Saturday, January 31, 2015

Your Pictures are Never Safe on Facebook...

I totally forgot about this project! My son's best friend posted a picture of her grandmother, when younger, on Facebook and I borrowed it to play around with in Silhouette Studio. I had never traced a photo before but wanted to see if I could. The picture was already in black and white so I didn't have to convert it, but the end results are much better when using a black and white photo. Picmonkey is a great place to go to convert your photos if you don't have any photo editing software! I brought the jpg into Silhouette Studio, selected the area I wanted to trace and then played around with the high pass filter and threshold until I was left with the best result I could achieve. After tracing it, I then went and zoomed really close into the picture and deleted or erased as many of the small dots and such that I could as they would be heck to weed! Ok, So, once I got the design the way I wanted it, I mirrored it, cut it out, weeded it and applied it to the back of the glass. Everything went GREAT!!! I had it all finished in no time and realized I had a few finger prints on the glass, so I took a dry baby wipe I had (don't recommend baby wipes as they catch on the vinyl and leave little white fuzzies) and was wiping them off and BAM- I broke the glass!!!!!! I am not going to type what I said as it wasn't very lady like at all!!! I walked away and took a bit of cooling off time before I went back and tried again. Oh My Good Gracious, if it could go wrong, it DID the second time around. I started in the morning and didn't finish until late evening!!! I lost letters weeding, letters were tore up while cutting, transfer tape wouldn't pick up the letters and SO much more! I can't tell you how many times I had to go in and edit the saying to get only the words or letters I needed, then applied those to the glass and realized I lost half my dots on my "i's" and my comma!!! I finally managed to get it back together and shared a picture only to be told the dot in the i in "bit" was missing!!! I sat there and said I KNOW all the dots were there as I double and triple checked it when I finished! Then I started thinking, I wiped the glass to remove smudges and I bet it took my dot- went to look at the cloth and sure enough, there was my dot, LOL So, it was an all day job but I am so tickled with the end result and my son's best friend was in awe when she saw it!! I posted the finished project picture on Facebook but didn't say who it was or who it was for, but she knew instantly so that made me happy! So, here is my finished photo! (The dot IS missing on this picture in bit, as I didn't take another one after I replaced it, and the picture isn't the greatest due to it being night when I finished and took it)

I finally "played" again!!!!

Wow, it's been a LONG time since my last post, or creation for that matter!!! I didn't make the first thing for Christmas Gifts this year, but I did make a few cards, just failed to post pictures of them! I finally broke out of the "collecting" stage today and created something again!!! I took some ice cream buckets I had and made Easter Buckets for my great niece and nephew! This was my first time layering vinyl so it isn't perfect but I am pleased with them! My sons gave me a Silhouette Cameo for Christmas and I am having a blast learning all it can do! SO much nicer than my Expression, if a bit louder, LOL Now, you know on the buckets it wasn't just cut, apply and done- that would never be "my" way of crafting, LOL I cut, recut, applied, removed, recut again and applied! The green egg on the truck was cut at least 4 times by itself!!! I did something wrong on my stars on the truck one and they cut and then cut again in a different spot on the same piece of vinyl so that was wasted as well! I think I waste more than I actually use on the finished project! I can't imagine selling things as it took me all afternoon just to get these two things completed- how do people do it? Maybe with time and a bit more practice, instead of just collecting files, I can start to get a bit quicker and maybe, just maybe, have less mishaps along the way!!! Nope, not holding my breath, LOL I also would love to share a picture of my great nephew (another one, not Skyler), "painting" last night while he was over visiting. We are starting him early on the creating!!! Well, if you stayed with me this long, I appreciate your looking at my latest and greatest! I have a "great idea" in my head for something I want to try tomorrow, so hopefully I will be back to share that as well!!! *Hugs*