Mega Collection trying again

I had a look at the Blog today and realized that I had not posted the photo of the Mega Collection but of an earlier kit. So here it is, 21 papers and 56 elements all created during the class The Art of Digital Design II over 5 weeks.
The other class that I have been taking Fantasy Style Layouts has just finished week 4 and I'm enjoying it immensely. I am have fun learning how to cut, blend, shadow and extract photos to create a whole new landscape.

This coming weekend I'll be back to real paper, paint and stitching with Sandra Meech.
Sandra is Canadian born textile artist now living in the UK. She is giving a two day workshop for my Guild. Sandra has published several books over the years combining mixed media with quilting for some stunning results.

Another Class

I love taking on line classes and was temped into to signing up for this one at Deviant Scrap called Fantasy Style Layouts.  I am just loving it!
Here are my some of my assignments.

With this assignment I blended the two top photos together to create an new landscape

The next assignment I extracted my granddaughter from one photo and added her to another one.

This assignment was to add shadows to the figures we added into the landscape.
Learning how to extract and blend is just too cool! An added bonus has been the feedback from the instructor which I find so helpful.

Class ending

The design class that I have been taking for the last month is coming to an end. This class has been a terrific experience and I feel that I have learned so much. Our instructor Carina Gardner gave 110% of herself to insure we had a good experience. I found her feedback from each assignment excellent, positive and yet pointed out areas that needed improvement. The last assignment which is due next week was to created a mega kit! Three pack of papers and 3 packs of elements.

All of the papers needed to coordinate with each other as did the elements. With the three packs of  elements I had the most fun with the last one which I included shoes, ribbons and buttons as well as a pocket watch frame and umbrella all made by me ;-)

Street Party

I live in a great neighbourhood that has a terrific sense of community spirit. This past weekend neighbourhood volunteers organized a community street party.
The day dawned bright and clear for all of the events to take place. We chose to start the day with a lost river walk.

The walk was led by  very knowledgeable volunteers Liz Hood and Helen Mills. Our neighbourhood was once the shore line of ancient Lake Iroquois which evolved into lake Ontario http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_Lake_Iroquois which explains why we have very sandy soil in this area.Our city originally had many small streams and rivers which have been covered over in the sometimes misguided spirit of progress. If you are interested you can read more about it here http://www.lostrivers.ca/. During our walk which lasted about 2 hours we followed some of those covered streams and rivers that flowed into lake Ontario.
Our walk ended at the street party which was in full swing.

Our little granddaughters had arrived earlier and had their faces painted.

My husband and I headed for the Victoria Tea party for a much needed cuppa. Our city councilor joined us before her important job of judging the apple pie contest.

After filling up on delicious scones, jam, clotted cream and tea we headed back home passing this fellow who was on stilts entertaining the children by  juggling.

Cruise Journal

In anticipation of a cruise that we will be going on next winter I've been thinking  about what kind of journal I wanted. It has to be easily portable, and able to work for both writing, photos and general stuff that I pick up along the way. A frustration that I have encounter with journals that I've made is space for photos and journaling does not always match up with the order of my  pages. A solution I thought would be to have a ring binder. That started a quest to find where to purchase the binder rings to incorporate in a travel journal that I could make. After much trolling of the Internet I found a place surprisingly here in Canada that sold the rings.

I bought some great paper made by Graphic 45 which is my all time favorite paper company and put together the cover.

Using bright red duck tape to strengthen the spine.

I filled the book with a varity of pages for journaling, pockets for goodies, and places for photos. All of which can be shifted around to suite what the situation calls for.





Exchanges with Australia...continued

It was my Australian friend Heather's turn to chose what to make for our challenge in May. Her choice was a cloth covered journal from a tutorial by Jane LaFaziohttp://janeville.blogspot.com/2011/05/tiny-tutorial-cloth-covered-journal.html.

The cover is made of canvas painted, stamped and then machine quilted. I added some stamped and painted flowers to give it dimension and some dragonflies which Heather is very fond of.
Water color paper was used to make the signatures adding more dragonflies.

Last step was to wrap and add a card which I made using Photoshop and mail.

Practical Use

Our assignment yesterday was to use the papers and elements we have been making from the class the Art of Digital Design II to create a layout.



I'm quite pleased with the results. In the bottom photo is my newest granddaughter. Isn't she cute?

Three Sets Completed

I've been working overtime in Art of Digital Design II class and enjoying every minute of it. Three paper sets are completed WooHoo!

Each week I've been able to complete the assignment and send it in for critiquing. Our instructor Carina Gardner has a wonderful way of both praising and giving good feed back for areas of improvement. 

This week we have been working on elements for our kits, which I think is my favorite part of designing. I have been making frames, stamps and word art which I'm not as fond of. More on that later and some samples as well of my labours.

I would love some feedback from you my friends.



Catching up again

Ahhh...where has the time gone! It's already September and I've not had enough summer! The temperature has cooled down since last week and I needed to wear a sweater today when I went outside. The garden is still blooming away and some photo's will be posted soon.

I've been immersed in a design course led by Carina Gardner called the Art of Digital Design 2. Each day we are given a lesson most by video and at the end of each week we have an assignment to complete and hand in. Carina gives us feedback  written or oral.  My plan is to loosely work around a French country theme.

This is the result of my first weeks assignment.

And this is week 2 assignment almost ready to hand in. Carina's feed back has been so helpful and positive and I do feel I'm learn and improving.