Saturday Blogger Love

I've been working at this for over two hours now, and I just can't figure it out.  I want to make a collage of the photos my husband helped take of me today, but I just can't get it to work the way I'd like.  I tried it on photovisi, but most of their templates require the photo to be cropped square, which would cut off my head or feet in most of these pics.  I don't own photoshop, plus that seems like more work than I was planning for.  I suppose gimp can do these things, but I have no clue how.  I attempted using picnik, but I couldn't find a collage template that I liked all that easily.  Plus they are closing down in April, because they are joining forces with google.  I've heard picasa is great for this, but I'm not a fan of it being connected to the internet and google chrome.  Don't get me wrong I love google & chrome, but I don't want every photo I put on picasa to be on the internet or even accessible by google the company.   They already monitor so much of what I do on my computer they don't need to have control over my photos too!  

However, I did manage to make an awesome banner, and revamp the whole look on my blog today!  

Here are the photos we took, sorry they aren't as awesome as I was planning on making them.  I need to improve on my computer skills, and I need to help my husband improve his photography skills.  I was inspired by A Beautiful Mess to do some outfit pics for Saturday's Blogger Love.   I also saw some super inspiring outfit photos here and here.  

This was actually yesterday.  Aaron took this when I got home from work, and I took down our Valentine's Day decorations.  

We took this set of photos at a local state park.  They have some lovely historical buildings on the grounds at Bellevue State Park in Delaware. 

I love to wear jeans!  I hardly ever see any cute outfit photos in blog land that are jean-centric.  Here I am wearing sunglasses from H&M, the coat is form Urban Outfitters, the top is by Lauren Conrad I picked it up at Kohl's last spring, the jeans are Levi's, and the sneaker's are by Rocket Dog.  The bag I got in London, and I'm not really sure where.  I also have a little sweater on from TJ Max, and a pink tank top on from H&M.  Oh, and I have no clue where I got that headband.  

Now you can see the cute little TJ Max cropped sweater.  My necklace is a combination of two gifts, the chain was a gift from my mother in law, and the glass piece my cousin Kara made for me.  

Who doesn't like a good jumping photo?  Oh, and I've changed my shoes  to cute little flats that match my top.  I also got these in London, and I don't know where.  

Can you believe it's February?  

I had to check out that hole in the wall, there was a strong smell of mothballs waft out at me.  Lots of old furniture in there, if I were a squirrel I would totally go play in there!

AND this is our lovely photographer, my husband Aaron.  He didn't do bad for his first try!  I was nervous about doing this, and how it would turn out, but I can't wait to do this again!  

One more fun photo before we go ...

                                                

I finished my day off with the kitten ordering our seeds from Baker's Creek.  Their seed catalogue is has the prettiest veggie photos I've ever seen.  It's porn for a gardner. We ordered Chantenay Red Core Carrots, Lunar White Carrots, Tom Thumb Lettuce, Hairy Vetch, and Five Color Silver Beet Chard.  We've never tried any of these, and we are extra excited to get them started!  

Hope you all enjoyed, happy DIYing!  chris

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Back to the Clipboard.

I've been consumed with basketball photos at work.  I've looked at more photos of kids holding basketballs this week than minutes I've spent DIYing that's for sure!  Checking the photos pays though, and the DIYing does not, so my crafting will have to take a backseat for now.

Here is what I got done on my clipboard that I've been drawing on:

Happy DIYing! chris

Bento Love.

No time for the clipboard today, so here are some photos of my lunches.  Bento inspired.

A red velvet cupcake with heart sprinkles, cheese cut out in star shape & some hotdog bits, apples cooked in a little lemon juice with sugar, and the brown stuff is couscous with balsamic vinaigrette.  

Ham & Cheese starwich on potato bread, cheese stars, Cheetos, more taste cooked apples, and chocolatey trail mix with some chocolate covered pretzels.  

I love having fun with food!  Actually when my husband first met me I think he may have been a little embarrassed to eat with me in public, because I would play with my food so much!  When my food looks this awesome I just gobble it up.  No need to skip a meal, because I don't have time to stop, everything in this lunch in bit sized.  Hope you enjoyed my lunches as much as I did! :) Happy DIYing! chris

More Clipboard Love.

Clipboard art again!  This design is a lot more mature than the back is.  I was only able to put about an hour and an half into my DIY today.  That's disappointing, but I am super happy with the way it looks right now, so if taking my time with it means it turns out better, than it's well worth it.  Here is an over head pic of my progress:

A little less glare:

I'm really proud of this corner.  I started off here, and I'm happy with how successful I was getting the design under the clip part of the clipboard.  I sometimes struggle with making my patterns random rather than repetitive.  Repetitive is beautiful and has it's place, but sometimes a random pattern just brings an extra layer of cleverness.  It keeps your eye moving through out the pattern, but it shouldn't overwhelm the viewer.  There should be a continuous flow to the randomness of the pattern.  

This is my box of drawing pens or specialty pens.  So far I've used my black fine point Sharpie, and red Stabilo OHPen permanent fine tip.  

I work again tomorrow, so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get finished.  We'll see, and happy DIYing!  chris

Valentine's Day Card

This is my Valentine's Day card to my sweetie.  I started by using my x-acto knife to cut out a heart in wax paper.  I should have used freezer paper, but I read on the internet that I could use wax paper.  That's what I get trusting what I read on the internet! :)  Wax paper doesn't stick when you try to iron it down.  My solution was to get out some 3M Spray Mount, and to spray just a super light coat on the wax paper.  

Then I pressed it down on a piece of handmade paper.  I painted the heart in white, and peeled the stencil off.  Worked out great!

