Changing Rooms

Recently my cousin Neville emailed me asking if I could make a picture for his wife Margaret from the header on my blog. As some of you may know, the elegant lady sitting on the couch is Neville´s mother, my Aunt Lucas. I have many photos of her, mostly studio portraits from the 1930s in which she´s immaculately groomed and stylishly dressed. You´re probably thinking that the photo on the above header is one of them. Not at all!

 

As you can see, the photo was actually just a snapshot. According to the writing on the back, it was taken in March 1932 in the small Scottish town of Balloch on – to quote our national poet, Robert Burns - “the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond” - and shows that Lucas didn´t only dress in her best for her many studio photos but also for a day trip to the country. You could say that she looks just as immaculate sitting on a rock as sitting on the sofa in my header.

Anyway, that´s just the history of the photo. Back to Margaret´s request...I was wondering how I could possibly transform my blog header into a picture for her to frame when I suddenly remembered that I already had one. Years ago long before I started this blog I´d created a series of fantasy rooms one of which had been the inspiration for my header. I dug around in my folders and finally unearthed it.

It included the table, the vase of roses, the oval picture and Lucas seated on the sofa which are all in the header too. And if you look directly to your left, you´ll even see the china ornament which I´d placed on the table. I was tremendously relieved to think I´d found the perfect picture and wouldn´t have to start from scratch. That is until Neville sent me a photo of the frame...

 ...and I realised with dismay that 30.5 cm x 30.5 cm into 19 cm x 24 cm won´t go. I tried cutting the image down to size but that resulted in chopping the large oval picture on the wall right down the middle. It looked as if I might have to start from scratch after all. Then I had a thought that sent me scurrying back to the folder where I´d found the jpg and there, amazingly, was the original layout in psd format with all its layers intact! With some resizing and a little manipulation I finally ended up with this.

I was about to send it off when the thought occurred to me that since Margaret and Neville live in far distant South Africa the chances are I´d never get to see my work framed and hanging on the wall. On the other hand, since I´d already extracted the frame, there was no reason why I couldn´t have a preview of the finished picture on my computer screen.

Looking from the frame to the picture and back again I was just thinking that Margaret couldn´t have chosen a more beautiful frame when an idea occurred to me that made me smile. 

 

Maybe I should have called this post “Spot The Difference”.

Can you?

Will Margaret...

...and which one will she choose?

Faster, Easier Downloads!

As many of you will know, for years I´ve been storing my kits and freebies at 4shared. It wasn´t the ideal solution as it was pretty slow but it worked well enough and I never had any complaints...until just a few months ago when 4shared altered my settings without informing me and then things started to get difficult. First of all I discovered that if someone wanted to download any of my recent freebies she had to ask my permission so I had to keep checking to make sure that my settings remained as I´d set them and not as 4shared would have them. Then things got out of hand when suddenly 4shared refused to allow anyone to download anything, including kits, without opening a free account. That´s when I started to look elsewhere for alternative storage ...and by that I mean free storage. As I´m sure most of you know, I don´t have a large commercial store. I only sell my own kits and don´t invite other designers to contribute. Designing digital scrapbook kits is, and always will be, just a hobby and not a money making concern. By that I don´t mean that it isn´t thrilling when someone likes my kits enough to take the trouble to purchase and download them. However, if I had to pay for storage there would then be the worry that the store wouldn´t earn enough to make it worthwhile, and anxiety and creativity don´t mix well. I spent hours searching for a suitable website and came up with absolutely nothing. It began to look as if I´d have to close my store. Then I did what I should have done right at the start and told Lajuana who had set up my store in the first place and is still very much involved with it. She immediately offered enough storage space on her own website to accommodate my entire collection including any future kits. I shouldn´t have been amazed by her generosity as she´s always been a good friend but I thought – and still think – that this kind offer went well beyond the bounds of friendship. To cut a long story short we decided to start with the freebies so for the past week I´ve been hard at work uploading all the zip files to the FTP for Lajuana to retrieve and create download links. In other words I just did the easy donkey work and Lajuana all the difficult stuff and I must say she made it really difficult for herself by creating not just simple links but the most beautiful and original download pages. Here are a few screen shots so that you can see for yourselves how creatively she designed them.

Don´t they look great?

By doing all this work on my behalf Lajuana has had to neglect her other duties so while she catches up on her other work we´ll be leaving the kit links for later. For the time being all my kits are still at 4shared and still available but sometime in the near future we´ll also be making these downloads faster and easier.

In the meantime, I hope you´ll enjoy downloading my freebies and taking a little time in the process to enjoy Lajuana´s unique download pages.

Thank you, Lajuana!

