pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

September first was a pretty big day this year – back to school with Learn Something New but also my first official day designing for American Crafts. My first project for their Studio blog is online now and you can see the full layout here. So excited to be working with American Crafts over the next year! Click here to shop from oodles and oodles of American Crafts supplies, including nearly two hundred currently on sale!

xlovesx

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When I flip through my photos, there are two types of pictures that make me happy to be a scrapbooker: photos that are beautiful and photos that tell a good story. Unfortunately these are not always the same images. We all have those photos, right? The kind that capture an amazing memory but they are blurry or washed out or yellowed or whatever else makes them imperfect.

Sometimes, that amazing moment is enough to make the photo perfectly imperfect and I leave those images alone entirely. But sometimes, it’s worth a shot to improve an image. Take these two pictures for example:

Both taken on the same night, when we went to play Q-Golf, which is a bit of a mix of miniature golf and billiards, in which you work your way through a course with both a pool cue and a golf club. It was outdoors at night and the flood lighting was uneven. Which made photos a bit more of a challenge than usual. The photo on the left has good colour and made the best of the lighting, but there’s not much to the story here and the composition isn’t particularly fabulous. The image on the right is loaded with way more meaning – it proves I was actually able to sink that darn golf ball eventually (trust me, I need proof!) and captures my ‘I am really concentrating’ posture. But the lighting is all off so the colour is completely washed. I’d much rather scrapbook the photo on the right, but since it is in focus it’s worth a try to improve it a bit. I usually go with one of three options: cropping, colour-correcting or adding a vintage wash.

Find a creative crop
Sometimes a crop can help… other times it doesn’t do much at all. Converting an image to black and white can get rid of the colour problem. Here the crop doesn’t really help tell the story and there’s not sharp enough focus for it to be a great improvement, but it’s worth a shot as sometimes it’s the magic fix.

Restore the colours
Oh technology, you can be fabulous. There are plenty of easy ways to try correcting the colours. In this case, the colours were easy to improve with just a few clicks. The image on the left is the result of just the Auto Colour command in Photoshop, but you don’t need Photoshop or any expensive software to edit an image. The version on the right was colour corrected with the auto-fix button on Picnik, a free online photo editor. I would say these are good enough to work now, though more fine edits could improve the colour even more, which might be worth the time for extra-special images.

Give it a vintage wash
Or it can be fun to go in the other direction entirely and go with something that is very obviously edited. This is a case of personal preference – love or hate obvious processing! The processed version on the right comes from Rad Lab by Totally Rad Actions, and again you could use Picnik for vintage effects.

Ready for assignment three? Find a photo in your existing library that has a story you like but the quality of the image lets you down. Try any or all of these fixes and see what happens!

Good luck and happy editing!

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I promised I wouldn’t make this technical. I promise to keep that promise. And that’s because my entire process for taking a picture is about stripping away as much of the technical as I can. Basically if you can totally figure out just a couple basics, then the rest gets really easy.

You know what else I promise? No triangles. Hear me out.

Exposure is a fancy photography word that refers to how much light is in the picture – is it too light, too dark or just right? And if you read articles or indeed whole books on exposure, they will inevitably start talking about this triangle where you have to balance three different things on every single shot to get the exposure right. And okay, if you break it down that is entirely true, but the triangle thing just does not work for me. Because it makes it seem like you have to come up with this perfect combination of three different things every single time we click the shutter. Who has time to think about all that stuff on every shot? (Okay, superhero photographers totally do. I am not a superhero photographer and I’m cool with that. Way less pressure to save the world.)

So I would rather think about just one technical thing on each shot. I think that’s an amount of technical stuff I can handle on a shot-by-shot basis. I’d rather get the other stuff sorted and out of the way so I can minimise what I have to consider for each click. I start with the easiest of the three things: ISO.

