More bluebonnets

Another Picture of Today that features bluebonnets. :) It won't be long now 'til I can get some current pictures, so I'm still getting myself into gear. And I realize that I need to get a Picture of Today that has my son in it!

For those curious, I'm currently working on a new set of video tutorials about using the Brush tool in PS & PSE. I also have a mini kit I need to finish for next month's Q & A challenge at Digitals. After that, I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing!

Picture of Today

Taken sometime during this last week, this photo is one of the ones I've been taking while I play with my new flash. I love my daughter's expression here, although I couldn't tell you what kind of expression it is! LOL! But I like it, whatever it is. :) For those who care: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/60 second, and the lense was at 135mm on my Canon 28-135 IS lens.

More video tutorials!

If you watch 'em, there's 3 new tutorials by me up on Digitals' YouTube Scrapbook Video Tutorials website:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DigitalScrapbooking
One's about custom shadowing that goes with the vellum one that was posted a week ago, one is for learning how to use templates in PS/PSE, and the one I worked on this morning is about doing a quick "color pop" and vignette on a photo. Well, now you know. :D

I would never want to be in tech support!

I sat down on Friday and made an effort to back up my photos. When I got PSE6, my greatest hope was that they had resolved the issue I was having where it wouldn't let me make incremental backups. Every time I was backing up in PSE4 I had to do a full backup, which takes hours and hours. No fun, so it also made me not back up as often as I should be. Well, it *looks* like the incremental problem is fixed in PSE6, but I'm still fighting either the program or my dvd burner. I get about 60-70% done with burning a disk and then there's a write error. So I've been fighting this stuff since Friday (yes, I took a break over the weekend) and still have not been able to get PSE or Nero to back up my photos. (Oddly enough, I can burn a partial single disk in Nero, but I get a write error when I try to write a full disk. If you were here right now, you'd hear me tearing out my hair over all this.)

So, since I need my photos backed up pronto, I'm currently using an online backup service. Once I get my dvd situation straightened out, I'll use that, too. But at least I can get SOMETHING done today so I feel a little better.

Hope your Monday's going a bit better than mine!

The Picture of Today is from a year ago!

I'm thinking seriously of getting this printed for display somewhere in my house. I love bluebonnets and we're creeping up on that time of the year again. :) Man, I love flowers! Of course, as I'm writing this there's snow on the ground. We've had several late winter cold spells here, which is pretty unusual for our area.

So, last year was my first time getting bluebonnet shots. I trooped out before 7 in the morning to drive 20 minutes away to get some sunrise pictures of a local bluebonnet field. It was a little cold and I was sitting on the concrete or kneeling in the mud a few times, but it was worth it. Then we took the kids there the next day around sunset and got some more wonderful pictures. I also went to the Dallas Arboretum a few times during Dallas Blooms to shoot some pics. Did I mention I love flowers? :)

Whoo hoo! Flash!

I'd been saving my pennies, and took advantage of a sale at Roberts* and I bought a 430EX Speedlite for my Rebel Xt. :) I love it so far, although it'll take me a while to get to the point where I'm really good at bouncing and getting some directional flash. (This pic is a bit flat, but has nice catchlights.) So this is my Picture of Today.

*The sale ends tomorrow if you're interested. $199 for the flash.

A project I'm finally working on

For a long time now, one of the things I've been saying I'm going to do is get my Disney World pins on display in the house. My plan has been to make some sort of background, affix it to some cork, and then mount it in a frame after I stick my pins in the background. I've been collecting pins that relate to rides, places, & events at WDW since our first trip in 2000. So I have quite a few now. :)

I finally felt motivated today to get to work on a background, and this is what I have so far. I say "so far" but I'm pretty happy with this, so I'll probably get it printed & see how it turns out. The main background paper is from my Retro Mouse paper pack that is over on my freebies blog. Each photo at the bottom was taken during our trips, then I ran the Cutout filter on it until I got the look I wanted, joined them all together, and then faded/lightened and gave it an extra saturation boost. Then the white border frame was added with a stroke, plus I painted in dividers with white and a square brush. The "Walt Disney" font is Waltograph, and the World is something I keep in my word art stash, because it's a comination of a couple of fonts plus an extra bit on the "W" is removed.

I'll post an update if I get this framed & finished the way I want it to be. :)

If you haven't looked...

...this is a good time to pop over to the Digitals blog if you're wanting a nice sale. :) Today is Wonderful Wednesday, and in conjunction with my time as their Guest Blogger I'm offering even more products on sale than usual for WW. Click on the link to Digitals blog on the right of this page, then scroll down & look for my last post with my WW info.

