Most of the other postcards could be inappropriate, so I went with something more tame.

Before I made this, I was chatting with my friends, and we decided that even if someone is attractive, when they have bad grammar–they lose any appeal they had.

So I grabbed this cover and got to work in Adobe Photoshop CS6!

The first thing that I did was put the text on the note. I wanted it to be a guy’s handwriting, so I used the font Christopher Hand. Then I simply tilted the text box.

I originally had black text, but it didn’t look right. It looked like it wasn’t part of the original picture. So I played around with the Layer Properties. I tried Multiply, Lighten, etc., but none of them were giving me what I wanted.

While I was playing with the opacity for the text, I found that 75% lightened the text enough to where it looked like it was written, possibly in pencil on the card.

After that, the real text of the message needed to be put in.

The font wasn’t hard to decide on. I used Pacifico, the same font that the creator of this theme used.

The text color is #D9D9D9, and the stroke is #545252. I then scrolled through the Layer Properties and found that Linear Light was the best one for this application.

And there you have it!

I was inspired to do the 2 star worthy Visual Assignment Draw It, from the ds106 Assignment Bank,after reading Cole Wyrough’s blog post, Online Sketching.

I decided to do a flower set of photos, so first, I chose the pictures I wanted to use.  I then opened Picasa and edited each one by clicking Pencil Sketch.

Once I did all the photos, I put the old and new ones side-by-side, so you could see the difference, and uploaded them to Flickr.  Enjoy!

This 3 star assignment, A-Z photo collage, was SO fun yet SO challenging to do! The goal was the create a collage of themed pictures in alphabetical order. I wanted to do this assignment because I wanted a challenge. Anyone can take a picture of something or photo shop, but this one needed time, and a lot fo creative thought {and since it was visual week, I thought what the heck!}

The theme I chose was education. I am an aspiring teacher {and will soon be finishing up – wahoo!} and I thought that it would be an appropriate theme to do for this assignment. It was a little tricky at times {the letter X}, but I think you can tell what the picture is and why I chose for it to be in my education themed collage. If you don’t, just ask :)

I got the pictures off of Google and I copy and pasted them into a collage. I love picture collages but I’ve never made them on the computer, just in scrapbooks and on my cork boards.

P.S- HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!

*Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!*

Today I am sharing with you a really fun, but challenging for me, assignment. This is a 3-star A-Z Photo Collage. The purpose of the assignment is to pick a theme- I went with African Savanna Animals and then to find photos that go with the theme. You have to pick a photo to go with every letter of the alphabet.

I used former ds106er Kiersten’s tutorial as a guide for making this collage. The only thing that wasn’t mentioned and I couldn’t figure out was how to scale the different layers. I tweeted @cogdog and he had a suggestion. I didn’t see exactly what he was referring too, but I found another method with looking around.

In GIMP, you just have to go to “Layers”, scroll down to “Stack”, hoover over the arrow and like “previous layer” or “next layer” depending if which direction you need to go in.

I had to restart this project twice, because I kept “losing” pictures. They were off to the side of Canvas and I couldn’t find them. But once I got everything together and lined up, I was really happy with the outcome.

Here are the list of African Savanna Animals – I had to get creative with a few!

A-Aardvark
B-Buffalo (African Buffalo- similar to water buffalo)
C-Cheetah
D-Dog (African Wild Dog)
E-Elephant
F-Flamingos
G-Giraffe
H-Hippo
I-Impala (similar to an antelope)
J-Jaguar
K-Kilpspringer (similar to an antelope,but miniature size)
L-Lion
M-Meerkats
N-Naked Mole Rat
O-Ostrich
P-Python
Q-Quelea (African bird)
R-Rhino
S-Scorpion
T-Toad (African Toad)
U-Umbrette
V-Vulture
W-Warthog
X-Xerus (African Squirrel)
Y-Yellow Baboon (Had to go with the color here, as I couldn’t find a “y” named African Animal
Z-Zebra

Since this is a 3 star assignment this take me up to 11/10 stars!

All these Visual Assignments have been really fun!

This three star visual assignment really made me think about my story as a college student. I knew right away that I was going to do a picture from freshman year, mainly because I have pictures printed out from then and I also needed the location to be in Fredericksburg since I’m not going to New Jersey for a while. I took a look at the pictures that I had printed out and was suddenly brought back with tons of memories from my first year at college and my first year away from home. But I really wanted to pay a tribute to Goolrick Gymnasium. So here it is, my ‘ode’ to Goolrick.

So if you have been to the beautiful campus of the University of Mary Washington you may be familiar with Goolrick Gym. I know that I know almost every nook and cranny of that place. Being on the volleyball team for four years the gym has been a huge part of my college career, even after the Anderson Center was built. So let’s go back in time to three and a half years ago when I was just starting my college career out. After having no competitive experience playing volleyball I decided to try out and hope I made the team. I called my mother almost every day telling her about our three-a-day practices and explained how I was not anywhere close to the level that the girls trying out were. After a few grueling days of being unable to properly walk I finally found out I made the team (which is a funny story in itself). Success was mine, but I still was no where near the level that these girls were playing at. It was in Goolrick I had my first college mental breakdown, it was in Goolrick where I made friends that I’ll have for the rest of my life, it was in Goolrick where I had a team that was actually a family, and most importantly it was in Goolrick where we beat Salisbury University in the conference semi finals to close out the gym for the last time. Now there is the Anderson Center which is big and brand new and really amazing in so many ways, but to me Goolrick represents who I was when I got to school, kind of overlooked and trying to just blend in. Now, I too have developed not only as a player, but as a person as well; and I owe that all to Goolrick. So maybe it was just me being sentimental because it was basketball’s senior night tonight, or maybe this project gave me the opportunity to reflect on my time as a collegiate athlete, but I once again returned to the place where it all started, Goolrick.

Believe it or not, this picture was kind of hard to get. Getting the angle just right was a challenge and I was trying to match up the eagle on the middle of the courts together. I took a few different pictures by showing more of one side than the other, but this one was the one that I liked the best.

Hope you enjoyed,
Princess Karissa