No More Pencils, No More Books

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