Mindless Scrap

After doing this week's texture challenge, I felt like playing some more with real photos. I grabbed an old photo that just needed a different background (it was taken in my living room). I used Eye Candy Texture Brick! What a cool plug in. But it was far too pristine for the urban feel I wanted, so I used a grunge brush to dirty it up. I love the way this came out! I even added a touch of graffiti. I'm much happier with it now. I got a lot more experience with removing backgrounds, and with brushes, and with my new Eye Candy software. Very fun and satisfying! Tutorial Used: None .

Weeee! My first scrap layout! I had no idea what I was doing with this, but I did it anyway. Boy, it went much more slowly. I wonder if I was doing it properly, or if my computer is bogging down, or what. This was fun. I'll definitely try more of these. Tutorial Used: None .

This tag I did because I was dying to make the tube blow bubbles. I had seen a tut somewhere, though for the life of me I can't remember where. Never did find it. If you know of a tut like that, let me know, will you? I'd love to experiment more with blowing bubbles. I was disappointed, after starting this tut, to discover that the animation was simply to make the bubble appear to glimmer, not to move. Rats. So I set out to find some kind of animation to help me here. I did stumble across a tut that showed you how to make a girl blow bubbles (though not specifically my tube). Cool! I played with it some, and while I'm not completely thrilled with the results, I am reasonably happy with them. I wish I had made more frames to the animation to make it go smoother. Maybe added more bubbles. But it's okay. I loved making this animation from scratch though. Very satisfying. But I wish I had more tutorial help with animations. They kind of intimidate me sometim

I was looking for an excuse to play around and use one of my new PinUp Toons, so I picked this tutorial. The word art that came with this one was okay, but I wasn't quite sold on it, so I used a different one. I liked this one better. I didn't really learn anything new, just practice. I chose it strictly because I liked how the kit went with the tube. Tutorial Used: http://josbits2-tuts4u.blogspot.com/2009/01/dottie-love.html?zx=a6a11f7177391456 .

I don't usually use textures, but this one intrigued me. I've been wanting to try something with an artistic grungy feel, and this texture seemed to go in that direction. Then I saw one example where the texture did not go through the person in the photo! Even better! I first took a photo and erased all the background. I used brushes to give that grunge look I wanted (scrolls and fairy dust), and applied them to my white background and to the texture itself. I duplicated my photo. Then I applied the texture to the whole thing, and used the duplicated photo over the top of it, to take the texture off the photo. I liked the look! Then I applied a mat and frame. It's a bit funky, I know, but I liked doing it. I will play with this some more in the future. So I thought this would be a simple thing. Pick photo, apply texture as an overlay, done. Instead, I got to practice all kinds of techniques. I used the background remover, used numerous brushes (and had to bring

For all the Bob Dylan fans out there, yes, that's where I got the title from. :) The scrap kit this week was blue, and my first thought was a forever in blue jeans kind of thing, but the blue idea took on a different twist once I began working with it. It just didn't have that denim feel. And I felt like going with a Janesko tube, and the one that I had that worked best with the frames and stuff I was using was a sad tube, taking the blue theme in another direction. Hence the Tangled Up In Blue. (I love that song.) Tutorial Used: None

Before After Okay, now for something completely different! ROFL! This week's challenges included a caricature challenge. How fun! I glanced through some of the submissions, and there were some really good ones. Not much chance of beating them. So I decided to have some fun with it. I tried to think up the silliest picture of DS that I had. Not too difficult to find one, since he likes to ham it up for the camera. A certain birthday photo jumped to mind right away. Blue tongue, funky glasses... Just the amount of silly I was aiming for! Not only did I get a chance to use the expand and contract tools, but I got to use my first script! (One built into the program.) Cool!! I had a blast with this tutorial. And it wasn't hard. Give it a try! Tutorial Used: http://www.pinoy7.com/psptutorials/9/caricature/p1.shtml .

In this challenge, we're supplied all the goodies, and we need to create something with it. I liked the tube. It was interesting. And I liked all the individual goodies, but I had trouble putting them together into one design. I liked the mask, but didn't want to cover up the edges of it. And I liked the frame, but I couldn't seem to get it to work the way I wanted it to with the mask. So instead, I shrunk the frame down, and used MM copies to create a different frame. (It's not against the rules, honest!) I liked the brush, and used it applied to the mask. (Remember, I wanted more reasons to use brushes.) I used Eye Candy chrome on the font, since none of the colors I tried really showed up well against the blue and white. I thought that worked fairly well. Then I animated the mask with a Xenofex Constellation. Simple tag, but it appealed to me. Tutorial Used: None .

