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Hydrangea Tour

Yesterday I had a blast going on the Hydrangea Tour put on by Aldridge Gardens. My brother Jeff heard about this after taking a class from the great Eddie Aldridge, a retired nurseryman whose family name is synonymous with the hydrangea around here. Jeff and I started at Eddie's house, which was on the tour. He gave us a ride around his property in his golf cart, patiently answering questions from those of us on the tour. Eddie has an amazing fund of knowledge about plants and the history of hydrangeas in particular. He and his father, Loren Aldridge, discovered their famous Snowflake hydrangea, which made a great show in the homes we visited. Jeff has some Snowflake cuttings from Eddie Aldridge's garden and is currently rooting them for his own yard.

We saw three other homes after that, all unique and beautiful in their own right. You can see more photos at Jeff's blog, now and over the next few weeks. For now, here's my take on some of the sights we enjoyed.

 

 
 

I Won a Scrapbook Contest!

The online newspaper Examiner.com has been having a weekly scrapbooking contest. One of my friends, Kathleen Summers , won it last week, so I decided to enter too. The theme was prom, and I had a few layouts from last year to choose from. I picked one, entered it, and they chose it as the winner in the digital category. A fun little perk to the week. You can check out the article about it here.

Andrea's Wedding Photobook

I finished my book for my niece Andrea's wedding and uploaded it to Shutterfly. She was such a sweetie to let me take so many pictures of her. Now I need to get working on her cousin Kevin a wedding book whose wedding was last month. All these weddings have made for a sentimental spring!

Click here to view this photo book.

A Page About My Blog

A few months ago, I got the Wacom Intuos 4 pen tablet for my computer. I wasn't sure whether I would like it, but now I don't use the mouse any more. I love the control it gives me for editing photos in Photoshop, and it allows me to do new things in scrapbooking. I have doodled some and used my own handwriting using the pen. I have found the calligraphy brushes in Photoshop are good for handwriting, and I always lay a sheet of regular paper on top of the tablet and write on top of that. This seems to give the smoothest result.

I made a 12x12 overlay using this technique. I wrote the names of my blog posts, one after another, going back about a year. Although I don't like my handwriting very much, I like the grungy, artsy feel you get when you draw things by hand.

Here's the page I made using the overlay. All supplies are courtesy of Digital Scrapbooking. I used Pattie Knox's Duotone Actions on the photo to tint it different colors.

 

This week Designer Digitals introduced a tutorial by Sara Horton on the pen tablet. I can't wait to check this out. I love my tablet; if you haven't tried it, take the plunge!

It's National Scrapbooking Day

And to celebrate, here are a few things I've been working on lately.

On Saturdays there is a scraplift challenge on the Designer Digitals blog, and this week I have a page in the post. I love scraplifting...someone else designs the page and I get to copy it. The blog post shows the original page by jdcooper, and here's what I came up with:

 
 I had so much fun lifting that I did it again; this time it was a layout by Stacy Cohen in the March/April issue of Creating Keepsakes. This is a photo of my niece Angele's children. I took it last weekend in Houston when we were gathered for a wedding. I have been working to improve drop shadows on my layouts. Every element here has a little shadow applied to make it more realistic appearing. The size and intensity of shadows vary depending on the thickness of the element. I owe both Pattie Knox and Cassie Jones for teaching me these techniques.

 

I hope YOU have a wonderful National Scrapbook Day, whether you are a scrapbooker or not!
 
 

The Club

I went downtown last night to meet up with David for a little bit. We were at his dorm, and from the top of the parking deck, I took this shot:

 

This is The Club, a magnificent dining and entertainment establishment built in 1951 atop Red Mountain. Over the years, I have been invited there on a few occasions for bridal functions and Christmas parties. It has spectacular views of the Birmingham skyline and has retained its funky retro look over the years. A Birmingham icon.
 

Jesse's Birthday

 

I have been away from this blog too long! I finished my pen tablet class and have just a few weeks left in my design class. Need to do some catching up on that one this weekend.

