ten minute tuesday..

life is quite hectic at the moment. My beloved hubby had emergency surgery at the start of last week and things have been upside down ever since. I’ve needed to temporarily close the store so that I can be his home nurse and look after him since being discharged. The house doesn’t look like a bomb has gone off, it looks more like a bombing raid has been through. We’re all exhausted, but getting through it and he’s slowly on the mend.

When we went to the hospital I had to quickly grab a bag and stuff things in it to amuse the kids. My little lady, who is an avid drawer, didn’t know where her sketch book was, so I quickly grabbed a small one for her. She didn’t use it and it ended up being my note book for a massive list of things I needed to do for hubby before he went for his surgery. I should have known what the rest of the week would be like from that point…

Anyway, at the weekend, I sat down with it and started to doodle, and I now have a bunch of pages started. I’m thinking I’ll keep it as a doodle journal. I found it really relaxing. Everyone was in bed fast asleep and I just sat in the peace and quite with a black pen and my book. 

a bird in amongst some grasses

a few leaves with some ‘flowers which I’ve now started to colour in.

 

I’ve split one page in to 7 parts to do a doodle a day. This is Saturday’s doodle (you might guess…)

and finally I created a “frames” page. Each frame to be filled with a little something. So far, girls, grasses and mushrooms mainly.  Oh and while I was sitting wondering what to do in one of the frames I thought I’d have a go at drawing a feather. I’m quite pleased with it. I don’t think I’ve drawn one before.  That page may become a feather page as I try different ways to draw them.

That’s my short and sweet creative burst for this week. If nothing else I may sit down each evening and if my eyes stay open long enough add to my doodles.

Thanks for stopping by, and please do share your ten minute creative bursts with me.

Vicki

that cake…

I never did come back and share my piñata cake creation.. oops. Having said that if you are “my friend” on FB or follow my instagram feed then you will have seen the progression!

The finished article, complete with slightly wonky rainbow. It was soooo hard getting them all lined up. It was the first time I have even made a cake covered like this, never mind a piñata cake! I know if I did it again how I’d do it better, but what mattered most was that my boy loved it. Even more when he I made him cut it open, with him eyeing me suspiciously (he had no clue) and a flood of skittles tumbled out. Each slice, and it lasted four of us nearly two weeks, came with a bobble of cloud. There was no way the kids weren’t going to eat the clouds. I think a few may even have been surreptitiously removed……

ten minute tuesday…

hello and welcome.
Today’s post is a nice one for me. You may remember one of my previous ten minute posts where I created some simple project life cards I was making. Well that led to me being asked to create some for Scrap365 who had an upcoming edition which was a project life special. That edition, the Oct/Nov 2013 issue, is now out, on sale, in the real world. And my cards are in it!

(we’ve also got a giveaway in this issue for two of the new Glitz collections)

Back to Project Life cards. I thoroughly loved making these cards. Nice and clean, which if you ever saw my desk you would NOT think that they had come from me!

I made a couple of extra cards that I didn’t send off and they are now in my PL album.

I found it really therapeutic hunting through my stamps to make these. A great relaxing way to spend ten minutes escaping the chaos. Now I must go face the chaos.

words that speak to me...

 two for this week, as always found on my other home - pinterest.

don't we all have day's where this rings true! I get so ratty when I get that look shot at me to sensor what's falling out of my mouth...

...and every week this one applies! 

ten minute tuesday...

hello, I'm back for ten minute tuesdays...finally. It's been a hectic summer but now the kids are back in school things are slowly starting to return to normal. I'm enjoying peaceful days but oh boy - where'd the sun go?!

Anyhoo - creative talk now. Project Life more specifically.

Just before we took our summer holiday I ordered 154 photo's from Photobox. Lots of them were Instagram shots which I ordered on 4"x6", making them 4"x4". Honestly though - what a pain going through and clicking "shrink to fit" on every single one.  For some reason that was the only way I could get it to do it. Ugh.

So, here I am with 154 photo's, destined for my Project Life album. Ha - lots of gaps to fill in too as this is from March to July. Eeek. so where did I start....by buying a new printer! LOL.

I've quickly come to the conclusion that if I'm going to record our lives again, I need a printer.
We used to have a fabulous printer, but it died a death and we replaced it with an amazing printer - but it's an office one, and in all honesty, printing photo's on it really isn't the best. They are ok, but not what I want.

Enter a Canaon Selphy C900.

