liebster

Frankly, I'm a lucky girl. I have had the good fortune to get to know many beautiful and lovely women since my first fays of joining internet communities. From wedding planning mates (over at the now dead WeddingChannel.com forum), to gossip and whine pals (over at Livejournal.com), to creative inspiration (at JessicaSprague.com). I am truly thankful for all of them as they have given me strength, support, love, laughs, tears, and much inspiration.

I got to know Cathy Pascual, a super talented girl, when she was a creative team member at JessicaSprague.com. Cathy has a keen sense of style, and her ability to pull out the most beautiful layouts is so very inspiring. Cathy has an Etsy shop where she sells adorable embroidered hoop art, and she also has a blog where she shares her art and her scrapbook work.

Yesterday Cathy posted her nominations for something called Liebster awards, and I was one of the awarded. Oh deary me! Thank you, Cathy!

Now, usually I'm not into all of those blog awards type of things, and especially not when it comes to the ones with rules, which this thing supposedly has. But I was inspired by Cathy's kindness to at least share with you five blogs that I really enjoy to read (but blatantly disregarding the rules). So here we go:

Becky of Casa Caudill
Becky is smart, and funny. She takes fabulous photos, and she decorates her house in awesome ways.

Benita of  Chez Larsson
Benita's blog is all about eye candy when it comes to home interiors . Her minimalist style is just up my alley.

Frida of Trendenser
Frida's blog is one of the biggest in Sweden. She shares her own excellent photography as well as truly stylish interior and graphic design. This blog is in Swedish, but anyone can enjoy the beautiful images.

Meeta of What's for lunch honey
Oh my god! Don't go to this blog if you are on a diet! This girl cooks, and photographs, the most amazing food.

Tammy of  Telling stories from chez nous
Tammy is a truly lovely woman. She cooks, she scraps, she talks, she takes such good care of her beautiful family. She is an inspiration!

And there you have it, five blogs, five women. Enjoy!

A source of inspiration

Ah, inspiration, that elusive flash of lightning that goes off inside of you (gut? heart? head? combination of all of those?) for a second or two. How I love when it shows up and how it frustrates me when I can't evoke it or control it. It's a love/hate relationship for me with inspiration for sure, granted not a 50/50 ratio, but still the frustration is definitely there at times.

I like to look at pretty things when it's all a mess inside of my head and I can't quite get my ideas out. I find it calms me down and helps me focus. Sometimes it makes a certain idea seem crystal clear - and I love those times - and sometimes it just makes me feel happy. I think that's a kind of inspiration too.

I thought it would be a cool idea to compile a little list of places and things that give me tons of inspiration - both for digi design and for feeling happy and refreshed. At the very least they might inspire any one of you guys as well.

Now this is a list I will have to come back to and add on to as time goes. One can't very well put a restraint to inspirational places, right?

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My Fonts
The perfect place for typeface and typographic inspiration. I've signed up for their newsletter and it's cool to get their picks in the inbox every now and then.

Lovely Package
All about great package design. Fabulous pictures. *love* this site.

Style Me Pretty
Swoon! Amazing weddings are featured here. Beautiful photography and fabulous design details in abundance. Also, weddings make me immensly happy.

Design*Sponge
The epitome of style. Nuff said.

Paper Source
This place has high quality paper design and their front page is always very colourful and inspirational.

Visualize.us
This place is quite genial. I like the idea of collecting pretty, inspirational, images in one place that doesn't take up space on my own computer. I like clicking through my collection and looking at what I felt grabbed me at one point of time. Another plus is that you can hook up with other people and see their collections as well. I'm lindsan if anyone is on there.

Hostess with the mostess
Hip, fun, and trendy this place is the go to for party detail designs for me. 
Also, I had the honour of being featured twice. Awesomely awesome.

Trendenser
Swedish blogger with impeccable taste. Centered around interior design but she branches out every now and then.

Martha Stewart
Needs no further introduction!

Kuler
This is the perfect place for finding great colour combinations. Colour is a huge source of inspiration for me and just looking at the swatches at this site can cause flutters in my stomach.

Colour Lovers
Another fabulous place for colour combos. This place grabs the combos from photos or graphic design.

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Do you have any favourite sites for inspiration that you would like to share? Please do!

Website tip for paper and digi scrappers alike

I am sure most of you already know of this place but, just in case you don't, do check out paperclipping.com. They have the Paperclipping Roundtable Show as well as the Paperclipping Digi Show where they invite lots of great people in the business and talk about all kinds of useful stuff with regards to scrapbooking.

I usually don't have time to listen every week when the new show comes out, so I tend to cram them in at weekends every now and then.

