Basic Grey Challenge

Please excuse crazy clone strip on the left side. I can assure you the layout is square, but my ability to take a square picture was terrible today. It's the last day of the challenge so I am sucking up the bad photo and entering anyhow.

Cool thing I noticed while digging out the Urban Prairie paper pad... which I knew had the perfect colors for our Easter. Basic Grey is super ahead of their time. This pad is at least a year, possibly two or three old. It's filled with the same color scheme as the brand new October Afternoon, bees and hexagons. Could be a brand new release.

Anyhow the challenge was scallops, I fought a good fight with MTC trying to make the scallop layers exactly what I imagined. It's hard to tell in the photo but there's also 3 layers of partially welded, and completely welded title pieces. I really need to use MTC and the cutter more often, it's getting to the point where I've forgotten more than I know. I glossy accented the black for a super slick look.

The only non BG Urban Prairie parts are the journal box from Luxe and the Washi tape date spot from the Smash book line.

Link to challenge: http://blog.basicgrey.com/?p=2561#comments

I love Authentique Paper

My Entry:

In addition to some black cardstock, a little stickles and mist, some backers twine, a smash tape calendar spot, and the tag... everything else is Authentique Paper from the Blissful line.  The Background is from the bi-fold from Blissful.  The Honeycombs are cut from the ruler paper, the banner from the dots.  The Title was premade and just enhanced with some mist and tracing over the words to make them pop.

Link to the challenge: http://blog.authentiquepaper.com/2012/04/april-sketch-challenge.html

Got Scrap?

Scrapjazz
"only use your card stock, alphabet stickers, stamps, and photos"

It's subtle but the pumpkin stamp is embossed all over the crate paper card stock.




Scrapbook Challenges, product challenge
border punch
rub-on
ribbon/twine
the color black

I blatantly scraplifted this LO from the talented Krista Milford.
My Sketch World


The Scrappiest



White Plus One
Can I just say I love white plus one. It's such a fun way to do a LO. I have never once (OK once, but whatev') been disappointed with these fun challenges. Give them a try, you won't be disappointed.

I like it

Maya Road black and silver glitter mist. Circles are smeared off the bottom of a Starbucks cup :) Yummmmmm!

Happy Birthday Andrew

DSC04814, originally uploaded by msceejay2000.

Andrew's birthday. Hard to believe we had all those guests. I used a sketch from Sketchy Thursdays for this LO. They've got a great prize this week and you've still got 5.5 days to get it done.

Super Awesome Candy

Super Awesome!!!

I've been following for a while, this lady is an incredible crafter.

Those are Copics!!! And BG paper, and primas, and nestibles, and, and, and! Wish me luck!

Sketchy Thursday

Zrazy Blog Candy

If I am lucky enough to win, I'll need new storage! Check the Site

Sketchy Thursday

I went super literal. Had some fun mixing paints and painting the butterfly, followed by stickles and making antennae out of beads and wire.
The tag is from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge, I never use the cartridge it took an embarrassingly long time to figure it out.



Also whipped out a LO for the cookbook, creamed spinach, YUMMY. Excuse the blur, used the scanner and it doesn't like the thickness of fun stuff.

Fix-it-Friday

I heart faces photography blog

While I follow along I rarely post, but what the heck I've got time today, if I didn't spend my time creating a blog post about the photo fix I tried of some random person I've never met... I'd probably have to do the laundry and clean my house. What good would that be?

So here's the original:


And the request: This is a photo of her beautiful daughter and she was interested in learning a bit more about how to brighten up the image and how to smooth out the skin.

And my take:


Most of the other editors kept the original photo perspective. I took the subject to be young and decided to crop out the cleavage, not so much because I'm old fashioned as because I couldn't seem to make it not draw in the eye... making me feel like the picture might attract pervy eyes and goodness knows I'm not trying to attract perverts to my blog... that is unless they have a thing for 40-ish women with a little cushion and not much in the way of cleavage;)

I used levels for the lighten brighten portion, using not only the RBG channel but also the red channel. I then used the band-aid for most of the blemish work and the cloning tool for the one right over the lip (because the bandaid just couldn't do that one nicely). Then I used the wand to pick up the face (cont J into it's own layer) gassian blur, reduce opacity to blend. Went to the layer under it did a high pass filter with linear light to sparkle/super sharpen the eyes, lips and hair. Then reduced opacity to blend (hind sight I should have further reduced opacity they are still too sharp, the eyes are a bit glowy, my bad) Flattened the image and done.