_{Trinity College, Dublin, on a sunny day – shot at 200 ISO. SOOC.}

Now don’t even go into worrying about what ISO stands for. There will be no quiz. The IS in ISO has to do with the novel idea that there should be an international standard. Back in the seventies, the various film companies thought it would be helpful if a 100 film was always pretty much the same thing and a 400 was always the same and an 800 was the same, and so on. No matter what brand of film you bought. I love that they did this. So when you had a film camera, you had to look at the conditions, choose the film speed that would be best for those conditions and then you were stuck with that ISO until you got to the end of the roll of film. In general, 100 film was great for bright sunshine, 400 was a happy medium for overcast days or shooting indoors and 800 or higher was what you needed to shoot in low light. I’m simplifying, but this is the overall outline. Three points to remember: 100, 400, 800. There were plenty of other speeds, but those three would get you through the vast majority of all your needs.

But that was film. Now we have digital equivalents and they kept the term ISO except THEY DIDN’T FOLLOW ANY STANDARD. Oh nice one, camera companies. Really. So my 100 may not be your 100 and that’s not super helpful. But the 100, 400, 800 rule is still your best bet. They didn’t follow the standard closely but they did stay in line with the general concept. So if it’s sunny, you can set your camera to 100, if you’re indoors or it’s overcast outside, try 400 and if it’s pretty dark, try 800. Now you might have other options to go much higher than 800 now – it just depends on your camera. And because digital cameras don’t follow a single standard, you may want to try out other numbers around 100, 400 and 800 to see if your camera just likes another number better. But if you can remember those three numbers, you can set the ISO once for your conditions and then stop thinking about it entirely until those conditions change.

I really like it when I can just set something, leave it and not have to think about it.

It can also completely ruin everything. Let me illustrate.

_{Not the 2006 pictures, but another concert with low light. This is at ISO 5000. Really. SOOC, but this lost a lot of detail in shrinking it for the blog.}

In 2006, I shot some concert photos in a dark club with a few stage lights. So my ISO was set as high as I dared since there wasn’t much light at all (and flash and concerts do not mix). No problem – shot the pictures, came home, went to sleep.

Except the next morning we were going on holiday. To Iceland. In summer. WHEN THE SUN NEVER SETS, essentially. Do you see where this is going yet? I was taking pictures in bright sunshine at almost all hours of the day and my ISO was set somewhere around 1200 for four entire days. (You can see a sampling of those shots here.) I think I was just so excited about being there that I forgot how to work my camera.

If you shoot in bright sunlight at a high speed (like 800+) when you really only needed 100 or 200, your photos can still look fine on the view screen of your camera. But when you download them to your computer or print them, you’ll find they aren’t as clean as you would like. There’s lots of grit (often called ‘noise’) and the colours don’t come out as smooth as they should. If you try to zoom in or print those photos at a big size, they will be a bigger mess. It looks similar to when you take a really low quality digital image (like a quick snap from a phone or a really old digital camera) and blow it up – it’s not quite boxy pixels but it’s also not quite right either.

So while I love that I can remember those three numbers, set my ISO and not worry about it until the conditions change, I must worry about it when the conditions change. On the fifth day in Iceland I reverted to my normal habits, turned the camera on and immediately went to set the ISO, which was when I first noticed that giant mistake I had made. Time to set the ISO right and move forward. The photos from the second half of the Iceland trip are so much nicer than the first half. Smooth even. There are a few shots in there that I totally love to this day, and they were taken with my very first digital camera (the Canon 300) and today there are mobile phones with more detail to the images. Oh digital technology: you are so fickle and changing unlike the long life of a film camera!

If you learn from my non-ISO-changing stupidity, you can avoid your own batch of priceless-but-gritty photos and remember the key element here: set the ISO once for your conditions and then stop thinking about it entirely until those conditions change.

_{Indoors with a mix of light sources, shot at 640. SOOC – though this is the kind of image that would benefit greatly from some additional processing.}

Lesson two’s assignment has two options. Option A is for anyone who just read this and thought I don’t even know where the ISO is on my camera. It is totally time to learn. All cameras have different buttons and wheels so there are two places that can help you super quick: your camera manual (look up ISO in the index) or Google (type in ‘how to set the ISO on’ followed by the name of your specific camera). Seriously, seriously, seriously find how to change the ISO. It will set you free.

