Screenshots for GIMP create pencil lined (Highpass) tutorial post

Here are screenshots for my previous post...

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Butt-kins Web Pages

Credits: Little Dreamer Designs "VintageDreams Retro" paper

GIMP Digiscrapping Tutorial - "Create pencil lined like drawing in Gimp"

The following is a pretty cool technique to use on your photos and Scrapness over at ScrapbooksGoneDigital asked me how I did this, so here are the instructions.

Start with just a single photo and perform the following instructions:
* duplicate photo layer - apply the following to the copy of photo
* Colors > Invert
* Image > Mode > Grayscale
* set the blending to colour dodge (don't worry if your layer goes all white, the next instruction will reveal all )
* Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur - about 50 radius setting
* Image > mode > RGB and merge layer with 1st original photo layer
* now add just merged photo to your layout page and set blending to overlay (I used multiple) Happy scrapping

Credits: Meadow kit by Rainbow, heart messystamper by Misty Mareda, chicken wire, tied bow "Believe in" kit by Fryske, dymo font

This is {Me} too

Feeling a bit shattered today, but can't put my finger on the cause. Will try and have an early night tonight and see if that makes a difference. BB and I are having an early dinner out with his family tonight, my suggestion as we didn't get a chance to see them on Sunday, so a night off cooking mid-week is a bit of a treat.

Have just completed this lo for a challenge over at ScrapbooksGoneDigital I am currently participating in called "Introduce yourself Challenge" and was looking for an appropriate photo of moi, when I came across this action shot. I am rather pleased the way it turned out and have included some minimal facts about myself.

Credits: Optimism Template, dotted paper & alpha "Love in Paris" by Kristin Aagard at http://www.digidelights.blogspot.com
UrbanJungle paper & elements by Coralee Evans aka MzCora

Win some, lose some

Junior club champs just finished yesterday at our club and Colin participated quite well. First game was on Friday night which he lost and meant he moved into the plate for his draw. This was followed up with a win on Saturday morning and meant he made it to the Plate final at 2pm that afternoon. Turned out he had to play his class mate Aaron from school, unfortunately Colin got beaten but he did so with a smile on his face and wasn't worried about the result. He certainly has improved over these last 3 weeks as him and I have had at least a couple practices a week after school, he now has fewer faulty serves and the aim now is to work on his backhand next and stop him from over running his shots. Something we will work on over spring and summer to give him a head start next year as the junior season has now come to an end. CJ didn't get a price but got a Subway voucher for his smile and attitude on court! All 3 Jamiegees did very well, finishing all 1st in their draw, well done guys! Will post some squash photos later when I get some more time.

Here is another LO I completed this morning and was working on at the club yesterday.
credits: SgD Template 7, SgD Club PS 3 at http://www.scrapbooksgonedigital.com, Stierney Preppyboy addon paper,
Little Dreamer Design VintageDreams Retro

Good excuse for a Mulled Wine weekend

Well, we didn't get as much skiing done as we had hoped this last weekend. All started with having to wake up at 3.30am on Friday morning as we wanted to be on the road by 4.30 as we had a 5hr drive to Taupo first to drop off one of Brian's work vans, now surplus to requirements. As you can imagine, not the easiest of drives with only about 4hrs of sleep and me driving our fully loaded family car following Brian in the van in darkness for about 3 hours until sunrise! We made it to Taupo, dropped the van off and turned around for a drive back to Ohakune to our cosy accommodation for the weekend and made it in time for some afternoon skiing at Turoa ski field. Visability was prety much non existent, but we were just happy to have gotten in some skiing at least. Couldn't take any pics as we skiied in the rain, never mind. Saturday morning wasn't any better, still no visability and we were so keen to try our upper mountain ski passes. We did our 1st run in white out conditions while looking for a particular trail down I wasn't able to find. After making it to the bottom we decided that the conditions were just too crap, so decided on a refund on our all day pass and head back to Ohakune to join the rest of the Win family for lunch in town. As you guessed it, Murphy's Law, the mountain decided to clear and we missed out on the best skiing we could have had, apparently it was warm and clear blue skies - oh well lunch was very nice and we still had mulled wine left over from the previous evening, yum yum. Sunday was total blizard conditions, no chairlifts were going, so Morgan & Colin hired out a toboggan each. The fun didn't last very long in those conditions & to top it all Morgan got hurt sliding over the bank and hurting his lower leg on a water hydrant and needed some medical attention when his leg swelled up with a nasty looking bruise, which turned out to be a broken leg - poor Morgan! So that left just a half days skiing on Monday afternoon after we all packed up in the morning. We did our best skiing on our last day with visability of about 1km. With plenty of runs down we all improved some what & Colin now out skiis us both, the little speed demon - haha.
Well, we must have done ok as I can feel plenty of sore muscles today...

