My Experiment with Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle

I am so excited to be working through the exercises in this book by digital artist Susan Tuttle. I thought I would work through the exercises from beginning to end trying each one the way it is written. I believe that I learn best when I have followed a "recipe" to build my skill base. After I have done something a few times, I start to see that it shows up in my own style.


"Whispers" Creating Vignettes with Color Fill Layers

What I Discovered:  The photo file of the doll pictured in the text was not on the CD that came with the book so I tried to find a photo that I thought conveyed the same mood. I don't know that it does. It just makes me look old and tired. I definitely like making the vignette this way. You can control the size of the vignette with the way you drag out the elliptical selection before creating the fill layer. I also like that I can soften the effect using the eraser tool. The settings Susan suggests are the default settings for the tools-that saved some time.

The inspiration piece is by Sonya Cullimore of a bird on a tree branch. It reminded me of a photo I took a few years of ago of a local bald eagle. I tried the effect here. I liked the vignette created with the reduced opacity of 79% because I liked how the tree branches framed the shot. I cropped the photo after vignetting and I like the effect much better than on the one above. It takes less than 5 minutes from opening the file to finishing this effect.

Find Susan here.

Last Hours

"Oh Angie," she cries as she realizes I'm there. "I want you to hold me."  "How you doing?" I ask, my hand smoothing the hair on her head.  "Not good," she strains.  "Are you ready?" "No, I don't want to die."  Her eyes, childlike, search my face for what I don't know.  "Are you scared?"  She contemplates that one and responds, "A little."  "Are you at peace?"  "I think so," she manages.  Hillary scoots back her chair allowing me to access the side of the bed.  Bonnie's belly is swollen and heavy.  Blood stains her gown near her left shoulder where a port was put in earlier that day.  I climb up on the bed, careful not to put pressure on the arm where an albumen infusion is replacing the fluids she lost hours ago from the parecentesis.  I rest my arms around her and lean my head against hers.  She is breathing heavy.  Her body is warm warm.  She hasn't been warm for months, but on this day her body is working harder than ever . . . to die I suppose.  For a few minutes she is gentled, comforted, but the pain in her back is working again and she has to move. 

The LNA and nurse come in and I kiss her translucent cheek and get out of the way.  They manage to pull her further to the right side of the bed and turn her ravaged body on its left side, the only position that seems to give her any relief.  Her head lays cockeyed on the pillow, her jaw slack and mouth open to catch the air.  The LNA gently lifts her head with two hands and places it in a more comfortable, natural position.  They tuck pillows in tightly against her back and between her legs.  The skin on her right leg is still red from the lingering cellulitis.  The other calf has blood seeping into the tissues-symptoms of a low white cell count.  It is red and beginning to swell about her toes. 

"I'm going!" she lifts her head from the pillow looking intently around for who is sitting within arm's length.  "Right now . . . Goodbye." Her head falls down on the pillow.  A few moments pass, her breathing deep and effortful, she opens her eyes again and mouths, "Bye."  "I love you," I call as if she's leaving on an airplane vacation trip to somewhere.  I caress her warm, fragile hand.  I run my thumb along her soft, short cropped hair.  She has a cool washcloth resting on her neck, the soak stain blooming down along the front of her hospital gown.  I notice a small collection of dark purple arteries near the skin on her right cheek.  Another bulging artery runs down from her lip along into her jawline.  Were these there before?  Is this the evidence of her failing liver and kidneys slowing down her bloodflow, bulging in her veins. I try to sing to her, but no songs come to mind. I start to hum, "Allelujia, Allelujia, Allelujia."  I think she recognizes it.  I bow my head to will back the tears threatening to consume me.  "Keep humming, just keep humming."