Option B is what you do once you know how to change the ISO. Take two clicks of the same scene – one with the correct ISO and one with it set way wrong, like a high ISO for a sunny day or a low ISO for darkness. You’ll probably need to do this in a mode other than fully automatic, since many completely automatic modes will set the ISO for you, but for the moment it really doesn’t matter which mode you pick. On an SLR, go for P (program mode) or A/Av (aperture-priority – Nikon and Canon use different notation). On a point and shoot the modes are a bit less standard from camera to camera, but for the sake of this exercise you can pick any mode that lets you set the ISO. Remember that 100-400-800 guideline and take two pictures that are identical except for the ISO. One shot with the right ISO and one with something to another extreme.

Transfer those pictures to your computer and have a look at them full screen. What happens on your camera if the ISO is too high? Too low? Sure, I could just tell you, but it works so much better to see it with your own eyes. Knowing how your camera behaves in different ISO settings will help you and your camera become buddies. I swear your camera will instantly have more respect for you.

And once you can control the ISO, the rest of this stuff is going to get way easier. Like what we’ll cover tomorrow in lesson three. So go take pictures of stuff!

_{A note about automatic ISO: I use it for one thing and one thing only. Video. I shoot my YouTube videos with the same camera I use for everything else, and almost entirely with natural light. But there is a problem that the darn clouds sometimes cover up the sun WHILE I AM RECORDING. So inconsiderate. It meant some of the video would be lighter and other parts darker. Setting the ISO to automatic means right in the middle of the video, the camera will compensate for the change in the light. That is awesome, and proves that my camera is willing to join me in the battle against the clouds. Or something. But the rest of the time, Camera and I are all about setting the ISO on a real number, not the auto setting. Added bonus of setting the ISO: longer battery life than on automatic.}

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A little red, a little black? Has to be a whole bunch of Jenni Bowlin! This week’s sketch of the week comes from this page I made for the JBS blog. Lots of layers in limited colour scheme, and for this page a mix of old collections and newly released products. (I love that about JBS papers – new releases always mix well with older stuff!)

I worked on this sketch with just a single 4×6 photo, but it could easily be adapted to two or three 4×6 photos or a collection of smaller prints. Two portrait shots would sit in the same place as the single photo, or for three landscape images you could stack them in a row and move the title to the left. One photo or several – feel free to change it up to make it work for you! And of course the butterflies can be absolutely any embellishment you like.

As always, the weekly sketch is no-stress and just for fun! If you use it, I’d love to see, so please leave a link if you post your page online.

I love how many different styles and looks came from last week’s sketch! These are nine of my favourites. Click the corresponding link to see any of these layouts in more detail and get to know the scrappers behind the pages.
Top Row, L to R: one, two, three.
Middle Row, L to R: four, five, six.
Bottom row, L to R: seven, eight and nine.

Now… are you up for some sketchy scrapping this week? What colours will you pick for your page? Give it a go and share it with us!

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I’ve decided there is really only one important thing when it comes to photography, and that is to lose all fear. Go boldly in the direction of capturing something new to you. Be brave enough to take pictures that fail miserably and can’t be saved. Don’t be afraid to take a picture in a public space or to take a self-portrait or to ask a friend (or even a stranger) to be your model.

I first started to learn about photography for real in a high school journalism class. Before that, I only had instamatic type cameras – point and shoots with 35mm, 110 or even disc film. In fact, I should have learned something from the disc camera, but I’ll come back to that in a bit. In journalism class they threw photography vocabulary words at us, set us loose with Canon SLRs and sent us into the darkroom to develop and print our own images. The darkroom is magical. You know how memorable smells stay with you? I can dream of the smell of darkroom chemicals. I shot everything with a fixed 50mm lens, printed everything in black and white, and ‘everything’ was a mix of indoor school moments and outdoor school football games. A few of us were able to get a tiny bit of work with the local newspaper selling on our assorted football pictures, because Friday night football was a big deal and I think they paid between $5 and $15 per picture. A few of us absolutely fell in love with cameras and I’m pretty sure I could guess from the roll call of that group of teenagers who still shoots on some form of SLR today.

