One of My Favorite People

When I saw that there was a 3-star assignment in which I could highlight one of my favorite people in my life, I knew I wanted to do this assignment. It took me about 2.5 seconds to decide that I would make a video about my mom.

So… who doesn’t love their mom? I for one, do!

Unfortunately, in June of 2009, I lost my mom after her two-month battle with cancer. I could write a book on how much I hate cancer. However, for the first twelve amazing, fun, hilarious, and adventurous years of my life, I had my amazing, fun, hilarious, and adventurous mom to walk along beside me. She was my everything. She taught me everything I know, seriously. One morning, I woke up and I wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast. She told me that it was time for me to learn how to cook them (even though, guys, my mom made the best scrambled eggs). I got a piece of paper out and wrote down the “recipe” so that I could make my own eggs. I don’t have this anymore but it was something like “1. Crack eggs in bowl 2. Whisk eggs 3. Pour milk in the eggs   4. Put butter in a pan and turn on medium heat 5. Pour eggs into pan 6. Stir the eggs around the pan until cooked.” As an only child, my mom babied me, and I loved it! She loved to pick out my outfits for the day until I was in second or third grade. She was always at every school play, festival, etc. Not only was she a fun person, she was protective, spiritual, and brave. She could do everything and anything she put her mind to. For one thing, she had me completely naturally. No epidural, no nothing. One thing that she always tried to get me to do was sports. I hate sports. She was the most athletic woman I knew. She signed me up for tennis, basketball, soccer, dance, gymnastics, field hockey, volleyball, golf, and horseback riding. As she may have expected (I don’t know, though), none of them stuck. I don’t even like going to the gym to run on an elliptical all that much to be honest. However, she always did things with my best interest in mind. She took care of everyone else first, before taking care of herself. She had to deal with me as a little girl who was a picky eater, stubborn, and the list goes on, she had to deal with our dog, Molly, who liked to eat everything in her path, and more! My dad was there to help too, however, my mom was who I spent most of my time with due to my dad’s work schedule!

Her contagious laugh and the love that she gave to everyone and everything, including her garden,  are just two of the hundreds of traits that she had. Nothing can ever come close to the bond I had and continue to have with mom, even though she isn’t physically here with me. I do now have a stepmother, whom I love very, very much. I feel as though my mom pulled some strings up in heaven to send her to my dad and me. She shares many similarities with my mom.

Lastly, anytime you hear the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” my mom is the first person I think about. I can tell you more about that later! ?

Before and After the Apocalypse

So… I made it!

I’m so glad to be alive. I can’t unsee the things I’ve seen. I’ll never forget the people I’ve met. It’s not over yet, though!


I haven’t run out of supplies yet, so here’s hoping I make it all the way through. Wherever and whenever the end really is!


BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS POST: 

For this assignment, I had to create a side-by-side comparison of a person, place, or thing before and after the apocalypse. I chose to use two pictures of me. I used a picture of me from a few weeks ago when my best friend did my make-up, and I felt beautiful! The picture on the right is me today. I am running on a lack of sleep, so that is one reason I look the way I do. I also wanted to make a facial expression that made me look tired, exhausted, and lost. I feel as though if the apocalypse were to come, this is what I would look like, at least after a couple of days. Whenever I look like this (no make-up, barely awake, etc.), I’ll call it my “apocalypse” look! Haha! However, my room is not green-ish colored, so I decided to add a filter to the picture to make it look like I’m in a dreary, dark world.

SALUKIZIM Productions

SALUKIZIM Productions needed a snazzy logo.

 

 

 

 

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-your-own-logo/

For this 3 Star assignment I downloaded a saluki sketch from online, placed it into a PowerPoint, added Text and saved it as a JPG.

Super Saluki Billboard

Saiph was welcomed to the United States with a giant billboard:

 

 

 

 

 

For this 4 star assignment I went online to the internet and found an image of a billboard and downloaded it and saved it to a PowerPoint slide. I opened another slide and created a collage of pictures of Saiph. I then used Insert>Text Box to create the text. Highlighting each piece of text I sized them and changed the color to white. To achieve the arched  lettering I used  Tools Format>Text Effect>Transform>Wrap and chose the arches I was looking for. Next I held down the CTRL Key and clicked on each photo and the text. Going back to Format I clicked the group button and then Copied and sized the slide so that it fit on top of the billboard white space. I then saved the project in the PowerPoint format and then re-saved it as a JPEG.

Easy-peasy way of downloading YouTube vids

Okay, so, I don’t know if the rest of you took the time to try out the video download trick that I talked about in class. In case you didn’t, here’s a quick and easy tutorial to get you started. … Continue reading

Visual Assignment: Design Your own Autobiography Cover

For this assignment I designed the cover for what would be my autobiography cover. I always thought of my life as a dark comedy and feel this cover perfectly represents that shadowy humor I hold so dear.

 

“Design (using any programs you want) the cover of your autobiography. What pictures would you include? What would you title it?
Make sure it really shows off who you are what you want your audience to see in you by the cover.”-Submitted by: Randomriter (Bridgette Metzinger)

Visual Assignment- Alternative Book Cover: Fifty Shades of Grey

I had a little fun with this assignment. The idea, take a well known book cover and redesign it to mean something completely different. I decided to play on the flip flop nature of Mitt Romney by creating this alternative cover to Fifty Shades Of Grey.