Over the next hour and a half, she's in and out of awareness.  She opens her eyes, the panicked look fading as she recognizes who is near.  This is our last time together.  I only know it now.  Her pastor is there, comforting her with prayers and asking her if she can rest. He's trying to console her.  He tells us later that he thinks it will be a day or two given her agitation.  "Do you think he's strong enough to watch me die?" she asks Dale about Alfred.  "I think so," Dale replies.  "We'll take care of him," I tell her.  Alfred has been taking care of her for months, on his own really.  We've helped when we could, but he's the one who has been there for every ambulance ride to the Emergency Room, every procedure, every doctor's visit.  He's the one who made sure she had something to drink and fixed her meals.  He helped her to the bathroom and to the chair.  He's here now.  Just waiting, knowing that she's leaving him now.

Bonnie was so afraid of having the port procedure.  Vickie wonders if she knew on a deeper level that her time card was being punched.  After the parecentesis, there was usually a period of extreme weakness, but once she had the albumen, she would begin to rally.  This time, the doctors told her there was no more chemical support they could provide.  Her body had simply had enough.  Her heartbeat was erratic, jumping from 34 to 134 in mere moments.  The heart could not last much longer given the extreme levels of potassium in her body and her dwindling sodium levels.   The news seemed to deflate her.  She had been dying for so many years, now that the time was near. I expected her to want to pray, to want her Bible and to be reaching for God.  Dale's presence provided comfort, yes, as he prayed with her she seemed to relax, if only for a minute. "I keep getting there and something is pulling me back," she tells Dale. Does she need permission to go? "Do you know what it is?" he asks her but she's gone again. "Bonnie, do you think that if we could take care of the pain, that you would be able to sleep?" "Oh yes," she's awake again.

As the pain increases, she becomes more and more agitated.  "I'm going to die from the pain," she cries out.  "Help me.  Right now.  Right now." Eventually amidst her begging for help that I can't give, I call the LNA in and the nurse.  Together they talk her through the quarter hour as the medicine machine is wheeled in, plastic tubing detangled, a small palm-sized bag of clear fluid hung and calibrated to deliver the correct dose of pain-killing Phentonal.  She quiets, sinks into her  pillow, anticipating the relief that's sure to arrive soon.  At last her breathing turns a little deeper.  Her face relaxes and she appears to sleep, finally.  She hasn't slept or eaten much in two days.  She's exhausted, in pain, and afraid.  She needs to rest.

We sat with her for another hour as the nursing staff prepare her private room.  I guess it will be her death room.  She rouses briefly as the pain intensifies, but I trepidatiously push the pain killer button and she dips back to unconsciousness. When we move her to the third floor, Room 335, the nurses set Alfred up to stay the night. He wants to be with her at the end. They offer us a comfort tray of coffee and cookies, but we decline.  Alfred just needs a cot and he'll be fine. He would stay to rub her legs, to call the nurse to turn her, to hold her hand and reassure her.  We need to leave, but don't really know how to.  I don't remember what Brett did.  I still think I was not believing her body would give in to death.  I had seen her cheat it so many times.  I didn't know this time was different. I kissed her warm cheek and told her I loved her.  Those were the last words she heard from me.  That's good.  That's good.  I am happy that she heard me tell her many times that I loved her.  Although she could be difficult and her own worse enemy, I really did love her.  I didn't want her to suffer anymore.

The next morning at 9:00.  The phone rings. It's Hillary.  "It's time.  You've got to come."  I quickly showered, hollering to the girls to get dressed and ready to go out the door.  I call Mom to see if she can tend the girls.  I'll have to bring the kids there as Dad is getting ready to go grocery shopping.  She calls me back in a few minutes to say that Dad will take his truck.  "Can you meet me at the school? I'll get your laptop for you so we have it this week."  It is vacation week and I want to teach Mom how to use her new toy.  Twenty or so minutes later we're in the car, heading up the hill, tears keep rolling out of my eyes and falling off my cheek. I have to wipe them away in order to put the key in the ignition.  It's raining and cold.  I adjust the car's blower to blast the windshield with heat and pull out of the bumpy drive.  At the top of the first hill, as I round the bend near the log cabin a tree removal crew has the road completely blocked.  Three orange traffic cones spread across the road.  Two men are picking up long branches and feeding them into a chipping machine attached to the bucket truck.  I thought about shouting out the window, "This is life or death!" but what good would that do.  So I thought, "This is a lesson.  To stop. To breathe. To remind myself that this is out of my control."  Now I know that she was taking her last breaths at that time.  I was sitting in the car with my children.  Whitney started singing a made up song.  Sydney was watching me.  They had the road cleared in five minutes. "Where are you going?" she asked me.  "You know Gramma is really sick." I look back at her to be sure she understands.  I can't bring myself to tell her that Gramma's dying.  I can't find the words for that.  I can't answer her questions about that now.  "Oh," she says. Mom is not at the school when I arrive and David is heading out the door to go run errands. I just barely caught him.  "My mother in law is dying," I tell him, not sure why I felt the need to share the drama of my life.  We head back into the school and I explain that I am heading to the hospital.  He's been through this a bit recently with his father and grandmother.  Judy meets us in the hall to talk with him.  She's asks how my conferences went. "Okay."  While David fiddles with the laptop and fills me in on what he's done to update the system, I eye the clock.  "So get this," I tell Judy and David the story of the tree crew.  "I guess I am okay with not being there. There's nothing I can do."

