Made by Wendy Bellino

Monday, August 5, 2013

August Break 2013 Photography Challenge Day 2

#augustbreak2013

Circles....

As I sit in the coffee room on my break, eating my Fage no fat yogurt, this is staring back at me.

Day 5 of Weight Watchers, and I am being tested!

The #August Break 2013 Photography Challenge, Day 1

Yogurt...it's what's for breakfast!

I love just about anything with coconut in it...food, lotions, shampoo, soap. I even put a little coconut oil in my coffee!

Welcome to my stop on the Club Scrap Wisteria Blog Hop! If you started on the Club Scrap Creates Blog, you are in the right place. If not, keep in mind that you can access the whole list of participants from there at any time.

It is after 10PM and I am just finishing my project for the hop. That is the story of my life! I always seem to get my creative bursts at the last minute. This year I have “discovered” sewing. I bought a new sewing machine last fall and since then I have been on a roll. (My blog posts are full of my latest creations.) My recent obsession is learning how to embroider. I was tooling around on YouTube for embroidery videos and found some tutorials on free motion embroidery using a sewing machine. I read my new machine’s manual and turns out all I needed was a darning or embroidery foot for my machine. Mine happened to come with one, so I played around with it. The manual wasn’t that helpful, “insert fabric under the presser foot. Lower the presser foot and begin moving the fabric following your design lines.” This is what happened…

After watching a ton of videos, I found some awesome tutorials on free motion embroidery by Patsy Thompson on her YouTube channel. Step one was to pull the bobbin thread to the top for correct tension (rolling my eyes).

Can I tell you I was absolutely giddy when I got everything to work! I practiced embroidering all my scraps of fabric! My 15 year old son watched over my shoulder for a few minutes and I invited him to try it out. Check out the lower left scrap, he wrote his name (Jake)…in cursive. It took me weeks of trial and error to get that scribbling down and he just sat down and did it!

What I really like about this technique is the imperfection of the stitches. I get so caught up in having everything just right and “perfect” that I get overwhelmed and forget to have fun. Free motion embroidery is good therapy for that because it will NEVER be perfect!

When I got my digi kit and saw the Voltaire quote stamp image I knew what I wanted to do for my project. I designed an embroidery pattern in PSE and printed it on some muslin fabric.

I found a great tutorial printing on fabric using an inkjet printer on instructables.com. I ironed a piece of freezer paper to the back of my fabric and trimmed it in my Tonic printer to 8.5*11. This gives your fabric some stability to be able to run it through the printer.

Then I loaded it in my printer and voila!

On to the free motion embroidering… AND I remembered to pull my bobbin thread to the top…

but I forgot to put stabilizer on the back for support. It was okay, but the fabric buckled in places. I had to print another piece of fabric (I’m working on imperfection). On the advice of Patsy Thompson in her video, I got a glass of wine, put on my quilter’s gloves and started free motion embroidering!

This is what happens when you wait til the last minute and get tired!

Here’s the finished piece. I think I am going to frame this to put on my bedside table. I thought about making it into a pillow, but I really should have treated the fabric with Bubble Jet Set and Rinse in case it had to be washed. I can always make another, the possibilities are endless!

Your next stop is Deb at http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/. Refresh your coffee and hop over to check out what she has to share!

Faux art media digi cards!

I just participated in +Club Scrap's PSL Summer Camp 2013. The challenge for last week was make your own cluster embellishment. I strive to make my digi creations look "real" and had fun with this. The red and black card was from Club Scrap's Study in Red digi kit. I used a mask for the painted cream background and used a watercolor brush to "paint" the cross element. The ribbons and tag were elements in the kit that I used to make my cluster.

The pink and blue card was fun....I love to make paper cards using my Cricut, so I made a faux Wild Card cartridge digi card. I used the rounded rectangle tool to draw out the shape and skewed it. I duplicated it and made the top layer and resized. I cut out a circle on the top layer to add the 45 record adapter to the bottom layer for dimension. I played around with the drop shadow for the spinner. Liking the effect. All paper and elements from this card were from Club Scrap's Cruisin' kit.

Club Scrap Blog Hop July 31!

Google+ and Blogger…

I recently updated my Blogger profile to Google+ (G+) and I am still working out the kinks. I just participated in Club Scrap’s monthly blog hop and received an email from a reader who couldn’t respond to my “no-reply blogger” comment that I left on her blog. I also read a comment about the blog hop in the Club Scrap Community forum. The reader didn’t comment on three blogs because she was asked to join G+ and wasn’t comfortable doing that. I did some research on the Google/Blogger integration and this is what I discovered.

First of all, readers will need a G+ page or profile to comment on your blog if you have updated to G+. When you enable G+ comments, existing Blogger comments will stay on your blog. G+ Comments lets you bring the following conversations together in one place, right under your blog post:

Comments made on your Blogger blog post
Comments on the blog post that you’ve shared to G+
Shared content on G+ that links to your blog post

Basically you are getting more bang for your buck because you can engage with more of your readers. So, joining G+ and enabling G+ comments on your blog is a win win situation.

