Blue China

So today I’m feeling a little blue, china blue that is. This first set of tea cups and saucers was given to me by my mother. She acquired a box which was tattered and torn. The marking on the box shows it was shipped from china. As we opened the box we were pleasantly surprised to find these small treasures lying in a Chinese newspaper shred. SCORE!!!!

Spice Ornaments

Want to make a quick and easy Christmas ornament!!!! You can purchase glass ornament balls in a variety of sizes at any craft store and fill them with anything you want, tie a ribbon on your done.

I chose spices from my kitchen cabinets, filled them and tied a cheerful red and white gingham ribbon. I also cut out mini tags from card stock and printed the names of the spices out on my computer.

Banners 2

Here are other examples of using paint.net.

I took pictures of some embellishments I use in my art work. Cropped them,

put them together and added the links.

Banners 3

Here is another example of a banner link I created for Serenascene.com.

This banner is for another blog of mine. Projects coming soon.

Serenascene building graphic

Another fun image I created using paint.net

The making of Sereascene banner

This was the beginning creation of the Serena’s Scene banner. It started with a great free software program, paint.net. Paint.net is like a free version of Adobe Photo Shop. You work layer by layer. It might not have all the bells and whistles as adobe, but hey….it’s free and it does the job. The other program I used was site spinner. This is a web site building software.

This is by no means a tutorial, just a glance at all the steps it took to create this banner for my fledgling website. Banners are so important because it obviously is the first image a person will see when they visit your blog or website. Choosing my font was pretty easy, but when it came to choosing the color for the background, well that just drove me absolutely insane. I wanted just the right hue, just the right tone and value. You want every little detail to reflect a part of you and the feel of your blog or web site.

Site Spinner has a color wheel with numbers associated with each shade and value, so it is important that you remember the color number

so you can match it to your other web pages. I suggest you keep a note book and journal every part of the process, even the mistakes, trust me… you will need to refer to the steps you took later on.

next, I chose my clip art and graphics. You should have your font, clip art and graphics work together in unison. For my graphic I chose my favorite ...flourishes. I love the free flowing movement which is also why I chose birds for my clip art.

Now for the final step, I added some photos of my work. As you can see, making a banner is a time consuming process and it does take a lot of trial and error until you to get just the right look and feel you want to portrait.

EEK!!!

I got this idea when my mom and I went to a farmers market. They also sell lots of cute Halloween decorations. We saw a black tin with a ghost head on top and with the word BOO on the can. Well, this is my version of the ghostly tin.

We found a white and red coffee tin on clearance at TJmaxx for $2.00. I painted it with black flat RUST-OLEUM, which is an oil-based paint so it will adhere well to metal. The pumpkin I purchased at Pier One. You can use any prop you find just make sure it is hollow so it will fit over the knob on the top of the can. Adhere the head to the top of the tin with a glue used for metal. Tie a ribbon around the neck to hide the glue. Lastly, I used stickers to spell the word EEK. You can hand paint your word if you have a steady hand, which I don't.