Photo Shop Pic

Every year for my son's birthday I take him to get professional pictures. I still can't quite figure out why, since I take billions of pictures of him anyway.... but none the less I still do it. I usually take him to a JC Penney Portrait Studio to get them taken and when I was looking on their website recently I saw one of their fine art effects that looked like an Andy Warhol. Super! I loved it and when I asked about it, they said that it wasn't available at this time. I am not sure why, but I had my heart set on that picture and when I was talking to my friend, Emily, she said, "why don't you make your own, you have Photo Shop on your computer." I said, "Well, I don't really want to spend the time... and blablabla." Well, since I couldn't get it through JC Penney I was bound and determined to get one made... even if that meant that I had to do it myself. Now, I haven't really used an Adobe program since College... I have dabbled a bit with it but nothing significant. So I found a GREAT tutorial on Melissa Clifton's website for an Andy Warhol look and after making a few adjustments, I got exactly what I wanted. The best part is..... that I had it printed at Kinko's on glossy paper for $1.59. YOU CAN NOT BEAT THAT. I don't know how much JC Penney would have charged for their Andy Warhol pic, but I would bet that it was much more than $1.59! Here is what I came up with, this is the scanned version of the printed image. It is a little choppier than the original, but you'll get the point.
So now my mind is racing with all other kind of enhancements that I can make to my photos. :-)

recent projects

We realized recently that it was time for our toddler to move out of the baby nursery and into a "big boy" room, especially since we are going to need the nursery soon. So I stripped the wall paper border, compliments of the previous owner, and I also had to sand the walls. Yes, sand the walls. The border was a "beach theme" and she mixed sand into her paint before she painted that room. Surprisingly it came off quite easily. I painted the room blue and bought fun car and truck decals from Target. I LOVE these because they are basically just stickers... and even though they stick to the wall nicely, you can remove them very easily. So if he decides he wants a more "grown-up" look in the room in a few years, then I can just peel them off. So, since I LOVED these decals soo much, I decided to make a stuffed plush toy that looked like one of the trucks. The truck turned out HUGE!!! The dimensions are about 23" long, 14" high and 8" wide. I also decided against making it out of felt (which would have held its shape a bit better) and made it out of fleece. Basically I designed this to go on his bed and the fleece is just a better choice for something you might be sleeping on. Well, since the shape is a little distorted, my son now calls it his motor home, when in reality it was supposed to be a large box truck :-)

Decal:

Motor home:
I also made birthday party invitations. Last year I made birthday invitations for my son's 2nd birthday and I really enjoyed making them and loved how they turned out. So this year I decided to make more. I took a picture of my son and altered it in the program; HP Image Zone Plus using the solarize tool. After I had the pictures printed, I thought about screen printing the text onto the picture or possibly making my own rub-on for the text but ultimately I just printed the text right onto the photo using my desk jet printer. On the front of the card, I used various stamps, the 2 bolder stamps I actually made with block printing rubber and there is also a 3 made from a label maker. The card is a Paper Source A6 card in the color curry, which I bought from Urban Arts & Crafts.