I also found a solution to the “no-reply blogger” email address on Fluster Buster. That was an easy fix.

Since I already had the Google profile, I jumped in and made a page. I didn’t like the backgrounds on G+, so I made my own profile cover photo. Cypress North posted a “Guide to the New Google Plus Cover Photo Size, Inspiration & Tips” and provided .psd templates to download.

This is my new cover photo for my G+ profile page that I designed in Photoshop Elements…

(Click photo)

Club Scrap June Hopes Blog Hop!

Welcome to my stop on the Club Scrap Hopes Blog Hop! If you started on the Club Scrap Creates Blog, you are in the right place. If not, keep in mind that you can access the whole list of participants from there at any time.
My Dad just had his 62nd birthday and took my boys to Omaha for the College World Series. Of course that was “scrapworthy”! My sister took most of the birthday pictures with her iphone using Instagram . My sisters and some of my closest friends introduced me to the Instagram and Hipstamatic apps for the iphone. The apps have a bunch of cool filters and effects for creating a cross-processed, textured look to your photos, with an added online sharing component. The photos print in cute little 4*4 squares, perfect for small photo albums. I love playing with the filters! I’m a digi ALSB scrapper, so I got out my Idea Decks for this project and I found three layouts that had square sized photo mattes for the Instagram photos. (The ALSB Digital Layouts tutorial by CS Jac opened my eyes to digi scrapping!)

I made templates out of the Idea Deck layouts so that I can use the layers as clipping masks for quick and easy layouts later.

Looking Glass Formula template screen shot

Birthday dinner and the airport send off!

A little somethin’ extra if you use PSE …. I really like the vintage look that some of the photography app filters give my photos and wanted to reproduce the look for some of my photos not on Instagram or Hipstamatic. I subscribe to Photoshop Elements Magazine and I highly recommend “The Instagram Effect” tutorial parts 1&2 to recreate two popular Instagram filters for your photos, Toaster and Earlybird. The possibilities are endless! I saved my filters as PSD files and can use them over and over.
(Click photo to enlarge)

Before and After applied Instagram Effects

Next stop is Deb’s blog at http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/. Have a fabulous day!

Here Comes Trouble!

My nephew was born June 3, 2013! Third times the charm. My Aunt Linda, Kellan Allen’s great aunt posted this on our family group page on Facebook:
“Welcome to the Family , Kellan Allen ! You are the first male namesake of Memaw and Papaw's great-grands! You were born almost 90 years after your great-papaw was born on June 23, 1923. Papaw would have been so proud! Your daddy was the first male namesake of the grands, so it is befitting that you are the first for the great-grands. Lots of hugs and kisses for your lovely Mommy, cutie big sisters, and your proud daddy. Auntie Linda and Uncle Jan .”
Well of course I had to make something special…

My first quilt. With the help of Jenny at the Missouri Star Quilt Company’s rag quilt tutorial, I did it!

Blue and brown minky checkerboard on one side and three patterns from the Oh Deer line by Moda Fabrics on the other. I made the card to match using cardstock from Club Scrap and the Oh Boy! Cricut cartridge.

My hands got a work out after clipping all those edges, but I love how it turned out. I even made some simple receiving blankets and topstitched with some of the decorative stitches on my machine. I am a sewing machine!

♪♫Will the Circle be Unbroken?♫♪♪

Keep hopping! I wasn ‘t able to post in time. Lots more to see, jump over and see what Deb Weller http://debduzscrappin.blogspot.com/2013/05/club-scrap-blog-hop-may-cape-cod-kit.html posted!

If you want to start at the beginning click this link!http://clubscrapcreates.blogspot.com/2013/05/cape-cod-blog-hop-time.html Pat Huntoon

i am a sewing machine

Now that my children are older (and I have time), I have so many things that I want to learn how to do! My Grandmother is a wonderfully talented seamstress and I strive to be like her one day. She taught me some simple hand stitches when I was a little girl. I can still hem a pair of pants with a straight stitch and sew on a button. I bought my first sewing machine in November 2012. Slowly, I’m teaching myself to sew. Thank God for Youtube! My first project was a set of placemats and napkins for Thanksgiving. I was sweating and crying the night before, but I finished them! And they looked “purty durn” good!

I got the fever and bought myself a sewing table for Christmas. Since I had everything out and ready, I needed a sewing machine cover. That plastic thing that came with it went straight into the trash! Of course I had to reference Pinterest for ideas….

I found this pattern by Bari J Ackerman. I love her fabric designs! I found some fabric at my local Hobby Lobby that I loved, but wouldn’t freak out if I screwed it up. And made this…..