Ten Minutes To Spring

One unusually warm day recently I was out in my garden for the first time this year admiring all the spring flowers. The snowdrops looked like silent bells as they swayed in the breeze or maybe they were nodding their heads in approval of the weather. The first daffodils had sprung up in such large clumps I could understand how William Wordsworth must have felt when he wrote:

“ I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

Well, it was a stretch of the imagination to picture the lake because our garden doesn´t include one but you know what I mean. There´s something so joyful about suddenly coming upon these harbingers of spring and realising that the long dreary winter is almost over. The tulips won´t be far behind either. I could spot their leaves in every flower bed interspersed with the first few forget-me-nots. I´m particularly looking forward to seeing the frilly ones which we planted a couple of years ago under one of the trees. However, on my way back I was distracted from anticipation of flowers yet to appear by the sight of my quirky “white” rose bush which had already produced a perfect little flower, all white but for one single red petal. I´m so glad that the Red Queen´s little gardeners have survived the winter unscathed! I was also thrilled to see the first new lupins sprouting, a sure sign that summer will eventually come around again.

Then as I left the garden and was walking along the path to the house something stopped me dead in my tracks in amazement and wiped all thoughts of showy spring flowers right out of my head. There, tiny, humble and insignificant growing against all odds in the moss and winter debris between the paving stones, was a bright yellow pansy. The flower was only about an inch in size but I thought it the most beautiful thing I´d seen all day.

Maybe we all occasionally need to be reminded that we should cherish the simple things in life.

From Time To Time Freebie Alpha

Here´s a rusty alpha which coordinates with From Time To Time and also with many other kits in my store.

You´ll find it HERE. Hope you´ll like it.

A Scottish Soldier

With so many Campbells, MacDonalds and Armstrongs in my family tree it´s paradoxical that the the only photo I have of a family member in Highland dress is of my cousin, Brian Roberts, whose surname is not Scottish but originated in England and is very common in Wales where his father came from. However, if he shook his mother´s family tree, enough Scots would fall out to form several Scottish regiments.

Brian joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – an infantry regiment - at the age of 20 when this photo was taken. Unfortunately, it´s in black and white so I´ve shown the regimental tartan he´s wearing underneath an enlargement of the silver badge on his hat. I´ve also shown a photo of the regimental museum which is in Stirling Castle in the “King´s Old Building” so-called because it was originally built in the 1490s as a residence for King James IV of Scotland, the last monarch to be killed in battle. The second photo shows a soldier with the regiment´s mascot, a Shetland Pony called Cruachan. By coincidence, or perhaps not, “Cruachan” was the traditional Gaelic war cry of the Campbells....something worth remembering the next time somebody nips into a parking place I´ve been waiting for or pushes in front of me at the baker´s. Incidentally, a mountain called Ben Cruachan – at 3689 feet - is the highest point in Argyllshire. The bottom photo shows a drum major and a piper dressed in regimental attire.

I find it rather sad that the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders no longer exists. In 2006, along with several other Scottish regiments, it was amalgamated into the Royal Regiment of Scotland. However, each battalion maintains its former regimental Pipes & Drums to carry on the traditions of their antecedent regiments.

I created this page using my latest kit, From Time To Time. If you´d like a freebie QP, you´ll find it HERE. Also, if you´d care to have an alpha which coordinates with the rusty spatters in the kit, watch this space...

From Time To Time

My most recent kit is called From Time To Time because, although it´s an art nouveau influenced kit and therefore suitable for vintage layouts, it also reflects the passing of time by including modern frames and elements along with the more traditional swirls and flourishes. Also, as the name suggests, there are many timepieces in a variety of styles including some unusual steampunk clocks. The colour scheme is mainly various shades of brown and sepia with copper and teal accents which makes it ideally suited for use in combination with Vintage Whimsy and/or Nostalgic Scrapbook which you will also find in the store. As is the case with all my kits, there are no recoloured duplicates included.

If you´d like to have the freebie QP which I created using From Time To Time, you´ll find it HERE.

Missing Photos, Finding Relatives

There are two photos of my father which I treasure simply because they are the only ones I have of him as a young man. In the first one he´s 16 and in the second one, which isn´t dated, I think he´s probably about 18. I know that both were taken in Ireland where he sometimes spent the summer with relatives who had a farm there. Judging by the Border Collie in that photo I can only assume that they were sheep farmers though I can´t be sure about that. There are a lot of things about my father that are a mystery to me. In the first photo he´s carrying a camera and yet none of the photos he took have survived. Also, there isn´t a single photo of him as a baby. However, the greatest mystery has always been his mother, Helen Campbell, for whom I was named. My father himself knew only that she died very young and that on her deathbed she pleaded with her mother-in-law to look after her child and made her promise not give him up to her own mother. I find this horrifying as it would appear that my paternal great grandmother, must have been unpleasant to say the very least if her own daughter couldn´t entrust her child to her. Until very recently these were the only facts I knew about Helen Campbell until Linda, a cousin of our mutual cousin, Neville, did some research into my father´s antecedents. I now know that poor Helen was only 23 when she died and my father only 4 which explains why he had no recollection of her. Linda has traced Helen´s family tree back to my great great grandparents who came from Reay in Caithness. I wish my late father had known this because sometime during the 1960s he went north to work at the nuclear power station in Dounreay near the town of Thurso and only returned when he found it impossible to find a suitable house there for the family.