By the time I got on the interstate, I could really look at the time, it was 10:24. Would I get there in time? I didn't think about her really being gone. I didn't think about what I might see when I got there. I just thought about the death rattle and the endless pauses between her final breaths. She'd told me about these things. She'd been around a lot of death. She had told me about when her brother Lisdon died and the pain his body endured.  She had sang her friend Bertha across with "Amazing Grace" and held her dying body to its final breaths.  She knew what a body did in the end.

Mike was coming out of the unit doors as I approached.  "Is she still here?" He nodded.  I couldn't quite remember where her room was.  The desk, the room suites all looked the same.  Then I noticed "335" and knew I had the right door.  I walked in.  I see Bonnie, on her right side now, chin slack, right hand poised by her face as if to be held. Al's sitting in the chair at the head of her bed. The grey palour to her skin is unmistakable.  I know I am too late, but Brett has to tell me to make it real. "She's gone," Brett said. Vickie's eyes are bright with tears.  I walked to the bedside and touch that skin, soft and smooth as a newborn's.  It was cool.  She'd been so warm the night before.  I was glad for that because the last year she was constantly cold.

"Now she knows the secret," Vickie said.  "The secret?"  "Yeah, what happens when you get to the other side."

"Everyday Adventures at BPS"

I have no followers but I have an overwhelming desire to share my story or my art or my photography or my something.  Well, not my something!  I don't understand it.  I just want to be heard, I guess.  It thrills me to know that someone out there cares.  But on the other hand I am in the process of simplifying my own blog reader.  I have created a new category called "Inactive Scrapbooking" for blogs that I used to read. Now I only "Mark as Read" them every once in a while.  I can't bear to part with them . . . yet!  I skim through the posts I like to look at and I am trying to limit my online time to less "searching for my muse" and more "putting my muse to work."  It's way too easy to get distracted from what I really love to do.  I have been in such a funky place lately.  Taking pics, sorting, editing, but not scrapping hardly anything.  I keep having the urge to work with paper.  Today I finally did after signing up for this 4-week workshop at Big Picture Scrapbooking.

I worked on my assignments for the BPS class, "Everyday Adventures."  I am hoping I can learn something to use in school for "Our Backyard" studies.  It seems to fit in with the nature journals.  We'll see.  I had the most fun putting together this field journal.  I found papers in my stash that I had gotten from someone in an exchange at Paperclipping.com.  There were so many pretty papers.  I used my Big Bite and old cardboard, lots of cardstock and some patterned papers.  I tied ribbons and other fibers to the binder clips and ended up with a nifty little book.

These are my nifty little "Goggles of Enhanced Perception."  I repurposed a pair of doll glasses that have been in my sewing kit for nearly twenty years.  The class is based on this book by Keri Smith called "How to Be and Explorer of the World."  It's going to be interesting and fun.

Brett says women should not wear a hat titled "Bone Collector."  I was cold!!

