THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE

Here's the most wonderful little video link I found on the web, for all you book lovers:

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

If you loved this, you'll love the item on Su Blackwell I posted earlier on the blog:

Aren't there some wonderfully talented people out there!

As you know, I love altered books and making altered books. I feel absolutely inspired to have a go at some trees. And Spring is coming, after all...

PLEA FOR HELP: PHOTO STORAGE

Here's a question for all of you altered art & photography fans out there.


How do YOU store all those digital photos?




Copyright-free photo from Tack-O-Rama

As you will know if you read my computer rants on the blog, I have had a few crashes and had to install a new hard drive. Luckily, I had done sporadic backups and so have around 20-30 CDs full of pix - many of them duplicates. And an external hard drive, which I did a backup onto - and the next backup started to copy the identical information again!

So I need to do 2 things:

1. Configure/organise/instruct the external hard drive just to backup the new stuff or changed stuff (not recopy all the old stuff already on there, especially my huge music section).
2. Totally revamp/reorganise all those photographs, so I can get rid of all these CDs and actually find what I need.

My problem is this: my old web is written in MS Front Page - I loved it; it has an autothumbnail capability. Unfortunately MS no longer support it, so neither does my web server - so I have to completely rewrite the entire website. I bought Serif's new package - which doesn't do autothumbnails (waaaah!) so I am now saving my pictures in 3 sizes (original 300dpi, 72dp for the web and also thumbnails) and even more versions of the same pic if cropping for closeups or alter for digital scrapbook/journal/altered book pages.

It's all become a nightmare, totally out of control, and I want to organise it all once and for all, before the situation snowballs even further.

So if anyone has a solution, I would LOVE to hear it!

HELP!

DIGITAL VALENTINE

And here's one I made earlier...















Here's an idea: if you are really stuck for a Valentine, or want to do a quick ATC etc, think about reworking some of your old journal pages: scan them, cut out portions and use them to make new artwork. Teehsa Moore does this to great effect, and if it's good enough for her etc...

Isolate the portion of image you want to use and crop it - then either rework it back into another piece, or print it off and collage/decoupage it, or even just mount onto contrast card and use as a topper for a card.

Here's the original journal page which says:
Young love or old love, live long and laugh often.















I wanted the page to illustrate my feelings that true love lasts forever, doesn't matter what age you are. I love to see older couples together, affectionate, joking, just comfortable... Your Other Half in fact: your soul mate, best friend, the one you can't wait to see and talk to at the end of a long day.

You should be able to do this with any graphics programme:

• If you want to print the image, set to 300dpi for the best reproduction (although as this is meant to be distressed/distorted, you could probably get away with a lower resolution. If it's for the web only, then 72dpi is fine).
• Crop the image (I included the printed twill and photocorners).
• Next, posterise it (play around with the levels until you are happy - mine was around 6%)
• Sharpen the image (and if this doesn't give you the effect you want, use the Unsharp facility, which should be in the same tools section)
• Print off (set the image size to 2.5 inches x 3.5 inches for an ATC or topper - if it's for a card, set to whatever you like!)

I'm 56 now, and my husband is 58 - second marriage for both of us - and we've been together a total of 15 years and had our 10th wedding anniversary last November. (We got married Friday 13th, his birthday is on the 13th, mine on the 31st of the same month... spooky!) And there still isn't anyone else I'd rather spend my time with.

Aaah, Love

UNDER THE SEA - POEM

I have been extremely industrious today - tidying up my hard drive, getting rid of duplicates etc so the machine will run a little faster and smoother (hopefully, fingers & toes crossed).

So I came across this poem I wrote a few years ago, which was previously published in the ArtErratica zine (issue 3, I think). It's a bit gloomy, but so is the day: grey skies, freezing cold, very misty this morning. This kind of illustrates my mood (wading through tons of files isn't exactly helping...)

Copyright-free photo by Benedikte Deborah Byrkjeland, from Stockvault.net

UNDER THE SEA

Down in the Deeps

Blue gleaming sparkles – sun (remember sun?)

