Following all the links to the wonderful crafty people in last week's 'My Creative Space' bloggy game, I came across Megan from Mousehouse's awesome blog. Megan is a wonderful sharer of great ideas and has some neat tutorials on there. I couldn't wait to get started and spent most of the weekend on some non-fabric related crafts. It's been about 3 months since I last picked up my photos, scrapbooking stuff and paint brush because I've been so busy with the launch of lily pad d's...so thanks heaps Megan for the inspiration!
I had my heart set on the Personalised Children's Art Idea - where you overlay a photo of your child with text that acts like a time capsule and records things about them at their current age. I had a head-start because I was recently given electronic copies of my two girls' professional photos, taken when we stood in and pretended to be models for my friend's small New Zealand merino clothes business, billi tees. But I had a few technical difficulties, because unfortunately I don't have Photoshop or Pages or a specific photo/graphics programme.
Instead what I ended up doing was importing my photos into simple old Powerpoint. I've had heaps of success making home-made Christmas cards and party invites in Powerpoint, because you can position pictures and words wherever you want and move and layer things freely. You can either print straight to your printer, or save a slide as a 'jpg' and email it around. Powerpoint can't do flash things like 'white out' areas though, so instead of 'whiting out' my girls clothes like Megan does, I just positioned the text on the plain background, printed and then cut the photos to size to fit my frame. I still think it looks cool.
After that, I wanted to try to copy the idea of photo blocks, which I've seen recently on a friend's wall. These are made of images glued onto wooden MDF blocks, and are hugely expensive to be done commercially. My take on it was to buy a double set of little square canvases (from the Warehouse, for $2 for the set). I painted the sides of the canvases black, then printed the photos from a slide in Powerpoint. I'd positioned the photos how I wanted them and to the right size. Now I'm up to the stage of varnishing the photos and canvases, to give it a 'pro' look. I'd love some advice actually. Shall I use my paintbrush, or maybe a small roller?
Happy cs space everyone!
