Harry Potter Montage

This took me three days on Photoshop.  But it looks pretty cool! 

Here’s how to do it.

1) Open the picture with the shape you want to use for a pattern.
2) Press ctrl J to copy the background. Create a new layer and fill it with a color or a gradient where the two colors are really close in hue.
3) Place the color layer below the background copy layer.
4) Get the pen tool and set the option to shape. Now draw the outline of your subject. (This doesn’t have to be a perfect outline just somewhat close to the general shape of the subject.)
5) Lower the opacity of the shape layer to about 40% then lock both the shape layer and the background copy layer so you don’t accidentally make changes to them.
6) Get the type tool and click at the bottom of your image. Choose a blocky font so you will have more shape to work with and type your word or phrase.
7) Go to layer-type-convert to shape. Now go to edit-transform-warp. Now you can adjust and shape the text as you like. (You can also do this with individual letters instead of whole words.)
8) Select the layer with the individual letter then use the direct selection tool to push and pull the anchor points.
9) Keep building the words and phrases in the image.
10) For some variety by selecting the text shape layer then choose stroke in the layer style menu. Choose your color and thickness. Click OK. Then lower the opacity to 0%.
11) When you have the shape all filled merge all the text layers together. Go to layer-layer style-gradient overlay. Choose your colors.
12) Open a texture picture. Place the texture over your image. Then press ctrl + shift + U and set the blend mode to overlay.
13) Finally create a new layer set a foreground color that matches the colors you have already chosen and set the background color to #000000. Go to filter-render-clouds and set the layer to overlay and the opacity to about 40%.

*Sometimes you can’t merge the shape layer, so you have a ton of layers, and Photoshop may quit working.  To solve this, right click on a shape layer and select “group to layers”, or something like that.  You can then drag all the shape layers into the group.  Right click on the group heading and select merge group.  The layers will all be glued together, and take up lots less space.

Pie, Quilling, Etc.

Yesterday we raked and dumped leaves for nearly two hours.  After that we went to the Smiths pie party.  It was way fun to see all the people from the 17th ward.  Now I totally miss it!!!

Along with raking and eating pie, I quilled a paper necklace.  It took nearly three hours, but doesn't it look so good?  Thank you to Grandma for the beads!! :) 

Hope you all have a wondrous week!

P.S Be sure to check next Sunday, it’s Fall Break this week, so there should be a good post! :)

Fall Break

Sorry it’s been so long since I posted.  I don’t feel like retracing all the things we’ve done, so I’m just going to pick up with where we are.  If you want to see what we’ve been doing before this, check out my Mom’s blog.

Ahh, Fall Break has been soooooo nice.  On Thursday we cleaned up the basement and I had a sleepover with Rachel and Becca to help them get ready for their Harry Potter party. 

On Friday we bottled a ton of pears.

Mark and I went to Rachel’s Harry Potter party that night.  Someone *Mark* brought the camera and didn’t take any pictures, but Rachel has some, so I’ll have to get them from her.  The party was soooo fun.  She cooked all day and we had a start of term feast to start off the party.  I had chicken, french fries, jello, mashed potatoes, a roll, apple pie, chocolate truffles, lots of jelly beans, and chocolate frogs. 

It had the wizard card and a frog made of chocolate in it….. just like in the books!!  Then we had a trivia game-which I totally rocked- and then talked the rest of the time.  It was way awesome. 

On Saturday we took a drive in the mountains.  The leaves were so pretty.

We had a picnic up there, and then Mom, Dad, and Neil went to go get birthday pictures while the rest of us went to Rachel’s apartment and watched a movie.  That night Abbie and I made masquerade masks and did makeovers.  It was fun.

Hope you all have an excellent week !!

Heber Valley with 17th Ward

We met at the stake center with all the other wards at 8:00 on Monday morning.  After we talked to each other for about an hour and a half while we waited for everyone else to get there, we FINALLY loaded the buses at 9:30.  We got there and got our bunks all set up.  I was on the top bunk over Alisa. 

On the first night we were there our ward picked a tree around the amphitheater and sang Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.  It was very nice and all the other wards songs were beautiful too.

On Tuesday (I think) we went to the Challenger Course.  There were a bunch of different stations that had activities that related to life.  First we did the spiders web.  It was a giant fake spider web that was strung between two trees.  You had to get every member of your group through one of the holes without touching the tree and without touching the lines.  I think we got everyone through. 

We also did shark island.  It was a rope swing in between two aspen trees.  You were on a pretend sinking ship and you had to get the rope and swing to the door mat that was the safe island. 

My favorite thing on the Challenger Course was the high course.  First you had to climb up a fifteen foot pole with notches in it, then walk across a high wire, holding on to another wire for balance.  When you to got to the end of the high wire, there was a little platform in a tree.  A lady there would hook you up go a rope, take you off the other rope, and you would zip down the zip-line!  It was fun.

On Wednesday we went to the lake and did canoeing.  I had a canoe with Vickie and Betsy.  It was really fun!

On Thursday we had ward time and made really cute duct tape purses. 

And on Friday we had testimony meeting. 

And on Saturday, we cleaned up and went home.

Next week I will post about Girls Camp with the New Ward.

A Day “Jammed” With Fun!

Today is jam day.  We have four flats of strawberries, seven able workers, and some empty containers.  The goal is enough jam so that we can to through one every two weeks.  That’s a lot of jam!  Here are some pictures of me!

I was the sugar measurer. 

Funny pictures are awesome!

Neil loves to help Daddy!

Mashed up strawberries!  Yum!

Tada!  The finished product!

We had mac and cheese and corn for dinner.  Very tasty!  Neil helped us eat the corn.  It was pretty darn cute!

He also LOVES to pop gum bubbles!

We finally graduated from sixth grade!  Here’s Tori and I in our masks.  She made a butterfly and I made a zebra.

I am having a wonderful weekend so far, and I hope you are too!

Klutz!

This week I got to have a late over with my best friend Tori.  I was soooooooo fun!  We made friendship bracelets for two hours!  We checked out lots of different styles, and Mom taught her how to make a chevron.  After she went home at ten o’ clock, Mom and I stayed up until eleven doing friendship bracelets!  The reason I called this post Klutz is because I learned how to make friendship bracelets from a book I got from a company called Klutz, because it gives klutz’s something to do.  I also have Klutz books on sewing, twirled paper (which is how I make my twirled paper things), and battery science, and I LOVE THEM!  They are always what I do when I am bored, and so I am rarely ever bored!  If you want some good craft idea’s go get a Klutz book!  When I was at Robert’s, I saw one on Face Painting, which I am asking Mom to get me for my birthday because it looked so fun, one on Hemp Bracelets, and another that looked really, really fun is Gel Bracelets.  You take the gel that it comes with, which is four different colors, and do designs with them or put them on a mold I guess.  As you can probably tell by now, I really like making my own bracelets.  Hope you have a super-duper week!