But totally worth listening to while you are working or surfing or doing whatever.
Also, Izzy, the husband of Noell Hyman who runs the site, produces the shows and he is a total hoot. :)

The power of photography

I want to share a very touching and powerful set of photos that shook me to the bone the first time I saw them. There is sound in this link but the pictures speak a thousand words and you do not need to understand Swedish to be touched by them. In fact, the first time I watched I didn't have the sound on.

They tell the story of a woman with glioblastoma, which is a brain tumor of the worst kind, and her life from being diagnosed through surgery and radiation.

I have so much admiration for this woman; in a time of shock, anger, frustration, fear, pain, and sadness she has the courage and strength to share her story in a straight forward and honest way without self pity. I also have a huge amount of admiration for the photographer who has been able to capture all of the feelings I just mentioned in such a real and honest way, and still the pictures are so beautiful.

View the photos here

A layout + a blog tip

Can you believe it? I actually had time to scrap something else than the Italy pics. LOL, it might have something to do with not being able to surf the net for hours on end.

I did this LO for the challenge at creative inspiration blog that Tara and Kayleigh runs. BTW, check the blog out, it's awesome!


(Credits: Pattern: PDQPattern2 by Nancie Rowe Janitz Paper: Festa orange from Festa Minikit by Jessica Sprague Elements: WebChallenge18May Plume 3 by Anna Aspnes, Green Sequin from Cupcake Princess by Andrea Victoria (recoloured), staples from I live for Minikit by Vinnie Pearce Font: Palms International Photos: by me Linda Roos)

Me want!

Isn't it delicious? It's from Jill-e designs. It's the first camera bag I have seen that doesn't look like a camera bag. I wouldn't mind this bag one little bit. Not at all. But the price tag? Ouch! I need to win the lottery first!

Photoshop tip - Improve exposure to part of a photo with a gradient layer mask

Whew that was a long title! But that is exactly what this tip is about. We will improve the exposure to a certain part of a photo by using a layer mask.

As you all know I was recently in Italy and had the chance to take lots and lots of photos of beautiful places. Of course not all of them came out looking like spreads from a magazine. But no worries, right, since our beloved Photoshop can help me improve my shots by a long way. Don't we just love it?

So, here is my original photo of the duomo in Florence. Beautiful building. Huge. Difficult to shoot at noon in the scorching sun.


See how the building itself is pretty decent looking? I metered off the building when I took the photo but in doing so the sky was blown out and pale. This makes the overall impression of the photo pretty blah. Let's see what we can do to improve this.
(Please note that I use the Swedish version of Photoshop so all you English speaking people, please don't be confused.)

1. Open your photo in Photoshop


2. The first thing we have to do is to add an adjustment layer. An adjustment layer will give us the chance to edit without touching the original layer and that is good because if we change our minds we can just delete the adjustment layer and everything will be back to normal or we can do further edits to that individual layer. Click on the little circle icon for adjustment layers in the layers palette and choose levels.


3. Pull the black slider as far to the right as needed to darken your blown out portion just enough to make it look good again. One thing to remember is to not go too crazy here but to make it match the colour and exposure of the rest of the photo.


4. As you can see by the image above by doing so we have automatically darkened the everything else as well. Of course we don’t want this so to remedy that we will use the gradient tool on the layer we just created. In the layers palette click on the layer mask icon to make sure the layer mask is activated. You can see that it is by the frame around the icon.


5. Now press G to access the gradient tool. If you have the paint bucket activated in the tool bar you might have to change it to the gradient tool.


6. Click on the small arrow next to the preview of the gradient type in the options bar. Choose black, white from the fly out menu. Then choose linear gradient which is the button furthest to the left out of the five buttons to the right of the preview.


7. You will now get a cross hair marker. Click and drag a line from where you want the gradient to start to where you want it to end to make a selection of where the layer mask should be doing its magic. In my case this is from the top of the building to the top of the photo as it is the sky part of the photo that I want the layer mask to be active.


8. When you let go you will see that Hey Presto! the rest of the photo will be back to the original exposure. In the layers palette you will also see that the mask is black at and then fades to white. The black part hides the levels adjustment we did in the first step and the white shows it.


9. Depending on your individual photo you might have to do some cleaning up where the mask meets the original layer to make it look really good. You can use the dodge/burn tool for this.

Here is my edited photo. Better, no?


Have a go at this, it is so easy but effective. I would love to see your results so if you do try it out then link me up!

Have a great day everyone!

Fantastic blog tip

If you have never visited the Paislee Press blog you should go there right now! Her designs, scrapbooks and everything else are absolutely fantastic. So inspiring for me and exactly the style that I like to do for my non scrapbook projects but can't seem to get right when it comes to digi scrap.

Anyway, go there!

Blog tip on decorating

I like to check in on husmusen a couple of times a week to look at beautiful pictures and get inspiration with regards to interior decorating.

Even if you don't speak the language you can still enjoy the blog because she loads it with eye candy.

