living artfully

february photo calendar

Another month down, another 28 pictures for our Project 365. I am really enjoying this photo project. I keep loving it more and more as our photo collection for the year grows; I can only imagine how amazing it's going to be to have a whole year completed!

 
Calendar and full size images can be viewed at Shuttercal

How are you doing on your photo project? Do you find that it's getting easier or harder now that another month has passed? Wishing you much success with your Project 365s!

 

projects

It has been a buuuuuusy week. Unfortunately, the projects that are keeping me busy are not so glamorous.  I've been curling up with Rocco and reading this for our book club meeting next week...


 
And I've been tagging and rating photos for Library of Memories. All 5,500+ images from 2004-2010 now have star ratings. Yay!! And I'm still tagging the who/what/where.

 

I am dying to get my hands on some paper and adhesive. I'm going through some serious scrapping withdrawal. Are you the same way? How long can you go without creating something before you start to go crazy?

 

wishing

Today, instead of snow...

 


I'm wishing for rain...

 

 
  
 
(photo cred 1, 2, 3, 4)

I'm ready for spring! How's the weather by you?? 

 

design your life - week six

Design You Life class is just flying by! Week 8 started on Thursday and this weekend I'm working on the layouts from weeks 7 and 8. When my best friend came over on Friday night, we looked over the pages I've completed for DYL and she confirmed what I had been thinking in the back of my mind... she said, "These pages don't look like you." And she's right. I've been trying to add a bit of me to the DYL layouts, but they are undeniably Cathy Zielske sketches. Don't get me wrong! I'm enjoying this class and I have learned a lot about graphic design principles. So while the layouts aren't always a direct reflection of my style, I still love what I'm learning and it always feel good to get another story recorded. So on that note, here is sketch 2 from week 6...

 

For the rest of week 6, the layout posted here is sketch 1 and this layout was the Real World Color sketch.

Have you ever taken a class where you were asked to copy sketches? Do you try to infuse your own style into the sketches?

 

dexter marathon

Tonight, we are having our good friends over for appetizers and a Dexter marathon.

 

Our friends haven't seen this show before, and we are so excited to watch it with them and see what they think.

Before I had seen Dexter myself, I was very skeptical. A show about a Miami PD blood spatter analyst who is also a serial killer? Seriously? And is it going to be super gory? After watching the first episode, though, I was completely hooked. It's actually a really funny show and it's not entirely gruesome. We don't have Showtime, so we haven't seen the latest season and are anxiously awaiting it on DVD.

Do you watch Dexter? Or are there any TV series you could watch over and over?

 

my least common layout

What do you scrapbook most? Events or relationships? Places you go? As part of Stacy Julian's Library of Memory class last week, she asked us to categorize all of our layouts into four categories: All About Us, People We Love, Places We Go, Things We Do. I completed the exercise and wrote about my thoughts here.
 
After tallying up my layouts, I found that my least common layout category is "People We Love." Stacy asked us to create a layout that fits into our least common category... and I was happy to get to work on that! It's a whole different feeling, scrapping about relationships instead of events, and I really enjoyed making this layout about my dad.

 

I have literally never made a layout just about my dad. So I'm sure this will be one that I treasure! And as a bonus, I used a Design Your Life sketch for this layout, which helps me complete another week of assignments on that class, too. 

PS - Did you notice in the layout... my dad went from having a mustache to shaving it off. He's worn a mustache my entire life, but shaved it to win a bet! Craziness! :)

 

cool new product - love my tapes

I'm so excited to have found a really cool new product... tapes from a new company called Love My Tapes. They sell gorgeous decorative tapes in a variety of colors, widths and styles. I can see these used on layouts, craft projects, and home decor pieces!  Their website says that they are photo-safe (though I haven't tried yet myself). And because it's a masking tape product, they are repositionable without tearing your project, but stay put once in place. I can't seem to narrow down which ones I want to buy! In the meantime, I'm following their blog :)

 
  

What do you think? Have you ever used a product like this? I can't wait to try it out!

 

photo organization

My digital photo library is out of control. Maybe you can relate? As a scrapbooker, I take and save more pictures than an average person might. And I love this.  But in order to find and use my best photos, I have found that I need more structure in my photo storage process. This is a big reason why I'm taking Library of Memories.

If you've heard of LOM before, then you probably know that a whole lot goes into using this approach to storing your photos, as well as your layouts. But on the most basic level, there were two things I knew I absolutely needed to do, with or without LOM.

First is purging. As my last five years of photos on my computer surpassed 17,000 pictures, it was clear that I was saving far too many images. I was saving pictures just in case, for "some day." But really, what kind of "some day" calls for that many pictures? It's too many to even enjoy. So I reviewed all my images and purged the ones I no longer need. Think you might need to do this, too? Here's how I decided which images to delete:

• Duplicate images - those images where you have multiple identical or nearly identical shots. I saved only 2-3 of the best duplicates.
• Poor quality images - those images that are blurry, too dark/bright, poorly composed or just unattractive. Unless it's  my only shot of something sentimental, these poor images got the delete button.
• Unimportant subject matter - those images where the subject no longer has any meaning or value. A good example of this is our trip to the zoo from five years ago when we took over 300 pictures of animals and I have since felt no desire to scrap or use the animal pictures. I saved a few of our favorite animals and purged the rest.

The second thing I knew I needed to do - use organizing software. As your digital photo library grows, it can become increasingly difficult to find the one photo you're looking for and very easy to forget what images you have. Although I had my photos stored in monthly photos by year, I was still spending a lot of time browsing through folders, reviewing image after image to find what I was looking for.

 

So this is where the organizer comes in. I have decided to use the organizer tool that comes with Photoshop Elements 8. I was resisting using an organizer, knowing it would take some effort up-front to get myself set up. But now that I've started this process, I'm already finding that the time investment will pay off in a big way.  It's such a great browsing experience to have all my images in one spot to view. And by using an organizer, my photos can be tagged with the "who," "where" and "what" that will help me find pictures and make connections in the future. I haven't gotten as far as using ratings or setting up albums, but even these initial steps are helping me to find and enjoy my best images. If you're thinking about using an organizer but don't already have software on your computer, you can check out the free Picasa software for Windows.

I'd love to continue gathering ideas for how to stay in control of digital pictures. So what's your favorite tip or strategy? What's your method for managing all of your pictures?

design your life - week five

Do you like using "white space" on your scrapbooking layouts? For me, some of my most favorite designs are ones where there is a significant amount of open and unfilled space. I loved week five of Design Your Life because the sketches were all about using white space.

 

 

 

This has definitely been my favorite week of sketches so far. Any of you former DYL-ers have a favorite week from class?

happy valentine's day

Wishing you all a very happy Valentine's Day!

 

I'll be spending today with this guy :)  We are going to brunch at a cute nearby restaurant to enjoy fancy coffee drinks, yummy breakfast food we can't make at home, and each other's good company. It's a guilty pleasure of mine to read restaurant menus in advance and obsess about what to order... so as of right now, I'm thinking of the eggs benedict. Mmmmm. Who knows what else the day will hold. But since it's time spent with the hubby, I'm sure it will be good!

And in the world of blogging, there was a cute post the other day on the Typepad blog about showing some blogger love this Valentine's day. There are so many fabulous blogs to read, so don't forget that you can show some love to other bloggers with these four ideas: leave a comment, favorite a post, reblog, or follow someone new.

Thanks to all of you fabulous bloggers and readers who have taken time to show me some love on my blog! I hope that you all have a lovely day and get to spend some time with the ones you love!