More fun on the radar

I know it doesn’t quite feel like summer here, but our annual Road Trip is on the horizon.  Though we have some fun to look forward to when Mary, Diana and Kim arrive next week for a few days and another little European jaunt the following weekend as well, I’m thinking it’s time I started getting my road trip journal together.

In preparation and to provide a little motivation, I pulled my travel journals from the shelf and stuffed them into a wicker hamper, with the intention of looking through them in the next few days to recall what works and what doesn’t.

I used to buy a sketchbook and use it as is, so many of my journals have black covers.  Some are covered with stickers and many have tags tied to the coil binding so that I can easily identify them.  These days I create my own journals using a variety of paper and “stuff” which I bind using my cinch binder, so I can a bit more flexible about the size and format.

I like to use a spring binding so that I can attach a souvenir or two;  in this case a tin of “holy dirt” from a shrine in New Mexico.

In some places it’s easy to find “journal bling” in the form of trashy trinkets and little charms to tie on the spring.  Other places, it’s harder to find these things.

So beer has to be drunk…

unless the wine is good, of course!

Sometimes, the perfect cover is found, as happened in Quebec a couple of years ago, but usually, I am content with stickers.

I always use our baggage tags as “bookmarks”, sticking them in to mark the landing spots.

This year’s road trip will involve four such landings and looks like it’s going to be a whole lot of fun.  I’d better prepare plenty of pages.

Another page

I’ve been mulling this one over for a few days, unable to identify a piece of text which I could adapt and use for my page four, themed “Goals and Desires”.  this morning, reading one of my favourite blogs, I came across a short paragraph which just hit the spot (words by Vineeta Nair from this book).  It didn’t really matter that it doesn’t fit the given theme at all, I decided, since I liked the sentiment so much.

No need to identify a palette this time either, since I had this digital collection burning a hole in my pocket for a while, awaiting the opportunity to use it.

An afternoon working at my computer, answering various queries from colleagues gave me an opportunity to take small breaks from work and create this rather simple layout which included most of the features taught in this lesson.

What did I learn this time?

• I created an overpainted background
• created a warped text block
• filled type with colour but then deleted that as being way too naff
• painted the edge of the page (and then neatened the place where the label folds over)
• made all kinds of hue and saturation adjustments to attempt to get the colours to “sing” but ultimately felt I had not achieved 100% success on that one.

So, another page done.  Surprising what we can achieve when we’re supposed to be doing something else, isn’t it?

Lesson Five is themed “Introspection”.  Hmm.  Bearing in mind we have OFSTED stopping by work  in two weeks time, I’m thinking that might be a little close to home?

Colour!

In these dreary January days an injection of colour comes as a boost, don’t you think?  Working through those Digital Art Journaling tasks meant that I needed to assemble a few palettes and so far, I’ve found Kuler to be an easy way to find the kind of thing that I’m looking for – or if it doesn’t exist, to create a colour scheme of my own.

But then I came across ColourLovers.

Did I need any excuse to sit and play with a new paintbox?  Of course not!  But oh my, is it fun?

Needless to say, my very first palette was rhubarb…

Find me here and come and play!

Updates

My apologies for updating the last blog post way after it had been published – I wanted to record the techniques learned for my own benefit and thought it was better kept together than posted in a separate entry altogether.

Anyway, it’s probably time for an update on another of Santa’s really useful gifts, the True-Cut Rotary Blade sharpener which I’ve finally put through its paces.

It works brilliantly!

I have several rotary cutters of different sizes and guess what, I can never remember which one needs the new blade, or once I get to the shop selling the replacement blades, which size to buy!  Yes, I know, I could have written down the size on my shopping list but to be truthful, these are not things I find myself buying very often and actually, the place I usually remember I need a new blade is somewhere like the NEC or wherever.  Not necessarily the place to take a shopping list!  As a result, I’m often the one who is cutting fabric with a less than sharp blade, muttering about how I must get hold of a new one “next time I’m in town”.

Anyway, enough about my lack of focus – sweep the cutter through the guide twenty times and bingo, sharp blade. Simple as that.  I love it!

Thank you, Father Christmas x

Sweet Home

Well, at last I feel I’m done with the second project from my Digital Art journaling class.  What’s funny is that it’s unintentionally rather similar to how Day One’s project should have looked.  If you recall, I rejected that style as not really something I wanted to do – but here we are, a few days later and somehow that style (and palette) seems to have sunk into my subconscious and I have created something uncannily similar.

I found my palette using Kuler, the Adobe palette generator, and liked this one, called “Sonic Threshold”.  Looking at the finished page, I see that the paper I used for the house roof does shine out rather – but I’ve left it there as the grit in the wheel, the small surprise which just removes that over-contrived matchy-matchy look.

What did I learn?

• I extracted text from a scanned page to use as an overlay and then covered it over with other stuff so I might as well not have bothered!
• I created a polkadot pattern which was really useful
• I created a shape using the Polygonal Lasso tool and used it as a clipping mask
• I created a journal strip and masked it with paper, though I then took the paper away and simply filled it with a colour from my palette
• I created inked edges around my page but later realised I did it in a totally different way from the one taught!
• I created a filled outline font but I chose not to use it on this layout

In addition to the techniques taught in the class, I discovered how to import a photograph as a layer, to edit it and use the blending modes to incorporate it into the page, getting rid of straight edges and suchlike.  I’m not sure whether that’s something I should have known how to do already, or if it really was a new discovery.  Either way, I felt pretty pleased with myself!

So, on to project three.  I wonder how long that will take me?!