Wireless. Yeah right. Not in our house.

We work for ourselves, and have a lot of security set up on our network and clearly this little baby doesn't like hanging around for you to type in very long passwords...  Oh the joys. So, I've just plugged it in to my laptop. I'm not upset about it.

So far I love it! But. Warnings.....  

I usually print onto matte paper. The selphy packs are gloss and they are waterproof prints.Great if you have a coffee spill, not so great for my pens. My regular pens don't adhere to them, even my micron pens. Arrgh! I have several sharpies, one has worked. A regular old sharpie with an extra fine tip at one end.  If you don't write on photo's then it won't be an issue for you.

Second issue was Instagram photos. Although the Selphy comes with print size options, and a custom option. It didn't really do for Instagram. I want to be able to print them at various sizes, from 4" to 2".

Back to the drawing board then. Noooooooooo.....

I have had a couple of apps suggested to me to get over this. While they may work for other people I don't want to fiddling about on a tiny phone screen with an app. My eye sight isn't what it used to be you know... LOL. And, more importantly I just don't have the patience. But I do have PSE7. yay. Problem solved!

I do find PSE a bit of a faff most of the time, but this was quick and painless.  I back up all my Instagram and camera shots on our network as a matter of course, so they are all there ready for me to print.

HOW TO.....

• open your instagram image in PSE and select "image" "resize" . I then select the size in inches. As you can see from above image 4", 3.75", 3" and 2" sizes. 
• Do this for all the images you want to print - especially important for the smaller sizes so you have them all selected at once to fit on the sheet. 
• Select "File" "Print multiple images", with PSE7 a new window opens. 
• For multiple images on one sheet make sure you select "contact sheet" print type (dropdown 2)
• Set the number of columns - two should be enough for images 3" and smaller.

There we have it - all ready to print out my Instagram images ready to use.
Project Life album under way.
 I'm not putting myself under pressure to catch up with everything for it. I'll start with the big events and days out and gradually fill in inbetween, but from this week I can start recording things weekly (ish).

Where does the ten minutes come in? errm, well now I have the printing issue out of the way, I can spend ten minutes writing up the cards for the album in my "war on the photo mound".

Please do share with me what you have been up to in your bid to catch up and/or get creative ten minutes at a time.

Thanks for stopping by!
Vicki 

summertime photography scavenger hunt…

I’ve revisited the list this morning and realised I haven't really casually come across many items on the list. Still got a couple of weeks to find some more, now that the kids are about to go back to school and the daily grind kicks back in… ahem, we shall see what happens. Maybe I should carry the list – revise with it to help me remember! Maybe it will turn in to an Autumn scavenger hunt list..

So, from our trip to Crete I present…
Item No 5 “a sunset”

  

We drove for an hour and a half along some stomach churning roads – think lorries, narrow, sheer drops…on our side, to get these.  We sat in a lovely taverna on the beach and watched the sun go down. I have a few shots of it slowly going down. After a day on the beach it was a lovely end to the day.

Not quite Item No. 11: An animal in a zoo, aquarium, nature preserve, etc
I say not quite because we haven’t been near a zoo, aquarium, nature reserve or an etc for this one. So this is one of the critter that shared the pool at our villa with us.

This is where I really regretted not taking my DSLR with me, just my compact. Crawling round on my knees trying to get as close as possible with the sun shining in my eyes for hours!
How’s your scavenger hunt going?  Don’t forget to pop across to see Rinda’s blog and add yourself to the list.  She has some fabulous photo’s from the list.
Tatty bye for now then!
Vicki

design team call…..

We're looking for a scrapbooker and 2014 Guest Designers!

Entry deadline 30th September 2013.

We have an opening for a scrapbooker on the creative design team! So if you are a scrapbooker, maybe you also dabble with project life/ pocket style scrapbooking, have lots of tips and idea's to share read on!

Ideally you should be based from within the EU, and would commit to an initial six month term.

In return you get free goodies and a discount on your purchases!

We’re also looking for Guest Designers who can commit do joining our team for a month at some point during 2014.

If you’re not familiar with the store go take a look, we have everything from scrapbook papers to jewellery making supplies and lots of art supplies. These are the products you would be working with as a member of our design team.

Have a read through the requirements and the benefits (here) and get in touch with us by the 30th September 2013 if you are interested.

Don’t be shy! If you have any questions then email us at dt@asprinkleofimagination.com