This was the coloring challenge for the week. I didn't really try anything new, except maybe the leather. (I don't think I've applied leather before, have I?) Not really into this one. I don't care for the cutesy image. I just used tiles for the majority of it. I was trying to make the tiles look less uniform, but I wasn't successful. Kind of reminds me of needlepoint, lol.

I'm getting oddly addicted to this tutorial challenge. I LOVE it! I'm drawn to the idea of making a tag for someone, without buying anything! It forces me to learn new techniques, and to use my creativity. For example, in this tag, the person I made it for asked that I change the words to say something about "You can't scare me, I'm the mother of a 2 year old monster." Easy enough. But I don't own the tube, and I don't own the scrap kit. Hm, a bit of a challenge. I checked for a freebie on the scrap kit. No such luck. I checked my own scrap cache. Nothing, nada, zilch. Crap. I disliked the tube used. It has a scary look to me. So my first mission was to find a tube that had a super mom sort of theme. Bingo! I found a PinUp Toons with a woman holding up fists. Perfect! Now, since I didn't own the kit, I would create papers using the colors in the tube. I found yellow in her hair, so I created the yellow stars with a weave texture

Now I loved this tutorial. It was very simple. But I liked the looks of it, and I had some fun making it. I love the tube I used on this! I was looking for an excuse to use it, and the red & black challenge was the perfect excuse. :) I enjoyed playing with brushes on this. I need to do more of that. I guess I don't do too many tuts that use brushes, come to think of it. On this one, the look was a grungy splatter. Fun! I guess in this case, the grungy splatters took the place of a mask or doodles, giving a different background look. And I got to use the overlapping names again. (This tutorial was by the same author as the Sparkling Rose, which used that technique, too.) I love that look. So I got to do the whole hard rock look, without the sneering, pierced, unpleasantries, LOL. Tutorial Used: http://www.freewebs.com/vixpsp/tooobvious.htm .

This was a pretty challenge. I like it. I got to use my Janesko tube, too. It was not difficult. When I finished, I was disappointed with the drab grey background they suggested. I enlisted the help of my son, who has been known to have a real flair with color. I like his preference on the background color much better. Tutorial Used: http://sites.google.com/site/kylietutorials/eternity .

I'm not completely satisfied with this tag. It was disappointing on many levels. First off, I hated the looks of it. Too youthful, too harsh of a feel. I had no desire to buy the tube, so I tried to find a substitute, and while mine is appropriate to the design, I don't like the way it turned out. The other thing I disliked about this tut, is that it wasn't much of a tut. It had a template all arranged, and not much to do but add your tube. Boring. Okay, I'm exaggerating some here, but it would have been very challenging and interesting if I had to do more of the work myself, and I was disappointed that so much was done for me. To make it more interesting to work on, I created a strobing flash to add to the camera. It was interesting to work on. Unfortunately, the artist made the tube washed out by a flash to begin with, so that took away from the design in a lot of ways. The colors were washed out in her face, in her hair, and adding a flash didn't reall

You've seen me post about my nephew before, the one who is in AA. I did a tag for him for his 9 month anniversary. Well, his buddy had just hit his One Year anniversary, and he asked if I would mind creating something for him, too. I didn't want to duplicate what I did for my nephew, so I asked him for some suggestions. He mentioned the Serenity Prayer. I'm quite familiar with that prayer. I've carried it on a card in my wallet for decades. But I didn't realize there was more to the prayer. I tried to google it, so that I could just copy and paste the words instead of running the risk of a typo, and I found a longer version! Very cool. And it looks very appropriate for AA. After that, I used my new tube, and applied a stone background, some footsteps and a clock and a key, and came up with a design similar to, but not the same as, the one I did for my nephew. (He said his friend really liked it!) Tutorial Used: None .