Then there was the rest of the class. As soon as there was vocabulary and technique and procedure, the group split. We hadn’t even gotten to the fun we could have with composition or depth of field or anything remotely creative: they had hit the wall with the technical know-how and suddenly felt photography just wasn’t their thing. Of course I didn’t realise it then, but years (and so many discussions with scrapbookers) later, it all makes perfect sense. The truth is photography is a balance of technical and creative stuff, and no matter what your gut instinct, there is no reason to be afraid of any of it.

LESSON ONE: Let go of all fear.

You may want a notebook for Camera School, by the way. Somewhere you can track things to do, remember things you want to try and note things that inspire you greatly. And to track your progress through a series of assignments. I’m only calling them assignments to match this whole idea of Camera School and I’ve already told you this is school in the loosest sense of the word, so don’t worry. You can pick and choose what you want to take on. You can take all the time you need. You can work out of order. You can do absolutely whatever you would like really – I’m just going to call them assignments because that makes it clear and easy.

So your first assignment is to take a photo that gets over your particular fear. Which means it may help to identify your photography fears in the first place. Do any of these apply to you?

_{Facing my technical fear: shooting cupcakes in an entirely different style for me with some specific technical needs – for this cupcake workshop at The Make Lounge.}

Technical fear: When someone starts talking about exposure and aperture and compensation and f-stops and grey cards, you’re convinced it’s another language. If your camera manual intimidates you, this may be you.

_{Facing my creative fear: trying to find an interesting angle to shoot for a pillow fight flash mob in Trafalgar Square.}

Creative fear: Do you like the safe shot? So most of your images look the same, maybe with the subject right in the centre? Do you always stand straight up to take a picture? Do you see other pictures that look lush but you automatically think you couldn’t take a photo like that? Then creative fear may have captured you, I’m afraid.

_{Facing my confidence fear: photos, fancy dress and a public playground filled with staring onlookers? Fear definitely faced.}

Confidence fear: If you pick up your camera and automatically become shy and overly polite, this is you. You don’t want to get in someone’s way – to the point you will lose the shot. You would be terrified to take a picture in a shop or a library or in front of many people. The idea of asking someone if it’s okay to take a photograph in front of their house absolutely and completely fills you with dread. You want to take pictures of other people so you can learn, but you’re totally lost with how to make that happen.

_{Facing my accuracy fear: a lucky shot grabbed while riding on a golf cart and not looking through the viewfinder.}

Accuracy fear: A little like creative fear but more along the lines of specifically knowing that a shot might not work and therefore you would rather not click the shutter button. Trying a something that might not work with the settings you know pretty much freaks you out. The fact that I take a fair amount of shots without looking through my viewfinder in any way makes you think I am a crazy woman. You want everything lined up, perfectly framed and perfectly exposed at all times… because a blurry or ill-coloured photo makes you feel like you totally screwed up.

_{Facing my self-portrait fear: trying to capture something very real that I wouldn’t normally photograph, complete with eyes that say I need more sleep and vitamins.}

In-the-picture fear: Right now, you’re already dreading me asking you to take a self-portrait. You are absolutely fine with photographs as long as you are not in them. Turning the lens toward yourself makes you want to run and hide like you just saw something dart across the floor that was part rat, part tarantula.

_{Facing a whole bunch of fears at once, but mostly the idea that once I climb a zillion stairs to get the great view, will I make it back down with taking a tumble with my camera?}

Can’t-put-my-finger-on-it fear: To be honest, you’re not quite sure why you don’t push yourself to take better pictures. You want to, but you haven’t found the right thing to motivate you to step up your game. You might not feel afraid of anything at all, but in a way, you’re a little bit afraid of just being awesome. Or in general, you’re not too sure what it is that holds you back.

