The dress

It has been a few weeks since I last posted. During this time I've been busy with work during the week and making and adjusting the pattern for my dress to wear to the formal dinner on 24 June 2017 over the weekends.

Last night we attended the Gala Dinner of the RSL (Queensland Branch) 2017 State Congress at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. I finished hemming the dress a little over an hour before I needed to leave.

Here is the completed dress:

 

These were taken at the end of the night as I couldn't convince my husband to take them earlier as he felt odd taking a photo of me from the back, although, I wanted to make sure I had a front and a back view of the dress, as well as a picture of my hair and he understood this.

I wish that I had made the dress a little longer at the front, otherwise was quite happy with how it turned out. The worst thing with the dress is people following me kept treading on the train. Note to self: consider expected event environment before choosing a dress style next time.

I found the satin fabric more difficult to work with than the sequin fabric, which I didn't expect, as I thought it would be the other way round. Everywhere I look now I see sparkles from the sequins where the fabric was cut. It's a bit like when you use glitter, you think you cleaned it all up only to find more. 

I was due to have my foils done on my hair so decided an up-style would be good for the  evening to keep me hair out of my face and food. The lovely ladies (Trista and Becky) from Hair with Attitude did a fabulous job with my hair. 

We enjoyed a three course meal followed by the Australian Queen Tribute Show.

Dressmaking project

I have a formal event to attend at the end of the month and thought I would give making a formal dress a go. Here is the dress I plan on making:

 


and the fabric I plan to use:

So long as it works out I'll post the finished product in about a month's time.

Providing emphasis to the journalling and the photo in PSE

Another technique from My Corner Online this time demonstrating how to create a drop down journalling box to provide emphasis to your journalling as well as the photo. I think this technique would be great when creating recipe pages. Here is my page:

Credits: background paper: maitri_greens_paper7.jpg; Fonts: Beyond The Mountains (large text) and Baby Boston(journalling).

Tinting and converting to black & white in PSE

Completed another lesson provided by Hummie on My Corner Online and forgot to post. My page for this technique was based on photos taken on ANZAC day this year as I thought they would lend themselves well to tinting. In this class I learnt about virtualPhotographer, a free plug-in to PSE by optikVerve Labs, that gives a number of tinting options.

I used techniques from the clipping mask tutorial (Lesson 1) and combined them with the tinting so that I was able to keep some areas of my photos in colour.

Credits: Photos and background by Justina Friedrich. Fonts: 5th grade cursive (title) and Vivala (journalling). Photos tinted using virtualPhotographer.

2017 Mother's Day makes

In my last post I mentioned that I had spent time finishing projects to post to my Mum for Mother's Day. Since Mother's Day has now passed and Mum has received her gift I will post my creations. 

A couple of years ago Mum and I decided that I would make her a pair of nice cotton knit PJs each Mother's Day as it is often difficult, particularly where they live, to find something different. I purchased the fabric from Spotlight and used the same pattern for the ones I posted in April. I simply fell in love with the colour and could match a solid and a pattern to make a lovely set of PJs, suitable to wear all day.

Whenever there is an event requiring a card I dip into my scrapbook supplies and make one. The inspiration for this years Mother's Day card I found on Pinterest and is from Splitcoast Stampers.

 

Usually, the hardest part in card making for me is choosing a design and a colour theme. This time I wanted something architectural to go with the fabric theme. once I chose the patterned paper resembling a tile pattern the rest just came together.

I also included some herbal teas from T2 - Liquorice Legs and Mint Mix for Mum to try.

Scrapping to a theme

Every Thursday, My Corner Online posts a word for the themed Thursday challenge. The theme on 4 May was 'snow'. I didn't have time last weekend to get to my scrap-booking as we spent most of Saturday out and Sunday I needed to finish a project to post to my mum for Mother's Day tomorrow. But I did know exactly which photos I wanted to use. When we visited the US last year we drove the Going-to-the-sun Road in Glacier National Park. On reaching the highest point on the road, Logan Pass, it began to snow. We also were lucky to see a mother bear and her cub through the snow. Here is my page:

Credits: Photos by Justina & Glen Friedrich; Paper is KME_Snowbound_Paper_Special; Paperclip is Blind_annandandy_hardware06 and the fonts used are End To End (title) and fox in the snow (journalling).

Digital scrapbook techniques class

Working through an online digital scrap-booking class provided by My Corner Online. You can find many classes under the Tutorials menu.

Just finished the Blending Text into Background class using a photo I took whilst staying with my parents near Kempsey.

Credits: Photos: Justina Friedrich; Paper: BG_darkgreen.jpg from Bloomburst Backgrounds by Elizabeth Weaver (DSP); Journal tag: TCO_Template_Index Card.png (modified); Pattern on Journalling tag: cb_ps_atthefair-patterntiles using cb_atthefair-grunge3; Font: Stencil Standard (Title); Arial Rounded MT Bold (journalling) 

Finally!

It has taken some time but I have finally decided to document my hobbies.

Today I finished some PJs for myself, I saw this lovely bears in the wood print and it reminded me of our journey last year visiting National Parks in Canada and the USA.

I used Butterick pattern B5432. I have made a few sets of PJs for mum and I over the last few years. I have added my own touches to identify the front and back of the garments, which is especially helpful when you are tired. So I do recommend adding a label or some other embellishment to identify the front. 

Projects in progress

Like most crafty people I never have one project on the go. I have a long stitch of a galah amongst wattle in progress. Not enjoying it very much but half-way now and more motivated to complete it. Once it is done I will start another needlework project.

I have a few scrapbook albums on the go and have recently gone back to digital scrapbooking completing on-line classes from My Corner Online to improve my Photoshop Element skills. You can see my pages on flikr.

Also knitting a scarf. Now the evenings are cooler I'll have to finish it.

Have a great day!