This was a very fun tutorial to do! I really enjoyed it. In fact, I bought the tube because I really liked the looks of this. (It was the bubbles that go me. They're just fascinating, aren't they? LOL!) I also went a little nuts. They had a sale at the tube store, and discounted artists' entire collections. Well, I did a little math, and wrote down all the kits I wanted to buy, if they go on sale. If I bought them all individually, they would be more expensive than buying the whole entire collection! So I did it. I purchased PinUp Toons collection. I figured I would get the most use out of his work, since it's more G rated. I'd love to get the Janesko collection as well, but that's more expensive, and I wouldn't use it as often. So I think I made a good deal. And now I am just dying to play with all my new art! LOL! As far as the tutorial went, I did run into a problem. I couldn't quite figure out how they did the window view. I tried to

I loved the looks of this tutorial. I just had to buy the tube for it. It was a little difficult to follow the tut, but it wasn't a hard siggy to make. The tut was just phrased a little funny, and I found it confusing in parts. But the work itself wasn't complicated. I sent this out to friends as an e-Easter card. I didn't buy the scrap kit, so i fiddled with some scraps from my cache to make this. I liked my colors a little better. Tutorial Used: http://pages.suddenlink.net/queenbratdesigns/ForGodSoLoved.html .

Ah, I've had a busy week! I have lots to show you. I'll start with this Easter tag I did called Good Egg. This was a Tag Challenge. They post a tag they want someone to make, you try to do your interpretation of it (without necessarily buying the tube or the kit). Then you post a tutorial you would like someone else to try. I wasn't going to buy this kit. (I don't care for it). And I had a bunny tube I could easily use. So I dug through my scrap cache and found lots of elements to use. I also used an old template I used before, and duplicated it horizontally and then vertically for the background. I color altered the elements, and did the "fit text to curve" technique, using a pair of lips I found in my preset shapes, LOL! (Hey, it worked!) That gave me the odd crooked text look I was after. Gotta say, for a tutorial I wasn't crazy about, I sure learned a lot, LOL! The text was challenging all the way around. I didn't really like the desi

I loved this scrap kit. The colors were so vibrant and spring-like! And the tut was easy and lovely. I fiddled with it some. I added the glitter, the yellow gradient glow, and the animation to the butterfly. Probably over-did it, but I just wanted to see some movement, lol. I didn't really learn anything new on this tut, but it was good practice. And I liked the looks of it a lot. The original had a tube that was probably better suited for the design, but I didn't have the cash to throw at it, so I went with a tube I had from Popeye Wong. He has some terrific designs, and is incredibly generous to our group. I thought it went well with the frame and I was pretty happy with it. Boy, everytime I scope out his webpage, I get all kinds of inspiration. I just have to use some more of his designs. He has some really fun tubes. Check out his website: http://www.popeyewong.com/eng/toons.htm . Tutorial Used: http://sites.google.com/site/kylietutorials/sunnyday .

My nephew is celebrating tonight. He has reached a huge milestone, and we are all very proud of his achievement. He is nine months sober, and is receiving his medallion from AA. He's come a long way in the past several months, taking charge and working hard to improve the way he lives. It took a lot of strength and heart for him to take his first step on this journey alone, and even more strength and determination to remain true to his purpose and to come so far. He is in another state, and I couldn't be there in person to congratulate him, so I made this little tribute to his success. His mother is visiting, so I'll send it home with her to deliver to him. I have a lot of respect for his hard work, and I am so thrilled about his gains. I don't know what the proper etiquette is, to express my happiness for his accomplishment. I hope sending him this little token will help to express my happiness for him. I wanted him to know that his family is behind him, a

I'm pretty excited by the results I got with this. We were given a scrap kit to use, and we were not to take elements from other kits. The kit was called Captain of Her Heart, by Sabre. It's a lovely kit. And I love boats, so I eagerly jumped into this challenge. I liked the tube I used in this, but it was too vibrant, so I used overlay to tone it down warm it up. I loved the way that looked on this. And I couldn't resist trying my Eye Candy again, this time the fire filter. Very fun! It took me several tries before I understood how to do it. (My first attempt had the entire candle going up in flames, LOL!) But I finally got the hang of it. And I was pleased with the flames. I've seen other people do fire, and it looked very fake, and the flame didn't seem to match the wick. Once I played with it a little bit, I avoided that overly wide flame that turned me off. I thought it looked kinda neat. But I still felt the tag needed something else. Perhaps

Ah, a tutorial challenge where I can use my new Janesko tube! Cool. And, I got to use the Eye Candy noise feature again. Very cool. This was a pretty simple tut. I didn't run into any snags. I kinda like the kit they used. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but it grew on me as we went along. I liked the way the tube matched the colors in the butterfly. That wasn't even color altered. I was going to go with a different tube at first, but when I saw the coloring in this one, I had to go with it. I'm glad I did. Tutorial Used: http://sites.google.com/site/kylietutorials/morningglory2 .