Inkling: Outside The Box With Project Life

Have you heard of Project Life? It’s an amazing scrapbooking product that has great design elements but goes back to basics in how you create and assemble your scrapbook.

Etceteras: artwork from your favorite print

Artwork from your favorite print has been made possible by Shutterfly and Looksi Square.

Over the years I’ve taken lots of pictures. For this blog, family, our home, kid activities, vacations and more. Somewhere along the way, I stopped creating photo albums and just saved the photos to files on my computer or on a disc or flash drive.

Etceteras: pausing for spring

It's Memorial Day here in the United States. A day that we remember the men and women who died while serving our country.
 Since it's a holiday here, I thought I'd share some pictures and pause to reflect on the day and enjoy the season.

I was noticing {and thoroughly enjoying} the sprinkling of summer projects that I’m starting to see around the various blogs and creative sites. Shell, nautical and beachy creativity is always so inspiring.

Even though Memorial Day is also considered the unofficial start of summer, I thought I should take time to enjoy spring. Here are some of the pictures from my yard that I snapped that say spring to me.

Bursts of color like these blue flowers are always a welcome sight after winter.

A ladybug enjoying the afternoon sun in one of my succulents.

Bright red geraniums make me happy.

Nothing says spring like butterflies in your garden.

Hip hip hooray! My first tomato!

A baby blue jay perched on the trellis and finding a little meal.

Lemon buds… hopefully a bounty of lemons will follow.

A sweet little baby bird waiting for mama bird.

I hope you're enjoying the beauty of spring. Thanks for visiting.

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And, 

if you are remembering someone today, feel free to write about them in the comment section so we can all know about your special person.

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Carolyn

I link at the wonderful parties listed here and 

 

Etceteras: photo effects {goodbye picnik}

Do you use Picnik for photo editing? Picnik is Google’s photo editing tool and many, many bloggers use it for it’s ease of use and variety of editing options. My go-to photo editing tool is Picasa {another Google program} but when I want to do something a little bit more with my photos, Picnik is a great source.

Unfortunately, it was just announced that Picnik is closing in April. Photo editing can be done on Google+ but I have to confess, I haven’t checked out Google+ yet.

In the meantime, Picnik is offering their premium tools free of charge. So if you’re not a premium subscriber, you can take advantage of the fun tools for a few more months.

Here are some examples of Picnik’s capabilities.



I snapped this photo from my backyard - it’s my neighbor’s tree. The photo above is the original photo. Although the sky was really blue that day, my camera settings may have enhanced the blue because that sky looks a little intense.



I uploaded the original photo to Picnik and played around. This effect is called 1960s. I love the calmed down tone in the photo.



Film grain is a fun effect. Before I added the film grain, I played around with the color and saturation.



Adding Duo Tone completely changes the photo. You can’t even tell that there is sky in the background. For this duo tone, the first color is blue and second color is white. The combinations using the Picnik color palette are endless.



For this photo I completely covered the photo in a rectangular shape and added a light shade of peach to the shape. I then made the peach shade more transparent and I loved the result. So soft and dreamy.

Note: the very first photo in this post was edited using the rectangular shape with a medium shade of green and then I used the softening tool on the entire photo. It reminds me of old fashioned wall paper or a table linen. 

I’ll miss the Picnik tools. How about you? Do you use Picnik? I’m going to start researching photo editing alternatives. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for visiting.

Carolyn