Paperclipping.com March Monthly Challenge Layout

This is what I submitted:


I am submitting this layout for Challenge 2. Here are the tips from Paperclipping Tutorial #136 that I utilized to help me tell this story.
-Multiple photos are helped by the grid layout-helps to keep the layout from being chaotic
-Spread the photos with like colors across the layout so not all the greens were next to each other
-Chose a green background (not sure if that's in the tutorial but definitely from the newsletter tip about backgrounds!) to emphasize the lushness of the woods.
-Embellishments are similar in color and theme and form a visual triangle around the focal point photo
-The swirl brushes on the edges of the pages and by the title are intended to soften the hard lines of the grid
-Lastly, the journaling is subdued even though it's a lot the color kind of "hides" it in plain view.

(Paper and Elements, Vera Lim, Memories Makers No. 4)

The journaling: Norwich, VT (March 21, 2010)- Off Kerwin Hill Road is this piece of land on which the owners have several trails cut and blazed. We needed a hike with gradual inclines and dry ground to keep the girls motivated. I was just so happy. What more could I ask for? Walking through this beautiful, peaceful property on a sun-warmed March day with some of my favorite people in the world has got to be in my top ten things to do in life. As we walked we talked about not much of anything. We admired Mother Nature’s handiwork in the form of mushrooms and fungi feasting on decaying trees. We pointed out twisted and windblown trees whose desire for life outsmarted the winds that knocked them over. We marveled at the fairy glens of intensely green lichens and mosses reclaiming the fallen trunks to the moist boggy underground. The greens, the silvers, the almost-blue stones stacked into walls created a stunning canvas from which our imaginations extracted stories of what the land may have looked like a hundred years ago when 70% of Vermont was deforested. Human presence could be found amongst the handmade hunting stands, the abandoned barbed-wire roll, and the stone turned to fashion a chair upon which some long-ago hunter sat. Nature has been working hard to reclaim herself. It's the never-ending story, so beautifully crafted. I am blessed to have been there.

Design Your Life Starts Today

Before I continue reading the rest of Week 1's material I want to take a moment to reflect on what I already know about design. These things I've learned from Noell Hyman, Cathy Zielske, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, and by studying the elements of design some for my Math and Art class I took last summer.

This layout uses some of those things I've learned. I wanted to keep the focus on the idea of five so the choice to layer solid paper over patterned paper creates a central place for the eye to rest. The patterned paper frames the subject. The grouping of 3 squares creates movement simply by sliding it up into the frame area at the top of the page. The larger rectangle at the bottom balances the upper square as does the title. They work together to draw the eye to the center of the page. The color red is repeated throughout the layout in the "5", the title, and the 3 photos. There is a triangle formed with the title, the bottom photo, and the "5" that draws the eye toward the focal point-the tree photo.

("Every Life Has a Story" kit, The DigiChick Team)

Despite all that, I feel that I could improve this layout. I think the 5 needs to stand out a little more. Perhaps I should stroke it with the yellow to provide more contrast against the leaf photo.

I do really like this template though. We'll see if I learn how to make it work even better.

"I Love Your Smile" Contest at Ella Publishing

I have been wanting to do something with this photo of Sydney for a long time. This challenge at Ella Publishing was perfect.

I used Morning Sun kit JM Designs for Little Dreamer Designs and the fram.e is from Anna Aspnes' ArtPlay No5B kit.

From Idea to Print-My Workflow Steps

I have been busy catching up on my printing. I think I printed 25 or more layouts Friday and Saturday. I had only two problems. On one layout Brett somehow hit the cord to the printer and the layout was almost all printed but the bottom inch. (I didn't reprint it.)

On this layout

(Journaling: These are the spontaneous kinds of hugs that fill your heart and make you laugh out loud. These girls are very affectionate and loving children. So blessed. (June 09))

[Deanna Jones, Flower Scraps, Summer Afternoon]

I somehow messed up the font on the top of the photo. I had to fix it and resave it, but I wasn't going to reprint it. I figure I really should figure out how much it costs to print my layouts. I am thinking that although the papers and embellishments are significantly less when comparing digital to paper, I probably spend an equivalent amount in papers and inks. I will have to do a cost chart, especially now that I have caught up.