Just a quick post

The weather is settling down into fantastic skiing weather, with Friday so far shaping up quite nicely for a half day skiing. We can't wait.
Just posting a quick lo I finished over the weekend of a get together with friends bowling now a few months back. Hopefully this will load quickly, so I am not late for training again - hehe. Well Murphy's Law, blogger got stuck on me so am uploading it now 3 hours later and was late for training again!
Just did a big shop, isn't it funny how you always manage to spend more then you set out especially when you shop for goodies to take away for our ski weekend. We won't be starving, that's for sure...

credits: Digitreats RUN paper, Twoboyz00 paper (recoloured), Flerg's A Mother's Love Stitched flowers,
Vicky's AWP BabyBoy alpha, Stitched arrow Monique Gascon

Boyz & their toyz

What a busy Saturday we just had. Brian inherited an old farm/dirt bike from his brother, so once we got it back home, it didn't take long before all 3 boys got riding it. Corey is so into wanting to be into all the people action, so being on a dirt bike wasn't a worry to him. BB took him for lots of rides then Colin was next. He has been wanting a bike for a while, only natural when both his older brother and Dad ride too. CJ can't touch the ground yet, but in 1st gear he looks very much in control, doesn't he? Well, the smiles just said it all.
Then BB & I were of in the evening to our friend Geordie's 50th, great party catching up with good friends and didn't see our bed for the evening until 4am.
Sunday was spend recovering ;) but we did manage to pick up some new ski pants for the boys, BB's seemed to have shrunk - not! Also got measured up for some skis & boot hire, hopefully we get some good skiing in - there is over a 3m base at present but weather has not settled down as yet. Lets keep fingers crossed.

In training

Last time Colin went to junior squash night he wondered if he could put his name down for our junior club champs at the end of the month. I said of course he could as it was open to all junior members and he remembered how much fun he had last year, plus the goodies he got for just participating. So I suggested that perhaps he would like some extra practice during the week after school. CJ now catches the train to the club where I meet him from my work and we practice twice a week. It is paying off as his serves and game has already improved somewhat in the short space of time.

Finished scrapping my birthday blooms from last month, gorgeous aren't they!

credits: Hoosfunky papers by Amy Sumrall, Datebits date by Misty Cato, Quote by Anna Aspen, frame by Kristin Skjæringrud, overlay created from UrbanJungle flower by Coralee Evans.

OMG, Bethany created my Dog Tired WA request

Well, did I get a pleasant surprise this morning when I just happend to checkout http://elegantwordart2.blogspot.com/, low & behold there it was her latest post titled "Dog Tired". I started reading and came to the 2nd paragraph and I let out a squeel of excitement as I read "This WordArt request is from Maureen." I had left a little comment on her blog that I was looking for a Dog Tired WA and ended up altering one of her old ones, see my previous post.

So here is the revised version with a special thanks to Bethany for her wonderful word art. Such a talent!

Be on the look out for my next GIMP tutorial, I'll be covering creating manual/perspective shadow as applied to WA and I have used a little bit of gradient on the corners to make it look it has a slight curl.

