This week’s theme for Paper Crafting World’s challenge is anything school-related, such as graduation, teachers’ gifts, etc. One of my neighbors is graduating from high school and I needed a card for him, so that’s what I went with!
I used the Fab 4 Beatles set from PCW; the diploma is the icon from page 73 on the Wild Card cartridge; the hat is from Every Day Paper Dolls page 46; Cuttlebug Numbers Collage embossing folder; Hobo Std. font.
This file came together pretty quickly, except for the face. I am not an artist; I have absolutely no skill or confidence when it comes to drawing. I was so nervous about putting pen to paper because I didn’t want to mess up his face, so this is what I did:
I looked through my stamps to see if I had a face that fit. Nothing. I spent about an hour on the internet looking for ways to draw faces. Then I practiced with pencil on tiny scraps of paper that I placed on his face and squinted to see how they looked. When I finally did one that looked okay, I very lightly copied it onto my doll’s face, but when I went over it with the marker, I messed up on his mouth anyway! That’s an hour of my life I won’t get back!!
Olivia from ORM Crafty Nights (who is a member of my sister design team, Cooking With Cricut) left a message last week asking if I’d do a tutorial on how I take photos of my projects. So, here goes — a little behind-the-scenes look:
I have a white board sitting on the floor of my craft room on which I write my “to do” list of projects. I cut a long strip from a roll of white bulletin board paper and clipped/taped it to the top of the white board. Since it was on a roll, it keeps rolling back up, so I hold the ends down with two heavy punches. There is a west-facing window on the wall to the right of this setup. I place my project facing the window. My camera is propped up on several empty CD cases. I use more or less of them depending on where the project falls in my camera screen. I always use the ten second timer so the camera isn’t moving when the shutter goes off. I try to set it up so the camera is facing the project head-on.
I take a couple pictures so I have a choice of which one to use. This was a reject because of the angle of the card:
Here’s the original picture:
I bring this into Photoshop Elements and crop:
Then hit “auto contrast”:
Next hit “lighting – shadows/highlights”:
That’s it!
This challenge is an easy one; nearly everyone has a school/graduation/teacher-related gift to make this time of year, so let’s see yours! Please link it over at Paper Crafting World!!
Happy summer, you guys!! I hope to make a HUGE DENT in my 20+ years of pictures to be scrapped!
Evelyn
Here is the bulletin board I made for the end of the school year. I got this cute image from Little Scraps of Heaven. It was a freebie which is now available for $1.00. I added “Have a … summer” using the appropriately-named Summertime font! I used the school’s Ellison die cut machine to make a 5-day countdown mounted on a pad of paper that I had. That made it easy to just rip off the days as they passed. Not quite sure who did that, but I know they had fun!!