Blog tip for card makers

If you like making cards, and you sometimes feel a little pinch of "card maker's block" then I think you will appreciate 2 Sketches 4 You. This is a blog where a new sketch is posted each week and readers are encouraged to link up their creations based on the sketch.

The blog is brand new but I dig it. Great quality sketches from Laura and Kazan.

Table settings for the unprepared

I bet you never thought I would be one of those, did you? Unprepared and setting the table for a dinner party ten minutes before the guests were due to arrive? Unheard of in this household! But this Easter it actually happened. Not once but twice. Two days in a row. This weekend I really had to wreck my brain and work fast to make it work.

Day 1
On Friday we had five people coming over for dinner and drinks (and a go round with Playstation Sing Star). I spent all day cleaning. We have been very busy in the last couple of weeks, not having had time to do any sort of cleaning, and thus the house looked like a complete dump. I had no time at all to even think about the table setting until after I had showered and made myself look reasonable presentable which was indeed ten minutes before our guests arrived.

What did I do? Threw on a wrinkly, albeit clean, table cloth, put the tulips we got in the supermarket two days earlier in the center of the table, rumamged through my candle stash and found four blue floating candles that I put in small water filled glasses. I accompanied that with blue linen napkins from my mother and whiteand blue china. Once the food was on the table and the lights were dim nobody could see that the linens were not ironed and it came together looking quite sophisticated and classy.





Day 2
We had two guests coming over. The day was spent shopping for food and going to see our godchildren to give them their Easter presents. So again, no time for planning.

What did I do? Well, I did get up early so that I could wash the table cloth from the day before. It was dry an hour before the guests arrived so I had just enough time to iron it. I used the same flowers as the day before and added a strand of brown and rose coloured beads around the vase. I found matching paper and punched out little hearts that I scattered along the center of the table. I folded the white linen napkins to make them look a little more interesting and stuck the cutlery in the pocket. I tied some ribbon around the plain white candles to dress them up a bit and then used all white china. This made for a very clean and simple look that let the food (which was fabulous) shine and take all the attention.





My two random tips:

• Use linen or cotton napkins instead of paper. It's a more eco friendly alternative and it gives a more luxurious feel.
• Give fresh flowers new water every day to make them last longer during holidays. This way you don't have to get new ones if you are having several parties.

To journal or not to journal

First off, I just realised I forgot to write out the journaling of the layout in my last post. What an airhead thing to do, as it was pretty much the most important thing in that layout. *tsk tsk*

So here's the deal. The LO is based on my names, Linda Marie, and has one word that tells a fact about me for each letter of those names. You will feel a little confused when you read it because the letters will not match the words all the time. The reason for this is because I wrote it in my mother tongue, which is Swedish, and have had translate it into English. So I ask for your forgiveness for that.

L is for the love of life I feel when I am around the people I love. I is
for my intuition that I always trust. N is for the careful attention I always
feel forced to apply to everything I do. D is for the slipped disc I have had
two times too many in my life. A is for how different I feel sometimes. M is for
migraine that torments me. A is for responsible which I have been for as long as
I can remember. R is for rose which is one of my favourite flowers. I is for
infertility that changed my life plans in a both bad and good way. E is for
Ellie that is my pet name by my darling Bumbi.

Heck, for my Swedish readers, here is the original journaling.

L är för den livsglädje jag känner när jag är med dem jag älskar. I är för
min intuition som jag litar på i alla lägen. N är för den noggrannhet som jag
känner jag måste tillämpa jämt och ständigt. D är för diskbråck som jag har haft
två gånger för mycket i mitt liv. A är för hur annorlunda jag känner mig ibland.
M är för migrän som plågar mig. A är för ansvarsfull vilket jag varit så länge
jag kan minnas. R är för rosor som är en av mina favoritblommor. I är för
infertilitet som ändrade mina livsplaner på gott och ont. E är för Ellie vilket
jag kallas av min älskade lilla Bumbi.

Speaking of journaling, this girl I know has written quite the excellent post about journaling on your scrapbooking layouts. Check out Liv's blog.

Again, with the colour pop

I stumbled across yet another colour pop tip and this one I liked so much that I had to put it here. It's a live video, and be warned - the sound is horrible, that shows from start to finish how to edit a photo to bring out the colour without getting "lobster people", lol.

Check it out!

Colour pop tip

I found an article that presented a great way of making the colours of your photo pop in Photoshop and thought I would share. A quick and easy way of doing it is using hue/saturation. This way is a little more work but looks beautiful.

1. Duplicate layer and set the blending mode to multiply. Set the opacity to 15%.
2. Duplicate layer again and set the blending mode to soft light. Set the opacity to 20%.

The first layer will make the colours stronger and the second layer will up the contrast.

Go ahead and try it and let me know what you think!