Busy Busy Bee

I haven't had time to write anything for the last week, been really busy getting Christmas marketing done and making for etsy. And this week I got my first sale! I am so pleased, an excited so I'm having to balance making for the shop and my own Christmas goodie preparations. I am going to work on some more cards for the shop too, I have lots of greetings cards made up, just not photographed, so I need to get that orginised too.

I am working on a commission for some graphic design work at the moment, the client is looking for business cards and compliments slips. They are looking for something a bit different and possibly floral, which I love! So I went back to my flower photo bank and started playing around with some of my images on Photoshop.

This image was originall a beautiful cluster of orchids I was given, and I started off by inverting the colours, then hightened the contrast and the used the paint bucket tool to add my own range of colours. I am really happy with the collection of abstract images I can up with. I think they would look really good as canvases or on cards.

Computer day

Not much creativity today, just getting more stuff into my shop, editing photos and backing up. I made a new batch of paper flowers the other night and decided they don't really work as bookmarks so I have made them into cards instead. Heres hopin I get more making done tomorrow!

Inspire Me Thursday entry Control

I loose control when I see sweets, cakes and chocolate, not to eat them, but I feel the need to photograph them! I qued for 45 minutes to photograph Thornstons chocolates a few years ago for a knitting project I was working on! I love the colours of these liquorus alsorts, bands of sweet and strong colour.

Photographs

And now for today after I made up a batch of cards for a gift I did some photoshopping. There is a beautiful florist in Barrhead, my home town who kindly let me photograph their flowers, they also did my wedding boquet and they are called Almond Blossoms. Well I nipped in a couple of weeks ago and got some amazing photos and have only got around to sorting them out this weekend, here are a few.

I already use my photographs for cards and commisioned canvas art pieces but I have noticed quite a few people selling their photographs on esty too, so I'm going to do a bit of research and see if my photos would sell.

Here we go, third time lucky I'm going to try and get these cards up, i think they were saved too big, but we'll see. Yes!!!! That's what it was, and they were saved as pdf files too! I have really enjoyed doing these, and now I just hope they sell.

I did all of the designs on Photoshop, for the purple tree card. I started with a layer which I made pink, then a layer of text 'merry christmas'. Then a new layer which smaller rectangle in white, and then put a dark purple border round it. Then a new layer in a lighter shade of purple than the text and border and used the shape tool to make the tree, decorated it with stars and text. Then I used the magnetic lasso tool and copied the tree onto a new page and saved as a separate image. Then I went back to my original design and flattened the whole thing and saved it. Next I opened Illustator and printed off the flattened image and the separate tree and cut both out and used the flattened image as a background and the single tree as a card topper.

I'm sorry if this is a bit garbled, this is my first ever computer tutorial! And I have descovered how huge digital scrapbooking is and think I have been doing it for years and making them into cards but didn't even know it!

uploading

i'm sorry I'm doing something wrong and can't get my pics to upload, I'll sort this out and try again tomorrow.

cards at last!

Here are the cards I've been working on at long last. It's so hard to chose which ones to concentrate on, and as I'm designing and making each one I get another idea. It's hard to know when to stop.

Christmas cards and more etsy!

Today has been busy and productive, these are my favorite types of day. Got my range of Christmas cards finished and got more goodies added to Etsy. I am really happy with the cards, I did them on Photoshop and I am awaiting a delivery from craft creations of glitter glue to sparkle them up!

Esty

I have managed to get 2 of my bracelets on to Esty! It has taken me longer than I expected so I'll get more on tomorrow and I'll get other goodies up too!

This is one of the cards I made the other day inspired by Weekend Stamper, with no stamps just a fineliner, some sticky pads and an old book I'm recycling!

paper making

Here is how I made the textured paper for the paper flowers:

1. cut a5 sizes pieces of collected papers

2. Chose interesting textured papers and tear, I chose a natural fiber paper and my favorite- doillies.

3. Lay the pieces of torn or cut textured paper onto your A5 collected papers and cover in PVA glue. I found that they dry over night.

I have layered about 20 of these sheets along with newsprint, tracing paper, tissue paper and news print sheets all cut to A5 or A6 size and sewn the tops together and made my own sketch book. I'll photograph it tonight and get it up soon.

paper flowers

I have had such a crafty day! I was inspired by tricia at oh so crafty's blog the other night. She had made beautiful paper flowers and I decided to give them a go for myself.

I started of with a book I got from a charity shop for 50p and cut flower shapes out from the page using a template I made up earlier. Then I cut out a smaller flower from some papers I made up earlier. (I'll tell you how I made the papers at the end.)

Then I sewed them together with a button to hold the different layers in place, and added some beads to decorate round the edges. I ended up making three different ones, and attached them to strips of card to use as book marks!

Oops, the image I chose has disappeared! So the environment means........ nothing to me, of course not! I'll try and upload it again.

There we are! I took this picture a couple of weeks ago at the park. I can't really explain why I like it so much, the size and scale of the trees, the smell, the sounds of the leaves at my feet, and these are our earths lungs.

I have just joined Bloggers Unite, Blog Action Day which is October 15th, and this years topic is the environment, something close to all our hearts. I am a keen recycler and care a great deal for this planet, my environment and the legacy I will leave behind in landfill. This is what environment means to me:

Inspire me Thursday entry HATS

This is such an inspiration close to my heart, this time of year is when I start making up my new Christmas goodies and I'll be sat on the knitting machine working away on my felted creations. So hats mean, October, bonefire night, smoke, sparklers, knitting, gloves, scarves, prepairing for Christmas,cosiness and warmth.