Sunday was Jesse's 23rd birthday and all the boys were home to celebrate. Jesse has two and a half months of school left. He wanted an iPhone for his birthday, and after some discussion, we agreed to get it for him. Unfortunately his old phone died, so we couldn't have the conversation till he came home!

 

Matt finished his first term as an online student. He made As in both his classes. It took a term to catch on to taking online classes, but he did very well. He gave Jesse a "stylophone" for his birthday. It's some kind of musical gadget that you play with a stylus.

Mark had just gotten back from a visit with our friends Dennis and Joan. Dennis offered to take our old VHS tapes of home movies and turn them into DVDs. Mark brought one back with him, and left the rest there for Dennis to work on. The one Mark brought back just happened to be of Jesse's third birthday party. We really enjoyed watching!

I took some photos of all the guys. Jesse was holding his stylophone. I made the comment that Jon's hair made him the tallest in the family! 

  

The Pen Tablet Class

This is my fourth and final week in Jessica Sprague's Pen Tablet Basics for Scrapbookers class. We have learned some really exciting techniques and as always, Jessica is a wonderful teacher. This week we made a fun page:

 

You may notice that the center photo along the bottom row is a layout. I made it for Matt's 24th birthday last August. I asked him what his goals for the next year would be, and he has already accomplished almost all of them. This week he is 24 and a half, so I decided to congratulate him on being ahead of schedule. It was so cool to use the blue and brown watercolor brushes as a background for the main photo.

Do you see the fern frond in the top right and on the circle embellishment? That is a fern from my back yard! It started out as this photo:

 

Jessica taught us how to extract an object from the background. I gave it a blue green color and an outline and it made a great embellishment. 

This is a fantastic class. I highly recommend it!

Hopefully That's Enough For Awhile

On December 29, our oldest son Matt was involved in an auto accident. He wasn't hurt, but his car was totaled. Then on January 17, our youngest, Jonathan, had the same fate. He wasn't hurt either, but his car was bashed in pretty bad. Since the whole side would have to be replaced, and the steering was messed up too, we just decided to sell it for scrap.

For some scrap therapy, I made a page about Jonathan's wreck. We found him a new car pretty quickly and he likes it. It's a stick shift, and his brother David, the car master, gave him a few lessons on driving it. Jon's doing great on it so far, and I really hope he and Matt have learned an important lesson.

This page design is by Cathy Zielske, for her Design Your Life class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. All materials by Digital Scrapbooking.

 

Time to Get Thankful

It's Thanksgiving Eve and I am really enjoying getting the festivities started. Today after a short day at work, I went to the grocery store to pick up my last-minute items. I was extremely disappointed to hear from the grocer that they were out of canned pumpkin. I could almost taste that pumpkin pie laced with cinnamon, ginger and cloves, but alas, it was not to be. He said there was a bad flood this year in a key location for pumpkins and the crop was wiped out. Libby's is not expected to restock their shelves for some time to come :(. 

So, luckily for Jonathan, I made the switch to apple pie. (That's what he had asked for.) I came home and baked the pie and made homemade cranberry sauce. I also sauteed bacon and the vegetables that I will use for my cornbread dressing. I made the cornbread several days ago, crumbled it and froze it. I made Mark get out our turkey and check to make sure it still looked OK. I bought a fresh turkey this year when I couldn't find the size I needed among the frozen ones. (The nice man at Publix gave me the fresh at the frozen price for my trouble.)

My sweet family members are bringing the rest of the stuff, so I am really in pretty good shape!

I whipped out this page about Jonathan too. It tells the story of a sweet conversation we had at the dinner table tonight. I hope that by clicking on the page you can read the sweet things he said to me! I had so much fun using Anna Aspnes' brushes for this page. That's all the swirly stuff and the distressed edges on the orange block on the left. All the supplies are from Designer Digitals.

 

A safe and happy Thanksgiving to all!