I'm pretty excited today because we're expecting a few mail orders today & tomorrow. Today we're getting an extra guitar for Guitar Hero, and tomorrow I get my first external flash. Fun new toys! :) I have some design things to do today, but I just *might* be a little busy shredding my new guitar. LOL.

The Doll Project

I really enjoyed working on this project & I got permission to share. :) This is a print that my friend will be giving her mom for Mother's Day. (Obviously I removed the names & blurred faces for web sharing.) This doll has been passed through the family and now the original owner's granddaughter has the joy of playing with the doll. So we wanted something that showed love passed down through the years. It just so happened that my new Classic Moments kit had papers that matched that doll's dress, so I used that as a starting point. There's also a frame on the older photo that is available on my other blog, http://seebeesfreebies.blogspot.com/ .

I made the word art specifically for this, but I'm thinking a set of word art similar to this would be a good idea. You never know. :)

A different sort of day!

We had a big change today in that my husband has got a new work schedule. So things were a bit topsy-turvy today. :) I finished up a project for someone and also am putting together my Address Book kit for Digitals. (You can see the sneak peek here .)

And, what REALLY made the day different is that it snowed a bit tonight! Our first snow of winter, and it's in March. LOL! I hadn't watched the weather in a few days, so it was a surprise to me! If it's still around tomorrow, I might be able to get a pic for the ol' scrapbook.

The Photo of Today, which is likely inappropriately named

While I'm calling this The Photo of Today (which, btw, is not called Photo of the Day since I doubt I'll have a new photo to post ever day), it was actually taken yesterday. It took me over 12 hours to get this off my camera and into Photoshop because I had a Photoshop crisis last night. Somehow PS lost my registration information/serial number and it wouldn't open. Well, that was annoying enough but then I couldn't find my PS disk anywhere and I needed it to reinstall & have my serial number. Holy moley, I was panicking! One hour (at least) later, I found the disk...exactly where it should have been. (Don't you hate it when that happens? Or is it just me that sort of thing happens to?) So, I got Photoshop reinstalled, everything was hunky dory, but it was bedtime. This morning, I still wasn't able to open the file because I needed to reinstall the latest version of Camera Raw. Ahhh, the joys of computers! :) Finally, everything is back to normal and I was able to edit the picture & get it ready for you to be The Photo of Today!

If you're wondering what this is, it's a flower/bloom off the tree in our backyard. This just goes to show that it's getting closer to spring, at least here in Texas. If I was a fancy-schmancy person, I'd call this picture "Springing" or something clever. When I saved it for uploading, I just called it Treeflower.jpg . LOL! For anyone who cares about such things, this was shot with my Rebel XT with my 28-135 IS lens racked out, using a Canon Close Up filter with manual focus, and handheld. (Yes, I know, Scott Kelby, you said I MUST shoot Macro on a tripod. But my tripod wasn't available to me at the time. That's my argument & I'm sticking with it! I used the IS plus steadied my camera on the bench where I was sitting.) ISO of 200 shot in Manual mode at f/18 and the shutter speed was 1/100. It was underexposed a bit but I shoot in RAW so it was bumped up in there. It also made the usual visit to the PS playground for some cropping,defog, noise reduction, sharpening, Soft Light color pop, and vignetting.

Gee, Chris, couldn't you have just said, "Here's a pretty picture of a spring bloom" and left it at that? Guess not! :)

Now I'm a bit disoriented

I've had it with IE6. I've used it for several years now but I've been seeing more & more problems with it lately, like things not being displayed properly. I have IE7 on another computer and wasn't too impressed with it, so I decided it was time to try Mozilla's Firefox. So far, so good, except that when it imported my IE favorites, things aren't quite in the same place so I have to do some rearranging. Other than that, it thankfully doesn't look too different from IE6. And the problems I've been having are nonexistant so far. Wish me luck!

I temporarily need a name change! ;)

This week only, you can call me Three Blogs Beasley! Today is the first of March and I'm starting my week of being the Guest Designer Blogger at Digitals blog. If you like-a the freebies, I'll have a few posted there. Today I posted the information about how to download the Date Marker system that I offered in a chat last September. There's also a coupon code there for my products at Digitals, good this week only.

I went with a friend to see Semi Pro last night. I'm a big SNL & Will Ferrell fan, so I guess that means I'm the type of audience member they're expecting to get. We thought it was very funny; there were a few parts where I had difficulty breathing from laughing so hard. Gotta love all those 70s clothes & hair!