Trees are flowering. Hello February!

Digital journaling (my favorite apps)

Happy August!

Some of you may remember that I started using my mini iPad to capture daily snippets way back in January. And would you believe it - I stuck to it, and now have captured memories for each day of this year. I call them "snippets", because that is what they are... little bits of days that weave together the story of our life. I love looking through them and seeing the big and small, good and not so good things that happened.

Since I know that many of you have iPads and might want to do something similar (I received email questions about it), let me share which apps I use. The main one that houses my digital books is called Noteshelf. This is how my "shelf" looks right now. I will start a new book for August this evening. If the stripes on the covers start bothering me, I can change them quickly. For now - they make me smile.

To create super quick collages (like the one below) I use an app appropriately called TurboCollage. I made the heart with Photo Stack (free app) and added it over the collage. 

Can you see the butterfly in my daughter's hair?

Most pictures I take are with my iPhone, so the quality is far from perfect. My favorite app for photo manipulation is PhotoToaster. It can do almost anything! There are many very artsy options, but I use it mostly to crop the pictures and pull out as much detail as I can (the ducks below are a good example of that, as they were not very close to me and were moving quickly).

One of my other favorites is TitleFx for it's amazing lettering capabilities. The example below is not imaginative at all, but I used it simply because I wanted to have this blue picture here, as it was really a happy, amazing day. The photo collage below is done also with TurboCollage, after I cropped the photos and added frames with PhotoToaster.

There are other apps that I use from time to time, but the ones I listed continue to be my favorites. I would love if you add to the list and suggest some of your favorite apps :-)

Cheers! Happy August!

Playing with clay

Looking at my digital pages reminded me that I've never shared my brief explorations of precious metal clay. I don't make jewelry, but when my friend Rae (who creates amazing jewelry - take a look at her website www.JesterSwink.com) asked me if I would take a workshop - I couldn't wait. This is my iPad journal page - I love that I can write on it with a stylus and the result looks like my handwriting (somewhat). 

We worked with silver and copper clay in different forms. The instructor guided us through many techniques... It is pretty amazing, the creative possibilities seem endless. Here are some of the things I made - some better than others. I didn't worry about the outcome, as this is completely new to me.

This is my hollow, domed copper bead. I can't decide what to do with it...

I wear these earrings all the time. Can't believe that my hands made them (and there are fingerprints in the silver that show it!!!)

I'm so grateful that I had a chance to try something new and can't wait for another workshop in a couple of months where I'll play with PMC one more time :-)

Journaling on iPad in February

I am still loving my daily digital journaling. And I love when a month comes to an end and I can make a quick collage of all pages (it takes no time at all with the turbo collage app). I can then glance and see many snippets of our family life in February. This way I will never forget the first ever waffle I ate in my life (first waffle at 48 - that must be some record!), or how a face mask turned my face a lobster color, or a day where two weird male characters entered my life (second pic from the bottom/right - don't ask), or how much cuddle time we have with our cat etc etc.  

Happy March!

Journaling with iPad mini

No matter how busy my days are, I am still having fun making daily pages on my iPad mini. Sometimes I spend only a minute on a page, and some days I spend much more time. Like yesterday...

I wasn't feeling the best, so I snuggled with my iPad and started drawing in app named Procreate.

I love that it has levels that enable me to move things around, add a background, remove it, put it back again etc. without starting everything from the beginning. You can see the progression of the drawing (painting?).

It is difficult to stop, as you can continue working for days, so I usually stop when I know I don't have too much time left to play. After that, there is another big decision to make - do I want to put my painting through one of many photo apps, and if I do - what kind of effect I want to use? The following nine versions were done in a matter of minutes. The possibilities are limitless, so I try to make a quick decision.  

This time I decided that I like my painting as is, and left it that way. I uploaded it to Noteshelf, which is  what I chose to be my journaling app. I typed in the recipe, journaled by writing with a stylus (love that!), doodled a bit and called it finished.

I hope that no viruses are chasing you, but if they are - try the recipe. It worked magic for me (and it's pretty tasty). xo

Digital journaling

Can you believe that it is the last day of January? It always goes so fast... I didn't have too much time (or energy) for art this month, but that didn't stop me from doing something creative every day. I received a mini iPad last year as a birthday gift, and it instantly became my favorite toy. Not a day passes that I don't use it. If you are interested about what I like the most about it - ask - and I'll write a post about it. 

 For now, I wanted to share how I use it as a daily journal. I love the convenience - if I have minute, I will snap one picture and post it on my digital notebook page, but if I am stuck somewhere waiting for an hour - I can easily spend that time creating something (doodling, writing, even painting). I didn't miss one single day in December and January, and now it's fun to flip back through pages and see snippets of my days. And that is exactly how I call these digital notebooks - Snippets of my days.

I'd like to know if you use modern toys for art play...