Learning new things

I’ve been so busy learning new things that it was the 4th of September before I sat down to try to get started on the business of recording them.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was looking to something fairly slick this year, with a busy month ahead.  I had a digital project in mind then, with pages ready set up for a photo and a few words to be slotted in.  I began by taking the easy route, which starts with Anna Aspnes’ Artplay Palettes.  I’ve used them before and like her style, which makes it easy to create something reasonably original in no time at all.

I chose the Artsy palette first, liking the minimal use of figurative images and thinking that I could switch around the colours if I wanted.

As well as a collection of brushes, transfers, overlays and suchlike, it comes with a set of papers ready to go.

Whilst I was choosing which palette to go with, I noted they were all on sale last Friday, so I snuck in a second collection, Escape, which also came with papers and stuff.

A bonus mini palette, High Five, dropped into my basket free of charge, as I checked out.

With that little bundle of tricks in a folder ready to go, I had only to wait for a few spare hours when I could sit at my desk and play.

I started by resizing 30 pages to 5 x 5 inches and putting them into an order which mixed them up yet gave some kind of coherent look over a double page spread.

I began with 1st September, recording my changing priorities around here.  Though I had all the components there on hand, it still took me quite some time to come up with an arrangement I was happy with.  Photoshop was chugging away with so many files open on the desktop, I feared it would come crashing down at one point!

Fresh from the satisfying glow of finishing one page and keeping my fingers firmly crossed, I went straight onto page 2.  On the 2nd September, we were completing the next stage of our Global Entry applications.  One question is entitled “Travel History” and asks for a list of countries visited in the last five years. Well, what a good job that one of us keeps a record of such things

Even so, I was still shocked at the total number!

I already blogged about what I was doing on September 3rd.  When I began the page, I couldn’t get the photo to work at all on the page I’d save as #3 so quickly pulled up #4, a plain page and started from scratch.  I was beginning to feel more confident, remembering some Photoshop tricks I’d learned and was adjusting all kinds of settings to get the look I wanted.

So page four came together in a wink!

What will go on page five, then?  Right now, I have no idea.  I’ve added a few scribbles in my notebook and will weight up the possibilities tomorrow morning, when I’m ready to record it all.  Here’s hoping I can still remember the amazing things that can be done with Photoshop, or page five might have exactly the same story as page four.