Got it? If you have found something there that applies to you, it’s time to set it aside. Officially. At least until the end of these blog posts. I’ll make you these promises:
You don’t have to share a photo with anyone in the world if you don’t want to.
Your camera will not explode or laugh at you if you try something and the pictures just don’t come out that great.
You won’t have to memorise a list of vocabulary words or read your camera manual from cover to cover. (I have to admit it can be handy for a few things though, okay?)
You don’t have to have any special fancy camera.

But I also hope:
You will give new things a try.
You will let yourself be happy with your work.
You will accept compliments from others.

Because all three of those things make for a lot of good in life, I do believe.

So here’s assignment one: take one photo that proves you can set aside your personal photography fear.

There’s no deadline. You don’t have to share (but if you would like to, please do). You can interpret that assignment in any way you like.

Just let it go and click the shutter, and I’ll be back here tomorrow with something new.

_{By the way, all of these pictures are straight out of camera (SOOC) without any editing other than resizing and compressing for the web. They are not perfect by any means – but each one represents some bit of progress in my own little journey. Throughout Camera School, I’ll tell you what edits I’ve added to the photos, I promise.}

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Click here for supplies and details.~

Yesterday was beautiful, warm and blue. Today is chilly, grey and rainy. Such is the onset of autumn and I think it is well and truly moving in for the season. So before summer has disappeared from my mind completely, I wanted to share these summer-themed pages I made for the garden over the past month. I say summer-themed but I wouldn’t blame you if you thought the theme was use turquoise paint, as they all have that in common! Truthfully I mixed up way too much paint when I made this page and I hated to waste it all so I scrapped about five more pages in a row all with that same paint until I finally reached the end of it!

This first summery page is a funny one and I know you’re immediately going to think WHAT A TERRIBLE PHOTO! WHY DID YOU SCRAPBOOK THAT? and I promise there’s an explanation. I’ve made plenty of pages with photos from this lovely little week on an island. We appear in only one or two photos in the entire album. Because every time I picked up one of the pictures we were in, I would put it back down because our hair was a mess, I wasn’t wearing any make-up (rather ten layers of sunscreen) and The Boy was all stubble. And eventually it dawned on me: we looked a bit of a mess because we were having too much fun thinking about other stuff. I suddenly understood why all those surf types had that same fluffy unkempt hair thing going: they weren’t worried about it either. It just seemed to be the attitude of the island. So I decided that alone was worth scrapbooking and the photo made it into the album. (And now onto the internet, about which he will probably be less happy.)

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and details.}

Then there is a summer photo that is filled with worry! It’s hard to see in this tiny little (actual) Polaroid from 1980, but I am so not a water person. I’m on a raft. With shoes. And a million life-preserver objects. And I’m still as tense as can be! I am really not a natural when it comes to the water. But I love that we found these photos of summer trips to the lake from a million (or thirty) years ago. I hadn’t thought about those trips for years and now I remember bits and pieces that are definitely worth saving. (This page also uses those new flower punch-outs from My Little Shoebox that I posted about during CHA. Love them!)

_{©twopeasinabucket.com. Click here for supplies and details.}

And summer memories for me are not complete without some kind of summer camp. I went to summer camps for so many different things – including cheerleading. But camping-themed scrapbook supplies are all the wilderness angle with campfires and tents rather than college dorms and such! So I picked just a few camp word stickers and mixed it with brighter colours and summer papers to try to come up with the happy middle ground. The colour combination comes from our school colours (purple and gold) plus something summery and fun – which is how the turquoise found its way onto another layout!

Have some summer pages you want to share? By all means link us up in the comments to share the summer scrapbooking love before we’re all making pages in the muted tones of autumn!

