout or card. Post it to gallery and link us here to share your work. We will be doing the same thing and posting our layouts at the end of the blogging week. We'll be highlighting some of your work on the last day as well!

Reveal Night Winners!!!!

The winners of the online subscriptions to Scrapbook Trends Magazine are.......

lauren said...

What a FANTASTIC giveaway! This would make my summer! SC rocks! :)

June 26, 2009 11:32 AM

Ginnie said...

Thank you so much for an opportunity to win Scrapbook Trends. . . one of my favourite publications of all times. I always find the colourful layouts so inspirational!

Blessings!

June 26, 2009 6:53 PM

Please email info@studiocalico.com to claim your prize.

Photography Week Final Installment

Thanks for joining us this week! I hope that you had fun and learned some helpful techniques that you can use in your photography!

We wanted to finish off the week with a bang so I am giving away a spot in my next Online Photography Workshop! 

I just finished teaching my second one and I have to agree with the students when they say that it goes by too quickly! (It seems like that is the story of my life lately though! :) ) I always have so much fun teaching these fantastic students and the best part is seeing how much progress they make throughout the course! It is awesome! 

Here's what some of my students are saying. (Watch for a new testimonials section on my workshop blog coming soon!)

"I just opened my mailbox and there was our last lesson.   I am feeling so ambivalent about opening it.  I am excited to see what new you have to teach us but I am sad its the last lesson already.  I just want to say (and I know this sentiment has already been expressed by many) that I wish this were not over and that I thank you from the bottom of my heart for so freely sharing not only the cogent basic  instructions but also the the tips that short-cut a lot of the learning curve and get us loving our cameras - and not being intimidated by them.    You could have been proprietary about the knowledge you acquired through your own study and hard work, but you are just the opposite.

 I have such a long way to go to rough tune and gradually fine tune my photos but already I am reaping such pleasing rewards that it spurs me to keep taking, keep improving.  Almost all of my shots are already such an improvement over those immediately pre-course.   Really, I just can't express how grateful I am for this course, your style of teaching and your gentle, encouraging style of critique!

 I am so sad this course is almost over.  If you do plan additional courses in the future, I am pretty sure you will have a large audience among former students - me included. 

Thanks Maggie."

Carol B

...........

"Let me just say I see a major difference in my pictures as far as exposure and lighting goes.  I had the composition down, but needed/still need help with my exposure and knowing what to do in different light situations.  Today, I took the kids to the pool and was able to get some bright happy photos without being overexposed and even was able to catch my son jumping mid-air into the pool with no motion blur.  I've really enjoyed working in manual and am happy/relieved to find that its not as intimidating as I thought.  Thanks so much Maggie for the great guidance, and all you participants that post your work so I can learn from it.  Looking forward to these last few lessons!  Have a great week everyone!"

Barbara roberts

............

"This is so much fun!  I absolutley can not believe after 4 weeks I am shooting in manual and loving what I see!  You are amazing Maggie!!!"

Adrienne Banaszynski

To enter the drawing for a free spot in my next class, all you have to do is leave a comment here. I will be draw a winner Monday July 8th so you have plenty of time to enter.... one entry per person please. The next class is getting quite full but there are a few spots left if you are interested in getting in. I will be doing one more workshop later this year and more next year, so if you don't get in, you can get in to one of the next ones. You can find all of the details and updates about my online workshop here.

Hand Stitching - With Davinie!

Hi All! I have created a video tutorial to show you how to hand stitch the way that I do. Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions! And be nice! lol

Hand Stitching Tutorial

Davinie

Photography Week Installment 3

Hi there! It's me again... bringing you some more fun photography tips to help you kick it up a notch!!

Perspective

When taking pictures, there is always the option of shooting your subject from straight on and at eye level. This is something that we all do a lot and often makes for great images. But, it is always fun to change it up a little and try shooting from a different perspective or point of view. When doing this you have to be willing to get up high or crouch down low (or even lay right on the ground like I often do). Others might think you are a little crazy at the time but when they see the images, they will be glad you did it!

Changing your perspective also helps you to capture parts of the image in a different way and makes you see things differently..... like the wall in the image below.....

and like the yellow lines on the ground in this image. If I was standing at eye level to him, you would not see the yellow lines like this and shooting it this way makes the image more interesting and fun!

Changing my perspective in this image allowed me to get the blue lines in the foreground and it also frames him and the photo perfectly. Again, standing in the usual spot - at eye level and shooting straight on would have produced a nice image but this one ended up being a favorite because of the unique perspective.

In this case, shooting from down low allowed me to add some texture, color and lines to the image in the tree and the wall.... again things that would not have been in the image had I just shot straight on.

And finally, shooting from a different perspective in this one helped add to the playful nature of the photo. It helps to highlight her feet well and also makes it very clear to the viewer that they are the focal point of the image.

As you can see, I really love to shoot from a low perspective lately and this is a comment element in my photography. But, remember that you can also shoot from above and get some great "bird's eye" type of shots that way as well.

Mostly I encourage you to just go for it and have fun trying different perspectives. There is no right or wrong and you will never know which point of view is the most effective for a particular image unless you get moving around and try a bunch of different things. I promise that it will help to infuse a lot of added interest to your images!