Here are the directions from Stuff to Scrap Speed Scrap 322:

1. Pick out 4 Papers, 2 Patterned, 2 plain and 2 Photos.

2. Layer the 4 papers as your background Patterned Plain Patterned Plain. Adjust them however you like as long as you can see some of all 4.

3. Crop your 2 photos into Squares or at least the same shape as each other. One Big & 1 Small and place them overlapping on a lower corner.

4. Layer 3 Ribbons / RicRac / Stitches / Strings under the photos along the bottom of the layout.

5. Add as many elements to the photo ribbon cluster as you would like. I only used 2 but if you want more to cluster by all means.

6. Add Journalling above the ribbons, beside the photos.

7. Add any drop shadows and last minute touches & a title if you wish. Upload to the gallery & post it in the forum. You have 1 hour from now.

And my page…

Credits:
Forever in Blue Jeans by Scraps of Ellay
Page inspired by “Do Everything” by Steven Curtis Chapman

Now for the kicker, I created this cute page, but in the process of saving it for the web, I lost the original file. Boo. At least I have a pattern to copy though.

I really like how the font turned out. The color of the font is a sample of the fall leaf color. I changed the effects on the layers to emboss and satin to give it the shiny gold look.

The bottom layer is a brown-black sampled from the tree bark in the spring photo, then I used a photo of a forest and played with the blending modes and opacity to find the effect that looked best.

Using drop shadows, I was able to make the photos look matted.

The Easy Squeezy Spoon by Munchkin

Food is placed into the bulb, then squeezed onto the spoon. You can then feed the food to your child.

Unfortunately, I’m disappointed with how this spoon actually works. In order to squeeze food out, the silicone bulb must be completely filled with food. And then when you get near the bottom, you need to get very creative with how to squeeze the food onto the spoon.

Even if rolled up like a tube of toothpaste, there is a lot of food left in the spoon that is either wasted, or needs to be spooned out the conventional way. For me, I would rather just save myself the hassle of funneling food into the silicone part and trying to get the right squeeze and just use a regular old bowl and spoon.

Ways to Improve this Spoon

1. Make the entire device out of a more slippery plastic. This kind of silicone feels slightly sticky and picks up lint and other gunk after a while. Use the silicone as a gripper spaced out along the bulb.
2. Make the entire device out of a squeeze plastic except the spoon so that less food is wasted.
3. Make the bulb more like a pastry bag so that it is easy to squeeze and control flow of the food.
4. Put an opening at the base instead of in the middle between the bulb and spoon.

All in all, a good idea. It just needs better design.

This summer Groupon had a Canvas on Demand coupon. Now the coupon is expiring on October 22, and I still am not quite happy with how my art is looking.

Here is my original concept:

It really wasn’t working for me, so I got some feedback, scrapped the original idea and came up with these:

Horizontal:

Vertical:

Now, which do you like better, horizontal or vertical? Should I keep all the text in golden yellow? Should I change the capitalization in the verses? Leave some comments and help me out! (Thanks to everyone who has commented so far in this process. Hope you aren’t getting tired of it)

Today I am sharing a page that I did based on a speed scrap challenge over at Stuff to Scrap’s forum.

For those not familiar with Speed Scraps, you are given a certain number of directions to complete in a set time frame. Once you are done, you have a finished page. It’s a great way to get some guidance and still design a page on your own.

Here are the instructions (Speed Scrap 278):

1. Select 1-3 photos.

2. Pick 8 papers – You can pick 4-6 and duplicate some if you would rather but you need at least 4 different ones.

3. Set one paper as your background. Cut 5 large strips from at least 3 other papers (2 can be duplicated…at least 3 need to be different) and place across the background paper.

4. Place photos across the center of your layout or across one edge. They don’t have to be straight or aligned.

5. Mat photos with 2 papers, one on top of the other.

6. Place 2 elements wherever you wish. They can be duplicated up to 3 times each.

7. Add a title or journaling if you want. Add shadows and other finishing touches.

And here is my page:

Since I had so many pictures from that day that I liked, I used the page I made, turned it counter clockwise, and rearranged the pictures a bit. New page in less than 30 minutes! Easy!