And… camera school starts today! Those posts are set to go live in the evenings so you can choose to read them of a night and give them a try the next day or you early birds can read them first thing in the morning. So check back for that very soon!

xlovesx

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Today was the first day of the autumn term for all the schools in my neighbourhood, and the oldest of the neighbour kids is about eight, so there is a certain bliss to hearing them chat outside my window, not yet old enough to have much attitude. Today they were comparing notes about how fabulous school was and talking about all the important stuff like the colour of their exercise books, the quality of school lunch and the extreme height of the older kids. Super sweet!

I love the back to school feeling so much that I may have pulled out a new notebook for a little something I’m working on at the moment, but even if I’m not going back to school in a traditional sense, there’s a whole bunch of back-to-class stuff on my calendar right now. There’s a chance it might be up your street too, so here’s what I’m up to this autumn!

True Scrap II (aka Spawn of True Scrap)
True Scrap is like a scrapbooking convention you can attend at home – no travel costs, no hotel bills and no one will know if you go to class in your pajamas. True Scrap includes seventeen workshop videos and live chat throughout the event, plus you also get access to all the recordings after the weekend too, so you can make it fit your schedule or you can come back to workshops you would like to watch again. My session is called Go with the Flow and it’s all about looking at any album in your collection, identifying any gaps and adding in the finishing touches to make it extra fabulous in both design and storytelling. So excited about that! The other teachers include Jennifer McGuire, Nichol Magouirk, May Flaum, Aby Garvey, Kelli Crowe, Kristina Werner and ten other awesome instructors, each presenting a workshop on a unique topic. Plus five make & take project tutorials on top of that. Plus an interview with Cathy Zielske. Seriously cool. True Scrap II will take place on the 20th – 22nd of October, and you can sign up here.

One more plus for True Scrap: sign up by clicking through from shimelle.com (click here) then forward a copy of your receipt to shimelle@gmail.com and I’ll give you a class pass for your choice of any class hosted here too.

Teach Crafts like a Rock Star
Teach like a Rock Star is a course run by Sudie Alexander from UnKit. It’s aimed at those who want to take their love of crafting and share with others through fabulous classes, taught in person or online. Along with Sudie’s curriculum, there are also several guests contributing a session, and I’m one of those! I’ll be there with a video presentation with insight on teaching online. If you want to teach like a rock star, put the 22nd of September on your calendar and sign up here.
OR right now, sign up with this early bird special for half the price!

And the same bonus applies: sign up by clicking through from here (even the early bird offer) then forward a copy of your receipt to shimelle@gmail.com and you can have a class pass for your choice of any shimelle.com class.

But one last thing – and this one is right here and it’s completely free and I hope you’ll join me. It’s called Camera School. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be a full-time photographer or anything. I am not some amazing photography expert. But I love taking pictures. I love the process of learning something new on my camera or getting an idea for a shot and then making it real. I love shooting without thinking and seeing what I can get just as much as I love paying absolute attention to the most minute of details. Photography for me is so very fun and because of that I could talk about it all day. So I’ve put together a bunch of posts to run throughout the month to share my photo love. Little things I’ve discovered, what works for me and what doesn’t, things from other photographers that inspire me to create something more beautiful. I’m calling it Camera School because it’s back to school time, not because you’re going to walk away from the posts with a degree in photography, of course. But if you want to give some of the ideas a try, I’d be thrilled. Even if you just bookmark them for a rainy day. It’s free, so bring a friend, grab a camera and you’re all set. The first Camera School post goes live Tuesday! (Don’t worry, there is scrapbooking stuff too – this is in addition rather than a replacement!)

And to answer a question that has appeared in my inbox a few times this week – no, it’s not to late to sign up for Learn Something New Every Day! It’s never too late – you can join at any time!

Oh back to school time: I still love you so.

xlovesx

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Congratulations to Mollie, who wins the beautiful Collage and Badge from Julie Kirk.

Mollie, please email me (shimelle at gmail dot com) with your address.

There’s a new giveaway every Friday night, so check back next week for another chance to win just by leaving a comment.

Have a great week!

xlovesx

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