More Cards...and Photos

I got the chance to upload more photos this time. Here's an all-occasion card, no caption, text, wahatsoever so it can be used for any purpose. I just love the combo of classic colors red, black and white. Most of the things I used are left-over scraps - the papers, the trimmings and even the 2 red roses are odd finds. The only newly bought ones are the glittered flower diecuts from Panduro and the MM pebble brads.



I also tried my hands on teabag-folding. Such great fun making these but I must say very tedious too! The photos didn't turn out well as the lighting is quite poor and it looks gloomy outside. I usually rely on good lighting from outside thru the glass window when photographing my cards. I have this corner table in the lounge by the window and it usually gets some good natural lighting, well not today...Never mind.



I also made some boy cards which I keep handy for when my kids' friends have birthday. The third one is actually the card I made for my 13 year old this year. I never took a photo of it before so I just included it this time:)


Fancy some colorful cards? Here's a couple of harlequin cards I made. I just loved these bright papers I got from Panduro on sale last year but didn't really know what to do with them. When I opted to try out something different I remember I had these papers somewhere in my stash. So I pulled them out one day and turned them into these lovely cards, what ya think?


Before closing off for the day I'd like to share some of my favorite photos which I fiddled with some time back before I purchased Maggie Holmes' Actions set. Like I said earlier I used a lot of time playing with editing and trying to get the perfect (well almost:) images, but it's all worth the precious time. Oh, and by the way, I should give credit to MCP Actions for their freebies. The black frames I've been using in my photos are from their website which you can download for free, check it out. If you want to see more great use of these great frames have a look at Keisha's blog. Her photographs are just so beautiful and inspirational, so now you know where I got the inspiration from using those lovely frames. Anyways here are my fav pics of the boys which I intend to scrap later.

That's just about it for now. I'll be back with more cards to share later. You have a good day!

Cards I Made Early this Year

Earlier I promised to upload photos of the cards I made in the past and also of the more recent ones. By "past" I mean a month or so ago. I made so many that the earlier ones become "old enough" and therefore qualify as such:-) But when I publish them here in my blog for the very first time I suppose they don't really count as being "old"...hehe. Oh, and they haven't appeared anywhere else in the internet either, for that matter.

OK here's a few of those oldies...

This was a card I made for my MIL for her birthday in June.



And here's the present I gave her. I bought a purse-shaped box and scrapped it to match the card.



See, they match!


Just to share with you some detail of the box on the outside. Here's some swirl diecuts from Quickutz which I cut from a foam sheet and then painted black. Just before totally drying I coated some silver paint over and a slight stroke of gold here and there to give it a "vintage silver" look.



Inside the box are 15 cards I made so she should have enough to give away for at least half a year if not longer. Most of the cards are for general purpose, while the others are more theme-specific.



Here's a couple of those cards...



I'm adding here some other cards I made...


Well I guess this is all from me for today...I'll post some more later, perhaps tomorrow. Bye for now!

Photoshop Actions

I bought some PS Actions that Maggie Holmes developed. They are just so fantastic to use, saving me heaps of time editing photos (I have tons of them waiting to be scrapped:) You all know how painstaking and fiddly it could get trying to get those hard to part with underexposed but otherwise great snapshots to look better. I don't consider myself a pro when it comes to taking photographs but I like playing with editing and often find it very tedious and time-consuming getting the desired effect, so when I stumbled upon the link to Maggie's website during one of my blog-hopping sessions I knew I found an instant solution to this task. Thanks Maggie for your fantastic contribution and for unselfishly sharing your skills. Please check out her blog...she's got some really awesome everyday shoots in there - really inspirational. Her Action sets are well reasonably priced too. I've only had a chance to use the one I bought yesterday before abandoning my desktop for mundane duties for a while. Now that I've the chance to play again I want to share a couple of photos I fiddled with earlier...

Here's a shot of Jarel, my youngest son, which I took last week using my good old Canon PowerShot A 570 when we went for a short trip in downtown Oslo. Jarel was sitting along the edge of a fountain cooling off his feet as the heat was nearing 30°c. Note the subtle difference between the images after all four different actions have been applied.

This was the original photo

Then I used Simple Color Boost

Here I had a go at Color Pop, note the dramatic change in colors

And here's the result after I applied Extreme Color. Just look at those rich colors...yumm.

Lastly I toned the image down a bit using Lighten Up action.

Of course it's not necessary to use all four actions, I did this just to illustrate how each action differ from one another. Here I liked the effect of Extreme Color best but in other cases even just a Simple Color Boost would do. It all really depends on your desired result as some photos don't require much changes. And of course one can also go a step further as one desires. Yes I didn't stop there...when I became satisfied with the colors I then turned the tone into sepia...and I just loved the outcome.

Finally - My Very Own Blog

Hi All,

After having seen dozens upon dozens of inspiring blogs I've decided to give it a go...yes I'm finally taking the leap starting my very own blog. I'm not sure how good I'll be at keeping up with writing and uploading things but at the moment I have all the inspiration trickling down on me so I'm seizing the moment...yay! Please bear with me as I'm so new to all this - any suggestion and constructive comment from you will be very much appreciated.

I'm hoping to share my passion and interests thru this blog and learn from others by way of exchanging ideas and know-hows. I will upload some of my past and recent works as I go. Below are a couple of LOs I've uploaded. Next time I'll post some cards I made recently. I'm also working on uploading a slideshow of my earlier works.

Thanks for reading and taking a peak!