Credits:
Forest Friends Alpha by Erica Zane
Fairy Take by Stuff to Scrap

I am experiencing the same issues with Mac OS v 10.6.8 and 10.7.1. My photos are captured with a Nikon D50 as JPEG (setting: FINE). I am running Lightroom 3.4.1.

I set catalog settings to automatically write changes into XMP, set Lightroom to back up each time I exit, and set camera RAW cache to 50 GB. All other settings I left as default. Pictures were copied into the catalog as JPEG from my camera card. I tagged and added captions or titles to numerous pictures.

Today when I opened Lightroom, some pictures had the exclamation point badge (sidecar file has conflict) and some didn’t. When I tried to resolve the mismatching sidecars by clicking “retry metadata export” or “save metadata to files” manually within Lightroom, the program would go through the motions of exporting the metadata (progress bar, etc), yet when I checked the actual file that the catalog is linked to, the metadata was not included in the information for the actual image. The exclamation badge still showed in the catalog also.

All the metadata I entered into the catalog remains there and is correct.

Photos captured on the same day, downloaded from the same camera on the same day they were taken can behave differently. Some photos will have the metadata saved properly, others will not.

In comparing the info for files where the metadata wrote and those which didn’t, I noticed that the permissions are different. I changed the permissions of the non-written files to match the written files and tried to resynchronize with no luck. I can export a photo from Lightroom and the metadata will be included in the newly created file. I can also download the files from my camera, open and resave them as JPEGs in Photoshop, import them into Lightroom, and the metadata writes to the files with no problem.

Is anyone else having this problem? I can’t find anything in the forums or searching the web.

UPDATE: Adobe has released version 3.5 for testing. The problem I was experiencing seems to have been fixed.

The recipe I found online gave me a pretty heavy loaf with hardly any flavor.

I tried some New Glarus Brewery ales, and also a mix of brown sugar and molasses. I could taste molasses more than any other flavor.

The other day I bought some stout beer to try in the recipe. I also mixed some whole wheat flour in with the white. My thinking is that in the mixing process too much gluten was forming and if I added a less processed flour, the density of the loaf would be reduced.

The recipe I ended up making turned out to be pretty good. I think it still may need some more tweaks, but I’m happy with how it is now.

>1 cup whole wheat flour
>2 cups all purpose flour
>1.5 tsp baking powder
>1.5 tsp instant yeast
>2 Tbsp brown sugar
>1 Tbsp molasses
>1 bottle (12 oz) stout beer (I used Zonkers)

• Preheat the oven to 400 F
• Mix the dry ingredients, then pour in beer. Mix until dry ingredients are wet. It is important to not mix too much or you will get a lot of gluten formation.
• Place dough into loaf pan
• Bake for 30-40 minutes (Bread will crack on top. This is normal)

You can add other spices and herbs to suit your taste. Experiment with rosemary, thyme, garlic, whatever flavor profile you are trying to achieve. My may also want to change the beer if you’d like a lighter beer flavor.

Happy Baking!

I decided to test this out on photos too. It made the photo really blend into the page and look like it was crumpled up, just as the page appears.

I came up with the idea for this page when I had 7 pictures, but I didn’t think individual pictures would look good all together. The pictures I used for the background seemed to tell a back story, give the page movement and immerse the reader in the feeling of going from a snowy place to a sunny place. I could then very easily make a cohesive design using the 4 pictures snapped inside the airport to tell the story about our excitement of going on the trip.

I used a large soft brush (150-350 pixels, 0% hardness) varying the opacity and size to blend the pictures and make one melt into the other.

Macro:

Portrait:

Sports Mode:

We also learned how to take a self-portrait. Make sure you hold the camera off to the side to get the best angle (and some other creative shots).