“Take a title of a well-known book and re-design the cover to suggest something entirely different. For example, the book cover for Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (an apocalyptic novel about a father and son facing the end of the world) is reframed as a feel-good book about effective parenting (see image). Original idea found through this design contest on Book Ninja in 2008. Image credit: Ingrid Paulson’s  reimagining of The Road by Cormac McCarthy”-Submitted by: Jim Groom

Visual Assignment-Unlikely Intersections

 

My family and I laugh every time we pass this corner. Right down the street from my house in Inwood, Manhattan. I seriously wonder if these streets were named by a secret trickster, because this is too much of a coincidence. Though it would be weirder if the signs were reversed. Think about it!!

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/unlikely-intersections/

“Take a photograph of a street sign showing the intersection of two names not likely to meet. No photoshopping, it has to be real! Keep noticing what is around you.”-Submitted by: CogDog

 

 

DS106 Visual Assignment- Album Cover

 

This was a pretty cool assignment I did in my CT class. You generate random titles , names and pictures then use them to create and album cover. I decided to use a picture I took myself however. I couldn’t resist.  Check out the assignment at the link below.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/an-album-cover/

“So here’s something fun for everyone to do, should be quick and easy, but try to make it pretty. First, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The title of the article is now the name of your band. Next, go here: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 Go to the bottom of the page. The last four to five words of the last quote are the title of your first album Lastly, go here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Select the 3rd image. It is the picture for your album cover. Manipulate the picture, resize it, add some other color, whatever. Do the same with the band name and album title, put them over top. However you wanna do it. Make it look cool.”-Submitted by: Crazylegs

 

It’s official, this class is moving WAY to fast

Every week that goes by, I think OMG it’s really been another week and I’ve learned so much.  I think everyone can agree with me that we learn so many skills in this class, I absolutely love it! So week 6 is over.. I think every sunday I’ll be surprise that yet another week has gone by.  This week was filled with 4 daily creates, design safari and the contribution to the assignment page3, and 15 stars worth of design assignments!

Daily Creates

My 4 daily creates for the week are bellow, you can also click the link for more detail, whatever tickles your belly!

Empty

Personal font

The daily assignments this week really allowed me to get creative.  I loved the assignment about creating a floor plan about the house we grew up in.  This really made me think about my childhood and all of the amazing times I had, and also it reminded me of how amazing my family is, and how far we’ve come from where we lived in Peru to where we are now.

My Design Blitz

Learning about design was new for me.  I did not know that there were so many different components to a picture, or an advertisement or anything.  I guess I never really broke down the picture into individual elements.  I learned the importance of how color sets the mood, of how typography can use words to send a more meaningful message than a picture could, and how dominance and unity can really bring out the beauty in a picture.

Unity

Unity

This picture shows unity by combining the different elements that make the ocean into something that is whole.

Dominance

Dominance

Not only is a male peacock the definition of dominance, but I think that the colors in the picture really dominate the picture, and the bright blue body is really puts all the colors together.

Typography

Typography

Carlo’s Bakery has a way with words!  The typography they used in the image created such a visual for me.  I really did fall in love with one bite.

Color

Color

The color used in this bottle totally creates the image of mellowness for me.  I think that the black and white picture really tie everything together.

My pictures can also be found on the assignment documentt.

Design assignments

Assignment 1 / 3 stars

NemoandMEEE

I decided to Photoshop myself into a new poster.  I had to mess around with Photoshop for a while in order to figure out how to actually crop a picture by the figure rather than cropping straight lines across the image.  I thought it was really cool when I saw the end result.

Assignment 2 / 2 stars

For this assignment we had to use a word that represented the word in a way.  We couldn’t use color or anything but the word.  I decided to write the word backwards, backwards.  I thought it was pretty ironic!

Slide1

Assignment 3 / 4 stars

This assignment was a lot of hard work.  I decided to do 4 stars in order to challenge myself a little bit.  I wrote elements that represented me and chose a background that also shows my love for the ocean.  It was an interesting assignment because I used both Photoshop and Powerpoint to create this and crop and make different shapes, but it was also challenging to pick things that represent me!

Slide1

Assignment 4 /2 stars.

This is my poster for my radio show.  I used spooky font to go with the theme, and chose a picture of Autumn to show what our show is about.  We are doing a spooky/autumn theme.  I also discuss on my blog my contribution to what I’ll be doing for my show.  I can’t wait until our radio show is done so all of our hard work can show!

radioshow

Assignment 5 / 2 stars

I decided to make myself a cartoon!  Photoshop was a great aid in this, but I had to do a lot of work in order to get my end result looking just how I wanted it to look!

Cartoon me

Assignment 6/ 2 stars

This assignment was about creating a Valentines day card.  I love the one I created.  I put a lot of work into it, and I love the quote that goes with the heart!

Slide1

This week I definitely experimented with Photoshop so much more!!  I learned how to do so many things including how to crop a picture and inserted it on another one.  I knew how to do that, but I didn’t know how to crop the picture to the frame I wanted it.  Anytime I tried cropping it drew a little box around the picture and asked me to fit whatever I wanted into the picture  to chop of the rest, but that wasn’t going to work for me.  I had to do a little research and finally figured out how to delete the excess and actually give the picture the frame I wanted.  Also, my iPhone came to the rescue again, maybe it’s time to actually fix my camera or maybe even get a new one.

This week again taught me a lot about photography, art, and anything visual really.  Design is a big part of anything visual and it’s something I had taken for granted.  I really enjoyed this week.  I mention this on EVERY weekly summary but i really enjoy the things I’m learning in this class and every week I look forward to see what new skills I’ll acquire!