Credits: dog WordArt - Elegant WA by Bethany, papers Pawprints - LorieM Design, paper cluster - DaniellaYoung Designs, frame - Tout_simplement by ImagineByFran

Well done Colin

After school Colin produced a school certificate and proudly announced that the award was given out to about 25% of top academic students in his year. Well done Colin we are very proud of you, keep up the good work. He sees it as an incentive to achieve an even higher honor by the end of the year. School has centainly been good for him and is taking up each and every challenge.

Well another dog layout I'm afraid. Isn't it cute, we took Corey to our good friends Kim & Geordie a few weeks back, who have Tess and she is about 5 months older than our boy. Well, we can't even mention Tess's name infront of Corey as he just gets too excited and starts to cry and howl. Very cute I know.

LO credits: papers Pawprints - LorieM Design, paper cluster - DaniellaYoung Designs, frame - Tout_simplement by ImagineByFran, altered dog WordArt - Elegant WA by Bethany

Our boy, GIMPed

Finished this layout of Corey over the weekend, quite liked how this layout turned out. I must be in a dog layout frame of mind as I already have another one on the go.

The weekend was reasonably quiet too, though we saw it in with sharing my new batch of mulled wine with the JamieGees on Friday night. I have a new favourite recipe which is a favourite with everyone, so will be making sure I'll bring up the crockpot on our ski trip. Must have mulled wine for apres-ski of course!!!

The latest is that the Wins are joining us on the ski trip so it will be a full house, hopefully we won't be experiencing blizard conditions like poor Matt & Joanna who had to spend the night up on the mountain as they closed the road earlier on Saturday and having returned their rental gear where stranded with only the clothes on their back! As you can imagine they'd spend it very cold.

LO Credits: LoriM Designs PawPrints Addon, twoboyz00 papers, ScrapGirls frame

What a GIMP Geek!

I've been playing around trying my hand at writing a GIMP script, well not quite a brand new one from scratch. I decided I wanted a script that does both a blur border and copyright text in one script. So found a separate script for each so created/merged the two into one. That was still a bit of a mission as I'd never looked at a script before, let alone actually make it work. But I did it, 2 days later. And it still works with allowing user input for border colour and copyright text/colour/placement etc. I thought it was pretty cool that it worked in the end.

Oh, and what do you think of those gorgeous blooms, a surprise gift of hubby on my birthday of course!

Happy Birthday to ME!

I'm officially one year of the big 40 - ahhhh! Have the day off work as I think everyone should and have a totally me day, so that I have time to blog, scrap and shop. The day so far has started of well, with the opening of numerous birthday cards from family including one from Brian, who included a Bid Wednesday Lotto ticket and some Kiwi scratchies, so keep your fingers crossed for me! Then had breakfast out and am at home for the moment to post these lovely photos of my orchid that was a gift from my Mum - isn't it stunning??? Tristram came by first thing this morning with a birday card that included a voucher, so will be of later to have a go at spending it ;) Thanks Char, Barry & Tristram - you guys spoil me...

Our next skiing holiday is now booked

Yeah, we are going skiing again. Accommodation all booked out for long weekend next month. This year we have got a place in Ohakune it self, so we will be visiting Turoa Ski Field. The plan is that Brian's sister and family will join us too, but we have had to change their preferred date from early September to late August. Hopefully this will still work out for them, if not we will have spare accommodation as the place sleeps 9. Just as well we are getting this for a good rate. As you can imagine we are all so looking forward to this.



LO Credits: MBblogfreebie kit by Mandy Mystiques Design, Fonts: 2Peas Blocks - Winter and Rockwell Condensed and my own GIMP tutorial to create the curved text.

A Beautiful meal to finish the week with a glass of Black Chook

We went to our good friends Lynn & Barry for dinner last night. Having had a very busy week at work again, not having to cook was soooooo good! Lynn must have been busy all day preparing and had made us all individual Beef Wellingtons. My Brian being a typical bloke, ate his first all by its self as he just loves a good steak and pastry is his next weakness! Then potatoe bake and he nearly got away with not eating any vegies! We brought over our last bottle of Black Chook and saved it too have with our meal, just simply DEVINE. Make mental note, must order some more....

some layouts again



credits lo1: All Work in Progress alphas by Vicky at http://vicki20.blogspot.com/,
Love in Paris kit by by Mhulshoff for SYTYCD at http://scraporchard.com/
credits lo2: papers by digitreats, scrapalinquent, imaginebyfran, twoboyz00, NSD template by Kami at ScrapOrchard, bracket from Duval Street kit by scrapalinquent

Sunday morning bagels

Yum yum, remember these Connor? It was so cold here over the weekend that even with the oven on the temperature in the house still felt like a fridge for most of the morning. Never mind, the wait for these gorgeous bagels was worth it.