My workflow goes something like this:

1. Get an idea (photo or a challenge)
2. Open the pieces I want to use -photo from PSE Organizer; supplies from Picasa (or PSE if I am opening a lot)
3. Edit photos-convert to BW or Sepia, run actions, Auto SmartFix etc., Crop Last
4. Open my blank letter-size document
5. Sometimes, if my layout is complicated, I will do a template first to speed up the process.
6. Save as a PSD, High Res. Jpeg for print, Low Res. Jpeg for posting (Wondering if it's necessary to save the PSD after I have printed. In the printing process you see things-like that font change-that you might not notice on the screen.)
7. Save all files to a folder called 2009 Pages, with subfolders by title. Sometimes save photos that have been altered for a layout in the same folder as well.
8. On to the next project!!

Happy Scrapping. Will post some of my layouts to my flickr account and link them here.

Thank You Notes

I just finished this layout called "Thank You Notes." I just love the expression on Whitney's face when she opened this card from her preschool teacher Mrs. Joanie (Bjorkman).

I used a mini kit called "Sent with Love" by Vicki over at A Work In Progress. I think the theme of the kit fits perfect with the tone of the photos. I was able to work in a design triangle with the title, the corner elements and the envelope. The brown mat also leads the eye to the focal point photo.

The curled paper is a technique that I have wanted to try out but until I found this freebie from Gunhild, I was stumped how to do so. This layered psd file works very easily so I could get the perfect paper combination. I like how it looks. I also used stroke outlines on the photos to make them look matted. This is a new technique that I have only recently figured out how to do.

I have also figured out a way to create titles that makes the process of using alphas a little easier. I actually create a separate file roughly the size of the title space with a transparent background and then drag my letters to that. This works well, especially when you are trying to layer alphas with text as I did here. After you've put it together, you can rearrange and align without having to worry about clicking on other layers in your layout. Merge the layers and voila! you can drag the whole title to your page and resize as necessary. Sweet!

Finally_a focus

I have been digiscrapping all summer long and I have been learning some amazing stuff. I was sitting here this morning and I was downloading from the Summer Camp Blog Train at Stuff to Scrap when I realized that designers need to be consistent in how they name their files so it's easy to find their stuff. I noticed that a lot of the designers at STS use their initials then either the initials or the name of the kit-like MGD_Summer_Camp. I now recognize MGD as Mad Genius Designs. That's important because when I unzip my files I keep them in a folder for STS designers. That way if I am doing a challenge for that site, I can easily find my STS kits.

As I was thinking about this, I thought about what I would call my stuff (if I ever started designing) and my initials are ATL. So I came up with All Those Layouts! It's perfect because now I can use this blog to post my layouts and can direct friends and family to my blog as well. I sort of use facebook for this but it doesn't work so well. I can use facebook to link to here, right? I can update friends when I have posted new layouts. This should be fun.

So here's my initial post for All Those Layouts and I hope to keep them coming, especially as the school year gets underway. I love taking pictures and I love scrapping them. I also love sharing them and hearing what people have to say. Hopefully you (anonymous reader) will find something here you like and will be able to use in your own work!

Here's what I was working on last night. I am experimenting with holes in the paper because I saw a layout at Stephanie Howell's blog where she had used a punch of a butterfly to reveal the paper underneath. I liked it and thought I would try it for this PageMaps Apron Strings challenge.

Here's the pagemap.

Here's my take:

Blogs and Scrapbooking

I am trying to figure out how to use my blog and my facebook to inspire me to scrapbook. I have been reading lots of blogs from people directly related to the business of scrapbooking, designers in particular, but how does just a hobbyist use a blog for scrapbooking purposes. The big question is why have a blog in the first place? Who would read it? Do I have anything to say that anyone would be interested in anyway? How do I develop my own unique style scrapbooking? These are the questions that are going around as I pursue this blog thing.I am also wondering how to make my blog all fancy. And if I am spending time building my blog, when am I scrapbooking, because there is not unlimited time for these things. Dilemma.