My Dream Tattoo
 That I Will Never Get

As much as I love the aesthetics of tattoos, I could never get one myself. Between my low pain tolerance and my indecisiveness, I could never get something permanent on my body. I would also end up buried in my parent’s backyard. But still, it’s fun to dream.

I choose to combine two of the most important things in my life: my Swedish heritage and Winnie the Pooh. I found a site that translates English into Ancient Runes and entered in a Winnie the Pooh quote:

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh.


I found a stock photo of the inside of a forearm and put the text on top of it. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I think it turned out looking pretty badass.

If I Can Turn Back Time *Cue Cher*

For this assignment, I was inspired to use in my opinion one of my favorite superheroes and her powers, Hermione and her time turner necklace. Her character is brilliant in the story of Harry Potter and I fell in love with the concept of being able to manipulate time to change the past, present, and future. Hermione used her necklace mostly to make it to all her classes as she was taking lots of credits and couldn’t have made it to all the ones she was taking without this device. I desperately need more time in my days because of how busy I am and I too would use my necklace to take all the classes I wanted (which wouldn’t be a problem if I could stop time). I also may even use this superpower to travel back to the 80s!

I found a picture off of google images of an hourglass, as this symbolizes time, and then took a picture of my wrist. I then imported both photos onto adobe photoshop and with the blend tool, I was able to mesh it to look as if the tattoo was on my own skin. I actually ended up really loving the design and may end up getting this tattoo in the future. 

Another One Bites the Dust

Week 2 Daily Creates

I started this week late due to family visiting my home and unfortunate events with my spouse’s vehicle, but when I finally checked in I was stoked to see the inclusion of the daily create. I wanted to participate in them, but it would slip my mind. Now that it is a requirement, I’ll be forced to remember to do them with an alarm on my phone. Here are the four I completed this week followed by the thinking process for each one.

For Tuesday’s submission, I didn’t even have to think a minute before I knew exactly what I wanted to use. I constantly find myself thinking of this moment in the Princess Bride when people say things and I’m pretty sure they’re full of it
so I had to use it for this daily create.

Wednesday’s prompt was simple. I opened the link and used my current location, which was in Jepson waiting for class to start. When class was done, I went outside and snapped a photo of the building with my phone. I then used the Layout app to put them into the same image and posted it.

On Thursday I had time to sit down between homework assignments and spotted my daughter’s colored pencils. I took about ten minutes sketching my map. I didn’t focus on shopping because it doesn’t happen often enough, and the stores aren’t close to each other like in the map used for the demo. I chose to map out my daily travels during the school week. Ironically (if I even used that term correctly), I forgot to add the day care drop off/pick up until I was about to post the map without it on there – even though I was using her pencils.

For Friday’s daily create, I couldn’t figure out a simple way to make her face look painted, so I reverted to the classic hole in the face photos available online and turned my daughter into the form she was meant to be in at this age.

Assignment Bank

After posting Tuesday’s tweet (and telling my husband how
proud I was of it), I started skimming the Assignment Bank. I found some of
them boring, some quite intriguing and some downright tempting to complete.
Overall, I felt intimidated by most of the ones I liked due to my level of knowledge
with the media platforms they prescribed. My husband has a small 3D printer
meant for creating tabletop game miniatures, so I’ll be able to ask him for
help if I want to attempt those.

I decided to follow the recommendation to watch a movie from the 1980s and base an assignment off of it. I watched the original version of “The Bourne Identity” which was released in two two-hour installments on ABC as a television film in May 1988. It was much more consistent with the original novel which I found to be refreshing.

The first assignment I completed I posted on twitter on Thursday. It was “Who Said What” from the Visual Assignments section. In this task you are told to pick an image of a famous spy and combine it with a quote from a different spy, additionally signing the quote by a third spy. I choose the image of Richard Chamberlain version of Jason Bourne, quote from “Eye of the Needle” (another ‘80s spy film), and authored it by James Bond which had multiple movies released in the 80s. I found the image and quote in a google search. I completed the image in what I felt was the easiest way for me. I opened power point, inserted the photo, pasted the quote on it, made the font look acceptable, and then saved the image through there. Posted it to twitter and that’s that.

For the second assignment, I learned a bit more about twitter! I had to google how to do it, but I completed the assignment by creating t thread on twitter! Sorry for all the !!!!s
 this is exciting stuff, okay? This “Guess the Story” task, from the Web Assignments bank, called for the use of gifs to tell a myth, folklore, or legend. I decided to complete it but change the directions to fit the 1980s theme by describing an 80s movie with gifs. I started by telling myself to create a limit first and decided that would be 25 gifs. I completed the story in 23. I could’ve done it in fewer, but I really wanted to include specific gifs I enjoy. For those seeking the answer – it was based on The Goonies.