I have managed to get some time of next week, being the 2nd week of the school hols here, so no work for me this Monday and Friday, YEAH, two long weekends in a row!

GIMP Digiscrapping Tutorial - "Creating curved Elements"

I don't claim to be an expert on writing a tutorial of any sort, but hopefully you will find this useful. Let me know how you found it as I'm curious, especially how you applied it to your LOs.

I am not a designer, so have created this tut with other people's handy work. Thanks to Gratefull4U kit, yellow Duval Street paper by Elizabeth Quintana and photo frame by by Viviane at http://viviane07.blogspot.com/

Step 1

Open the background paper of your choice in it’s own layer. Create a new transparent layer, use the create new layer button on the Layer dialogue for short cut.

Step 2

From the GIMP main menu, select white as the foreground colour. Select the Rectangle Tool next and click/drag your mouse to draw a narrow rectangle. Fill it with white Foreground colour.

Step 3

From the Filter menu, select Distorts then Curve Bend

Step 4

Click points along the straight line and drag points to represent the desired curve. Select the copy button, this will ensure that the curve is copied to the lower edge of the rectangle, then select OK.

Step 5

Change to the Fuzzy Select Tool and select the white of the curved layer. From the GIMP menu select the 2^nd red circled mode, and with your mouse select the space under the white curve and fill with white Foreground colour.

Step 6

Duplicate the solid white curve layer in the Layer dialogue. Add new paper to the layer stack above the duplicate curve layer. Cut new paper from the shape of the duplicate curve layer and Merge Down layer.

Step 7

To create the thin white border between the curve and background paper, select the white solid curve layer. From Layer Menu select Autocrop layer. From GIMP menu select the Alignment Tool, set Offset to -20, and select bottom right Distribute button.

This tutorial can be applied to curving text and other elements such as straight stitching too.

You want a GIMP Digiscrap tutorial?

I read a PS article on how to bend/curve and element and wondered if I could do the same in GIMP. The answer is "Yes we can!" So then tried to do a step-by-step tutorial so that my little Gimp friend Sam out there can follow. I am nearly there, just thought to post this to see if I would get any interest out there. Leave a comment if you think a tutorial describing this is useful to you or you want a specific GIMP question answered.

The little digger that could!

I nearly forgot I had done this LO last month. Brian was very keen to get working on shaping the free fill that got delivered over a week's time. I can't remember how many loads we got, but 10 small trucks for sure! So Brian decided to do the job himself by hiring a digger from our local Hire Pool. On the first day of driving the digger, Brian found it took the whole morning to get the hang of it again. So of he went driving and digging and I carried on with other jobs as Brian looked comfortable handling the digger. Unfortunately the digger had the last word, trying to even out the fill, the digger launched forward as Brian was driving over the uneven surface, and he fell forward out of his seat. Then the digger right itself, but Brian was still falling forward. His head got cut in the process, colliding with the digger arm. As you can guess, nasty gash and lots of blood. Just as well I was handy near the house, we stopped the bleeding with rags and medical kit supplies as Brian didn't want to end up at A & E for the afternoon while having forked out for digger hire. Men!
After a clean up and patch up by me, he went back on the digger to get on with the job he started. Only damage done his split forehead, and I a stress headache watching him for the rest of the afternoon...