Electric eels ebb and flow

Shocks in the darkness, bolts in the blue

Layers of meaning

Down

Further down

Down to the bottom

Ground down: fine sand

Remains of life lived above, layered on layer

Silt

In the deepest of Deeps

The final full stop

Copyright: Susie Jefferson 2002

I promise the next post will be something more frivolous!

VALENTINE'S DAY COUNTDOWN!

I'm posting a Valentine's Day Countdown on the Blade Rubber blog!




Card sample by Freyja Lee, instructions on the Blade Rubber blog, link below

Every day, I will be posting card & project ideas for Valentine's Day -with instructions and suggestions to help and inspire. (This year, I absolutely must make one for my husband... he took a pretty dim view of the bought one last year.)

Card & project samples will be by Freyja Lee, plus a few from me as well (we both teach classes at Blade Rubber Stamps) . The first few projects are already up on the blog if you would like to go and look.

I won't be cross-posting the projects on this blog... but I am planning something rather special for Valentine's Day itself, so I hope you'll check back then (there will be free copyright images and a rather special project with full instructions).

IMAGE TRANSFERS - 2 MORE PIX

I just found these in the files, thought you might like to see them.

Here's a link to my Tape Transfer tutorial

This one is a card, torn white cardstock layered on black, stamped with Tim Holtz's feather image & quote, then a tape transfer (magazine ad) layered on top, affixed with eyelets. Sweet & simple. I like it.

This one is a piece of corrugated cardboard (as for packing washing powder) with a roughly painted layer of acrylics, then collage papers and napkin tissue layered over beeswax, with more beeswax on top.



The pic was a copyright-free download from Art-e-zine with more beeswax on top to fix it.

Finally, I took my little quilting iron and ironed OFF some of the wax so that the images were clearer.

I kind of feel this needs a little something more, but can't figure what, so am leaving well alone. Very often that "just one more thing" is the over-the-top detail that totally ruins the whole thing.

IMAGE TRANSFERS

I've always been totally in love with the soft, misty look of image transfers.

One of my altered book pages
& the link for my Gel Transfer tutorial


So you can imagine I was pretty pleased to find TWO links today (posted on the Yahoo groups) which I just had to share:

Suze Weinberg is doing transfers with wax

Nitsa has some great transfer ideas on her Still Alive photography blog



Spread from my "Supermodel" altered book

I have yet to get that new camera I was lusting after (any make I've ever heard of, minimum 8 mg pixels, and preferably 10 mg pixels - and cheap) but by golly, when I do...

PAPER QUILTS

As you know, I am a great admirer of Beryl Taylor and Wendy Cotterill (and here) and love their work, the paper quilts especially.

So you can imagine how jazzed I am that Adrienne Goodenough has posted complete instructions with pix on her blog, on how to make these amazing quilts! So if you haven't seen these before, go and look.

MORE COMPUTER WOES

Hi gang

Big apologies for not posting for - goodness, HOW long? Over a week?

Image from Tack-o-Rama, see Links

Well, guess what - the $%**$! computer went on the fritz again!

This time, I have no idea what went wrong... really sluggish, the mouse wouldn't scroll, and when typing anything the screen was blank for a bit, then the letters showed on screen around 20-30 seconds later, plus from the noise I could tell the computer was really labouring.

I couldn't find the problem: I ran Disc Cleanup, I Defragged, I ran my antivirus twice... no problems there for once... I tried System Restore three times, going back 3 weeks - and it still didn't fix it! So I rebooted the whole system again (took the entire weekend, and thank God for external hard drives so at least all my latest batch of photos etc was safe) and am finally sort of back on track again.

Anyone with any ideas what the problem was this time, I'd be very grateful! All I get from my husband (who does not touch the computer on pain of death) is "I thought you said you know what you're doing". Huh!

ALPHABETS, SWAPS & DECO PAGE

Happy New Year!






Cover of my Curly Wurly deco book





Anyone acted on their New Year Resolutions yet?

I have taken a step in the right direction: signed up for a postcard swap on UKPaperArts yahoo group, and am following the alphabet challenge on ByHandArtists yahoo group - where I saw this really interesting link for Alphabet Photography.

This site has really inspiration ideas for any photography, journal and font fan. It certainly makes you look at ordinary objects in a new way... I am dusting off my camera as we speak!