As the name Dounreay suggests, it´s very close to where his maternal great grandparents, Robert Campbell and Betsey Isabella MacDonald came from. Of course, considering how small a country Scotland is, this is no great coincidence but if he had known this he may have been able to find relatives still living there. However, one thing I find particularly interesting about Robert and Betsey is that they, perhaps unwittingly, joined two warring clans together. Throughout Scotland´s turbulent history the Highlanders didn´t just wage war on the English but also on each other and the clans MacDonald and Campbell have a particularly bloody history. I won´t go into that in detail but I have to say that I find it comforting that now that I can lay claim to both clans in my family tree I no longer have to defend my middle name to any of my countrymen named MacDonald! Yes, clan memories die hard in Scotland and the massacre of MacDonalds at Glencoe in 1692 has - unfairly - gone down in history as proof of the bloodthirsty nature of the clan Campbell. I say "unfairly" because, according to what I´ve read about this ancient family feud, the MacDonalds weren´t averse to slaughtering the Campbells either!

With all this recent knowledge I created this page in memory of my dear dad who passed away in 1995.

The tartan on the left is the clan Campbell, on the right the clan MacDonald and in the middle the clan Armstrong to which our family belongs. Thank you, Linda, for making this possible.

Getting Started Again

It´s been a while since I designed a new kit, so long in fact that I was beginning to think that Nostalgic Scrapbook was my swansong. Being in constant pain isn´t exactly conducive to creativity and the sudden death of a family member lowered my spirits even further. However, just recently I´ve been having osteopathic treatment, mostly for the persistent headaches I´ve suffered for over a year and I´m feeling a lot more optimistic. The headaches haven´t gone completely but at least they´re not as frequent as they were and I´m not constantly reaching for painkillers.

Getting started on a new project wasn´t really a conscious decision. As you may have noticed, I´ve restored several old photos over the past year. I thought it was about time that I gave them a suitable setting and that´s really what started me off again.

You may remember this photo of my grandmother and my aunt. It´s a particular favourite of mine and I thought it deserved a layout all its own so instead of using an existing kit I started to design something around it.

 

In a way it´s strange that I´ve gone back to shades of brown again. You probably know I really don´t like brown, mostly because it´s a colour I absolutely can´t wear, but I do like teal a lot and I can´t think of any other colour which brings out the beauty of my favourite colour better than brown. What do you think?

Knowing When To Start

I´ve often said that an important part of photo restoration is knowing when to stop because if you overwork a photo you can lose as much as you gain. By that I mean you can smooth it out, clean it up and eradicate all its major faults and in the process simply ensure that it takes on a completely artificial character.

With the following photo knowing when to stop was not a major concern. Well, not for many years because it was one of these projects I kept attempting and almost immediately gave up in frustration. I just knew that it wasn´t the right time to start.

 

See what I mean? For many years I just didn´t have the necessary expertise to tackle something so horrendous. For a start that deep diagonal crease was totally intimidating and the longer I looked at it the less confidence I had that I´d ever be able to remove it. I finally put the photo away and forgot about it. In the meantime I had enough old damaged photos to keep me occupied. Just recently I was looking through all my previous restoration work and realised that many of my old family photos had been just as badly treated and yet I´d somehow managed to restore them, if not to perfection at least to a reasonable condition so I dug it out again and had another look at it. First of all I desaturated it. I suppose that wasn´t really necessary but I find it far easier to repair faults in a black and white image. 

 

After that I straightened the edges and then used a combination of the clone tool and the healing brush tool to remove the crease. I know that this sounds easy but, believe me, it wasn´t! It took a lot of trial and error before I was happy with the result.

The next step was to conceal the black edges but that was easily done using the clone tool which I also used on the missing part of the shoe. Next I restored the photo to its original sepia. Well, not quite its original which looked rather too yellow to me. (See Tutorials) I also altered the shadows and the highlights. 

After that I cleaned up that messy looking sock using the clone tool. The photo still looked rather flat so I also deepened the contrast.

In my final version I decided to use a darker brown overlay. I then increased the contrast using Curves which brought out the detail. This also had the effect of increasing the visibility of the scratches. 

 

Did I just say that was my final version? Well, it may be but I couldn´t resist trying out an even darker overlay to give it more depth.

 

As you can see from the above, it took a lot of trial and error to restore this old photo. I´m still not entirely happy with it but at least it looks a lot better than the original. I suppose I could remove those scratches but, as I said before, you have to know not only when it´s time to start but also when to stop!

Heart Of Gold

I have the small diary which my mother bought shortly before she passed away. The only entries in it are the 24^th of December, my sister Carole´s birthday, and the 13^th of January, my own. As these are two dates which no mother could possibly forget or need to be reminded of, I think this says a lot about her and what was important to her. Since she was, and always will be, important to me too I feel it fitting that on my birthday I should pay tribute to her with this page in her memory. It´s also appropriate and no coincidence that I should have used one of my favourite kits, Heart Of Gold.