Bye bye PowerShot A85, hello Canon D40 DSLR

OMG I have a new toy, it's my early birthday present and I totally love it! Brian and I went shopping 2 weeks ago to look and see what was around and came home with this awesome baby. As you can guess I have been playing lots and my early manual SLR days are coming back, but I still need a lot of practice. Just as well I have a 1 and 4 Gig memory card!
My work has been totally stressful so not as much scrapping done as I would have liked, but having the new camera sure makes me want to scrap again.
Life has been hectic, Brian has been busy cementing retaining wall posts and installing the kitchen splashback. Unfortunately after only 4 hours on the wall, one small piece decided to crack by itself while Brian was admiring his handy work, bugger! We ensured that the same piece this time was toughened, so the 2 cut outs weren't going to give us the same trouble.
Now for some new camera photo shots...

Have I got my cousin hooked on GIMP yet?

I wonder if I have Conny hooked yet. Got an email from her during the week wanting some help, so I pointed her to this site http://www.scrapbooksgonedigital.com/TUTORIALS/. This hopefully will have everything to get her started. Remember Conny, start with the basics and make small baby steps. I remember using this site in the past when I first started out with my GIMP, and it sure helps having those step by step instructions & videos.
It has been cold weather this weekend, so a good excuse to get more pages finished. These being from Colin's 9th birthday in 2005. I don't participate in Halloween as not a New Zealand tradition, but since Colin celebrates his birthday in October it sure was a good excuse to have a theme party and Colin's mates still remember the fun times had.

Credits LO1: Crazy Garden Alpha by babs, Template by Simply Yin, paper from Macabre kit by Jan Crowley at www.oscraps.com

Credits LO2: Scrap Orchard So You Think You Can Design week 3 template by Janel Scraps, paper from Macabre kit by Jan Crowley at www.oscraps.com

Bad blogger...

Can't believe it's the 20th of the month and this is only my 2nd entry for the month. Turns out I have slowed down in both blogging and digiscrapping, just slowed down not stopped thank goodness.
I happen to look at my squash grading list and I was briefly a D1, my highest grade. Unfortunately had a few losses so am back down in D2, hopefully this will give me the kick up the bum to try harder and get back to D1. Am standing down tomorrow, so will have to wait till next week to get my chance to another win hopefully!
Laura left for Melbourne last weekend and I visited Mum on Sunday and gave her a piano lesson.. She was very excited with me bringing my old piano music around and she pick a new piece to learn for herself. Looks like her piano practice is helping keeping her fingers supple and the Arthritis at bay.

credits LO1: Brown background paper from Grateful4U kit at DST, Papers, flowers, buttons, tag from Tout Simplement kit by Fran at imaginebyfran.blogspot.com, Frame by Katie Pertiet at DesignerDigitals.com, WordStrips by Nicole Seitler at SugarplumPaperie.com

credits LO2: Template - by moriginals.blogspot.com, Journal paper & flowers by imaginebyfran.blogspot.com, Papers & WordArt from Circle Combination kit by CentaniDesigns, Jessica Sprague July title/doodle

Hallo Nederland, ik ben Colin

How nice it was talking to my Aunt and Uncle on the phone at my Mum's place yesterday. They too were catching up with her after her eye operation on Friday. All is well, just a slight blood shot eye, but other than that she is seeing better than ever. Have emailed 2 of my cousins now with my contact and blog details so hopefully you guys will visit this blog lots in future to keep up with our happenings.
About time an up to date layout of Colin is posted as I have been very busy focusing on older photos going as far back to when he was still a baby. Yes he is growing up fast, getting more and more independent, even challenging Brian and I from time to time in a cheeky sort of a way. All good though. School is going great for him, he started a private boys school at the start of the year and is thriving. As with all secondary schools here in Wellington, we forked out a bit of money for a new uniform, hopefully we bought it a bit roomy and he isn't going to grow out of it too soon. His first parent teacher interviews went great. Both Gordon and I attended and all teachers were full of praise of him. He is doing very well in French, helps if his Mum can test him on his French vocabulary. I think I will struggle when he picks up Japanese in the middle of the year as I can't pronounce or read Japanese, hehe ;)

Credits: papers from Grateful4U kit from DST, based on a template from pagemaps.com