This particular hat is called "Buttercup" and is knitted with 'super soft' Shetland wool and felted twice at 50 degrees in my washing machine, then sewn up. I have embellished this one with a simple flower and button design. More to follow I'm just getting them knitted up at the moment.

Diana Cooper - Home

Sunday the 14th is Angel Awareness Day, have a look at Diana Cooper's site for more information. I will be having a celebration, I'm not sure what yet so I'm going to set aside some time tonight to plan what I would like to do.

making and ebaying!

What a day, I have been non stop and not as much to show for my efforts as I would have liked but never mind! I have been making charm bracelets for my Christmas Girls Nights and wanted to get some on ebay too, and I managed to make 4. I love making them, I love the sparkliness and luxury of them and the stones and beads are yummy. I'll need to add my jewellery to my FLICKR thingy. So it turned ou half the day making them and half the day trying to get them and their descriptions to load onto ebay, it took ages!

Thanks again to everyone who commented on my peice for Ispire Me Thursday, I love this getting given wee projects and challenges to keep me on my toes. It is so easy to get bogged down with have and must dos so a wee project for my self is great. I am sticking with the knitting too, I am still working away with my barbacue squers although I was given proper needles last night but they are too fat and slippy. I have decided I am going to try to do one square a night, 10 stitches by 10 rows hehehe and decide later what I want to do with them all. I am just having fun doing it and thats what counts, right.

And I have just worked out to get the links to work on this too, today is a good day!

Thank you to Sandy and Kimberly, my first ever comments on my blog! I am working on a small series of bird drawings just now so i'll get them posted tonight.

Inspire me Thursday entry

My first knit !!!

1st real bit of knit.
felted corsages

Did my first finished section of knitting today, cast on, 10 rows and successfully cast off! I have to fill you in on the significance of this event, I have a Ba Hons degree in knitted Textiles, but on my first day having seen my holey shriking piece of knitting, my tutors told me to head upstairs to the knitting machines lol. Fortunately my skills on the machine were and still are slightly better and some how I managed to get my degree. I specialised in knitting then felting my pieces of work and for my degree show/ final collection I made a range of bags. And Laura Baillie Designs was born. So today was a monumental step :) What do you think? I know I still have a long way to go. (I know, I had no knitting needles so I opted for barbecue squewers and chop sticks.)

I have just spent about an hour tidying up my computer sorting files out and backing up my work. I learned the hard way about 3 months ago when I spilled a glass of water over my laptop and the whole thing went to computer heaven :( It is amazing how much I took it for granted, all my work, accounts, photos, music, favourites, everything gone. Luckily I had backed up about 3 months before so I didn't loose absolutely everything but enough to learn a valuable lesson.

1. No water or liquid of any sort with in a 2 meter radius of the computer.

2. Back up on a Sunday or after a large piece of work or fun.

Well, happy Sunday Night.

Been really busy the last couple of days so not had a chance to chat. Finishing off desorations in the flat my bo and his friend have bought to do up and sell on. The end is nigh' thank goodness and bo can move on to new jobs.

I have at last come up with a selection of christmas card designs!!!! So this week I'm going to start physically makng them up. I was intially going to use card toppers and layered paper ect. but that was because I could't come up with any of my own creations, but I have been inspired by the scarpbooking community and got back into photoshop and started layering!

Well I'm off now to do some more digital scarpbooking and look at some more scapping sites.

Here are 2 of my new christmas designs.

opps forgot to attach pictures....

The kindness of scrappers

Just managed to get some of my work onto the blog, it took me some time to master flickr, but at last I've done it. Its a great way to orginise my photos and let folks see what I do!
I spent ages last night surfing and looking at different scarpbooking site, I am amazed how many people are out there doing and how generous everyone is about sharing their fins and tips, who said it's every man for him self?, they were wrong. It sounds silly I know but it really made me smile to think that there is still kindness in people, yes I know it sounds so cheesey.

Well back to work I go on the christmas cards, I have nothing finished today to show so I'll put on some of my last years designs, some of them I'll use again, but I like having new exciting stuff to sell each year.

Oh what a beatutiful day!

Went for a lovely walk in the park today, it was glorious, the sun was warm and me and bo sat and watched dog walkers and ate ice cream! I know, Ocotber and t-shirts and ice cream!!!

The trees were beautiful, all changing day by day, so of cource I took huners of photos.

Meant to be coming up with Christmas card designs, but lost in making papes to drawon for a new sketch book, I love it, just bits of tissue, brown and gold paper, newsprint and doillies.

So I'll off now and tidy my desk and start afresh tomorrow.

me-a-newbeeee

Hi and welcome to my first ever blog, i am sooooo excited! I have been toying with starting one for ages now but always thought it would be too complicated and kept puttin it off. But tonight while my bo watches superman returns i thought i would give it a go.

I've had a lovely day today, been working on a commission/ 3 year old wedding pressie for my auntie and uncle!! So I've been working on them and rekindlin my love of all things photoshop.

i'm really chuffed with some of the pieces from today and quite fancy gettin a few made up for myself. The commission is 2 maybe 3 of my photographs blown up on canvas for their kitchen, i'll keep you posted on how it goes and what they choose.