I also cut out a chevron design from a piece of wax paper, and used the same technique to apply it to the first heart.  Before I placed the wax paper down I waited for the white paint to dry, and I torn the paper down to size.  I used a ruler as a straight edge, and just peeled the paper off.  Than I mixed up some light blue paint, and filled in my chevron stripes!  

I peeled off the wax paper, threw it away, and wow is this heart cute!  

To finish it off I glued it on top of another piece of handmade paper.  The first sheet of paper is made from a pulp of garden weeds and junk mail, and the bottom sheet is from my crayon paper project.  

Here's the back side.  I like to write my messages out, but you could always use a stamp.  

Hope you enjoyed!  Happy DIYing!  chris

52 Date Ideas!

I went to another school today to photography the lil' kiddos.  I photographed 390 people!  There were three boys I believe brother's, because they had the same last name, which wasn't a common last name at this school.  Anyway, their first names are, and I swear I am not making this up, they are named An, Long, Dong!!!!!!  How could parents' do that to their children?

But on to my DIY.  I worked on my Valentine's Day gift today!  My gift to my hubby is going to be a playing deck of 52 date ideas.  Woooh!  That was a lot of dates to come up with!  I tried to come up with date ideas for things we already want to do, and dates we already enjoy going on.  I also tried to keep the ideas semi-general so they would be easy to adapt to whatever is going on in our lives when we get to that card.  

Begin by painting the back of a deck of playing cards.  I picked white, but whatever color will complement your card stock will do.  I had to apply several coats of paint to cover up the awful 'art' on the back of my cards.  While the cards dried I cut out pink card stock to fit on the back of the playing cards.  2" by 3" worked for my cards.  Then I punched out hearts from the center of the card stock with a Martha Stewart Heart Punch.  Once I was happy with the white on the back of the cards I glued the card stock down.  Finally I added our date ideas written in Sharpie colored fine tip pens.

The idea is that we will take turns picking cards and planning out a date for the other person.  I used the orange card stock to designate the cards I will use for our weekend trip ideas.  

Here is our list of 52 Dates:

1. Jasmine's & a movie

2. White Clay Creek & picnic

3.  cook & play board games together

4. live music

5 & 6. Weekend trip to NYC

7. Day trip to DC

8. Day trip to Lancaster

9. Shopping trip for Aaron

10. Shopping trip for Christine

11.  Bowling & charcoal pit

12. cooking & gardening

13. cooking & dvds 

14. buy a dog!

15. buy a house!

16.  Fun in Philadelphia

17.  Panera Bread & a long walk

18. Pure Bread & a long drive

19. Try a new restaurant!

20.  Buy a cat!

21.  Johnny's Dogs & buy a new bed

22. Ikea for a couch

23.  Stoney's for dinner

24.  Make cookies & play video games

25.  Lucky's & a movie

26.  Dogfish Head Restaurant

27.  A day out on the beach, fries & ice cream!

28.  Carnival

29 & 30. Weekend trip to the beach

31. Cook & color together

32. Order in & and make something together

33. Volunteer together at the DCH (DE center for horticulture)

34 & 35. Weekend camping trip

36.  Buy bikes & go for a ride!

37.  Go to wildwood!

38 & 39.  Go thrift shopping, and find a project to do together

40.  Day trip to Baltimore try a restaurant & museum  

41.  Melting Pot

42.  Go to the Zoo!

43.  Brandywine Creek Park & Ice cream

44.  Horseback riding

45.  Try a new Restaurant in Philadelphia

46.  Frolic & Rita's

47.  Try a meal crawl!

48.  Day Trip to NYC for museum

49.  Cooking & Wii

50.  Hair cut & movies

51.  live music

52.  Cook & house project

Hope ya'll enjoyed!  Happy DIYing!

Ideas for Handmade Paper

I started today off by finally finishing my crayon heart valentine's!  Yay, now I'm ready for tuesday, and I won't have to worry about it after work tomorrow!  

Now I want to get back to talking about handmade paper.  Today I want to focus on some idea's of simple things you can do with your paper.  

This first set of papers is a mix bunch.  The upper left paper isn't handmade, I included it because the paper below it is handmade and the effect used on it is a direct result of the paper above it.  I used a sheet of glass, rolled out blue ink, and laid four lace doilies down, and then the store bought paper.  I pressed the items together, and then peeled them apart.  I then reused the glass sheet without doing anything to it on a piece of handmade paper.  The same technique was used on the paper on the upper right corner with yellow paint.  In printmaking the second pull is called the ghost image.  The orange white paper was a happy accident!  In the past I used paper couching sheets to dry my paper, and when one of my sheets had reached the end of it's life it dried it's self to this lovely orange paper I had made.  I enjoy the color and texture of this paper, so I didn't reclaim it for other papermaking ventures.  Here is a close up of the four sheets:

The next four are examples of different way's of using small lace doilies.  The sheet in the upper left is the first pass of the glassed used in the previous group of papers' yellow sheet.  The lower two sheets I used string and yarn in the pulp mix.  The paper on the bottom right I used a mixture of different paint to fill in the doily and make it pop off the sheet a bit more.  

Here is a close up of the doily paper with blue string:

Here is a close up of the handmade paper with yarn and the doily I painted in:

On this set of handmade papers I used a large lace tablecloth to press the sheets against while they were drying.  I also used yarn in the pulp mix for these papers.  

This is a close up of my favorite paper:

That's all on papermaking for today!  I also started working on my DIY for Valentine's Day.  I hate to spend money on Valentine's Day, cause I think it's a made up holiday for the card and chocolate companies.  Plus I think it's a lot more heartfelt, if non of my gifts are store bought.  My gift is going to be 52 different date ideas.  I have a fun way to put it all together, but I'll talk about that tomorrow!  Happy DIYing!      -chris