Disney World Prep

Our family will be going to a family reunion at Walt Disney World in Florida, this spring. So, of course I over prepare. I have a binder, read and printed lots of info, checked out just about every guidebook the library had and have started planning crafts to make for the trip.
One of the things I look forward to is taking photos. So, I scoured the web for photo ideas and lists. This is a list of photo ops I put together and it could even be used as a photo scavenger hunt. I have one for each of the parks at WDW, and one extra just for fun miscellaneous stuff. They are 4x6 for easy printing and carrying with you to the parks.
We are also going to spend one day at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure (my kids love Harry Potter and Jurassic Park). So there is a Universal IOA photo hunt list as well.

Changing the Colors of Things in Photos

Several people have asked me how to change the color of something in a photo, or one of the downloadable invites on my blog. Well, it all depends on which program you use and what you want to change. To help, here are some basic tutorials I've found on the net for some common popular programs

With Photoshop (and I believe it works in Photohop Elements as well): http://digital-photography-school.com/changing-color-in-photoshop

With Gimp (a free photo editing program): http://www.instructables.com/id/Quick-Color-Change/

With Paint.net: http://www.instructables.com/id/Changing-Colors-In-A-Picture-Using-Paint.net/

With Corel Paintshop Pro: http://www.corel.com/corel/pages/index.jsp?pgid=1400065&item=resource&listid=1500535

And, YouTube has video tutorials for these programs as well as any others you may use. Hope that helps.

Alphabet Photobook

Here in Washington we've been having a lot of snow. So, the kids and I have been stuck at home all week. One of our boredom busting activities yesterday was to make an alphabet book. I had them go around and collect toys for each letter of the alphabet, and I photographed them on a white background. I made them into book pages, and uploaded them to Shutterfly. Before too long our new ABC book will arrive, full of their toys. If the snow continues, I may do one in Hindi too.






You can see the whole alphabet on my Flickr set.

Dancing Sign

My oldest takes ballet classes. The owner of the studio (and her teacher) is a friend of mine. So, when the end of the year came, I wanted to give her a little teacher gift. Well, it turned into a big teacher appreciation gift. I am so proud of how it turned out I thought I'd share it with everyone.
It is a 10x20 size 'photo'. I had to buy a collage frame and then just get rid of the multi-photo mat to frame it (there is a serious lack of 10x20 photo frames out there). Another idea for this photo would be to get it printed on canvas, or maybe decoupage it onto a canvas.
Clicking on the photo will take you to a download page if you want to have this for yourself.

Free 5x7 photo card templates

I was looking around for a free red damask card template and could find one. So I made one, well actually I made 5. The cards use the free damask print from Pixels and Ice Cream (who has other wonderful things too). Hope you enjoy using them.
Download Here

Photobook

I got my Shutterfly photobook in the mail the other day. It's from our family trip to Fiji, in 2007. I took over 700 pictures while there and managed to condense them down to a 55 page 8x8 photo book. I put in some of my digital scrapbook pages too. It turned out great. I'm really happy with the quality of it. Gotta love ShutterFly!