The third task I chose was one of the Design Assignments called Super Tattoo. In this assignment I was tasked to design a tattoo that would represent my superpower or explain what I would do as a superhero. I chose an image I’ve had for a while of Fawkes the phoenix from Harry Potter. He defends people and has the ability of rebirth. I felt like it parallels my service in the Army and my rebirth into the civilian world after retirement.

Weekly Wrap-up

I spent two days during the first week customizing my blog,
so I didn’t really commit much time to that this week. I did spend time
troubleshooting an issue with the code that was preventing me from enabling
comments to the blog posts. It was refreshing to finally resolve that issue and
made me feel like I accomplished SOMETHING productive on that front. On
Thursday I went on a twitter following spree. I added everyone I could identify
with the #ds106 hashtag. I started “hearting” some posts and commented here and
there. I also started visiting other blogs and checking out the assignments people
were sharing. I sprinkled some thoughts and went about my business. There were
still quite a few that didn’t have comments enabled so I couldn’t spread the
love as much as I had planned.

I’m looking forward to what next week holds!

Super Tattoo

The superhero character I created, Madame Polygraph, has a super power which enables her to tell if people are lying based off a pinch in her foot. So, she had this tattoo of sound waves tattooed on her foot as a way of representing her super power. Although she can not hear what people are saying she can always tell when they are being dishonest. This sound waves design gives her the symbolism she wanted without exposing too much of her secret.

Super Tattoo

For my “select one” assignment, I chose to make my own superpower tattoo.

Super Tattoo

I cannot stand driving. I don’t like sitting in the car sitting in traffic. I don’t like the drain of watching the road in front of me. The only times I do enjoy it are when I am not actually driving and instead are a passenger and can look at the views going past. So I would like the power to fly. That way I wouldn’t have to sit in traffic and could enjoy the view of the world around me. I could get a birds I view of the world. That being said, if I had this power, I wouldn’t want everyone else to have it because then I would have to deal with sky traffic. This is actually a tattoo idea I had for myself already because I want to travel. I want to see everything the world has to offer and I don’t want to sit in traffic to do it. So I would love to fly. Not only would it make traveling easier, but it would make my life easier in general.

Week 6 Assignments!

 DesignAssignments2115 was my first assignment I did. I was able to create my super hero Super Nova by using http://www.heromachine.com/heromachine-3-lab/ .This was 4 stars. 

My next design assignment was DesignAssignments2101. I  used an online font creator. This was 2 and 1 half stars. 

My next design was DesignAssignments2099 this was 2 and 1 half stars.  I went online and used a tattoo generator. This a song lyric from my favorite hymn. 

My final design was DesignAssignments2112. I created through an online tattoo generator. This was worth 2 and 1 half stars.

 

Superhero Tattoo

My superhero, Safety Stan, is known to be the best crossing guard around. He can teleport to and fro to help his community cross the street. He loves his stop sign and enjoys helping others.

For this assignment, I gave Safety Stan a tattoo on his bicep of a stop sign because it’s his favorite possession. He also uses stop signs in day to day life to help his community members cross the street. He enjoys the help he provides and knew that without his stop sign he wouldn’t be able to do it. So, he got a stop sign tattooed on his arm to remember that without his stop sign, he may not be a hero.

Super tattoo

So for the Super Tattoo assignment, I was supposed to design a tattoo that represents my superpower. This was hypothetical, but I’ll do you one better.

I already DID design my super tattoo. And I spent 20+ hours under the needle for it. It’s a cherry blossom branch. It represents peace (within myself) and good. Which is exactly what I would want to do as a superhero. It is also a never finished project. That means, I can keep adding to it, or leave it as it is. I’ve had it for 6 years, and I haven’t wanted to change anything yet, but I like that I have the option. It’s never finished, just like a superheroes job is never finished!

Harry Potter/Superhero Tattoo

 

This is a rough idea of what I thought my superhero, the Black Dahlia. I thought about the fact that she was a botanist and likely a nerdy person so I combined the Harry Potter emblem for Deathly Hallows and added instead of a wand a sprig of lavender to represent her more earthy side and ability to control plants.

Super Tattoo (Week Six):

Super Tattoo

For this assignment, I was instructed to create a tattoo design that represents your superpower or explains what you would do as a superhero. I obviously took the opportunity to create a tattoo centered around my character – Jester. I decided that creepy smiles is the one characteristic of Jester that he is known for by now. Thus, I took a bunch of smiles and edited them into the form of a demented face! Below is the steps I took:

1. I found the four smiles I wanted to utilize in my creation

2. I opened up Gimp, had to cut all of them separately, and then saved them.

3. I opened up a new project and added all of the separately saved files to the new one.

4. From there I simply constructed them into what you see above!

P.S.

I totally figured out Gimp, or at least the simple techniques of it, so HA.

Gimp – 0, Me – 1.