Green Horned Unicorn

Caden Sports Superstar

Today, this handsome little man turns eight.

Photo taken last summer at the Grand Canyon.

My darling nephew has grown into such a sweet and caring boy who above all things, loves his sports. Soccer, baseball, basketball and football are all on the roster for this talented guy. As part of his birthday present from Nate and me, I created this fun poster filled with sports quotes and icons.

I developed my poster design skills while taking the Art of Poster Design Class by Jessica Sprague. In class, we created a poster similar to this, but I changed it to a sports theme for my cute nephew. While I haven’t made it through all the course content yet, I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve learned so far.

And while we’re on the topic of Caden and sports, I thought I’d share a sports themed book I wrote and designed as a present for him this past Christmas. You may recall the princess book I designed for my niece the prior year. Well, Caden was slightly envious of the book all about his sister and asked me if I could write one about him too. So being the awesome aunt that I am, that’s exactly what I did!

I wrote my storyline and then designed the book in Photoshop, using (mostly) supplies from Creativity by Crystal. I uploaded the finished book to Shutterfly to have it printed. I'm unable to share the Shutterfly link here because I wanted to blur out his full name on the cover, first page and last page. So I've loaded the pages images into Typepad's new gallery viewer, which you can view by clicking through the thumbnails at the top. While it's not as slick and seamless as viewing on Shutterfly, it saved me from creating a mile-long post full of images. 

 

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Note, I've noticed the images are a little slow to load, which is probably user error. I didn't take the time to optimize the images for the web, so they're slightly larger than they would normall be. Lesson learned for next time!

Happy Birthday to my favorite little man! :)

Frequency Change Approved: An Exploration of Aviation Photography

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, "frequency change approved" is a phrase used by Air Traffic Controllers, granting an aircraft permission to switch radio frequencies. It’s also the name of a blog Nate started last year. While he hasn’t been active on the blog much in recently, I really like the name - so I stole it. Now before you get upset, I stole the name to use on a project - a project I was creating for him!

For his main gift this year, I created a photo book, using imagery Nate captured throughout 2011. I may have mentioned it before, but Nate is an aspiring aviation photographer. He’s relatively new to it & doesn’t have any fancy equipment, yet many of his photos can hang in the mix against those with more experience and more expensive cameras and lenses. Yes, my boyfriend awesome :)

The official name of the book is, “Frequency Change Approved: An Exploration of Aviation Photography”. I love this book. Even if I had not made it, I’d want to buy a copy. But then again, I’m a total aviation nerd.

This project was one of my best as far as trickery and deception go. I actually worked on this at night, often with Nate nearby. I sneakily downloaded many of the photos from his Flickr account and then nonchalantly asked him for larger images of some of photos, telling him I was going to create art projects for our walls (which I do intend to do, so it wasn't a complete lie!).

There were so many images that I ended up spending hours sorting them into categories and rating them in Bridge. The 4 and 5 star winners went into the book (sorry 3 stars, there just wasn’t enough space). Sorting the images and deciding how to group them in the book was by far the hardest part. Once I had that down, I uploaded them and began to fill up page after page.

I created the book using Blurb's Bookify software and was very satisfied with the program. I'm not a fan of downloading one-off software onto my computer, but something that works as easily as this is well worth it. It saved me a lot of time (as opposed to working online) and worked pretty much flawlessly through the entire process.

Here are a few of the finished pages:

I must say, when the printed copy arrived in the mail, I squealed with joy - the book was perfect! From the semi-gloss cover to the upgraded luster paper, it was exactly what I expected (which if you know me at all, you know I set the bar really high). In fact, I was so satisfied with the quality that I’m going to order my Holiday Memories 2011 album through Blurb as well.

If you'd like to look through the full-version of the book (I'd highly suggest it!) you can view it here on Blurb or via the slideshow below.

Frequency Change Approved by Photographed by Nathan Hennessy | Make Your Own Book

Thanks for stopping by and taking a peek at Nate's present (and letting me brag just a little bit)!

Greg + Molly - An Engagement Album

Last week was a little rough - in more ways than one. On Monday, I was excited for a fresh new week and the exciting things it would bring. I had lots of plans, including attending a Diamondbacks playoff game (with amazing seats) and more importantly, flying home to attend my sister's bachelorette party and wedding shower. 

But, it seems fun and excitement were not in the cards for me. Long story short, I ended up being very sick and missed work and the playoff game. By Thursday, I was on the mend (or so I thought) and still hopeful to make it back home. Friday I woke up sick (again) and after a trip to the doctor was diagnosed with upper respiratory infection AND a sinus infection. If that were not enough, the doctor strongly advised against travel. Since I know the misery of flying with sinus issues, and the fact I didn't want to risk making others ill, I had to stay in Arizona and miss my sister Molly's special weekend.

To say it was a MAJOR BUMMER would be a gross understatement.

But, if you look hard enough, you can find a silver lining in anything - even being sick and missing out on family events. What is that silver lining, you may wonder? Well, I had plenty of free time to play on my computer. You see, one perk of being a digital scrapper is that you can scrap in bed. Which is precisely what I did! I figured if I couldn't be there for my sister, I was certainly going to make her something meaningful and memorable.

The results? Pretty cool, if you ask me! While being cooped up, I was able to put together and album to house Molly and Greg's engagement photos. The beautiful photos you will see were taken by my talented cousin Jill, of Jill Riese Photography.  

Here are a few of my favorite spreads from the album:

To create the album, I used the Curated album kit, a collaboration between Kitschy Digitals and Paislee Press. I embellished the album using lots of other goodies from Kitschy Digitals. 

I created all of the pages in Photoshop and uploaded the final layouts to Shutterfly, using their custom path to create the book, which is being printed as I type! 

You can see the full album below. Please take a peek and amire the lovely couple and the amazing photography! Oh, and the cute book too :)

Click here to view this photo book larger

Although the week didn't turn out as planned, I think I managed to salvage what would have been a lost week and turn it into something somewhat positive. I hope in doing so, I created a special memory for Molly & Greg.

Curated - A Digital Family Album

As most of you know, I LOVE the yummy goodness Danielle Thompson creates for her Kitschy Digitals line. A few months ago, Danielle teamed up with Liz Tamanha of Paislee Press to create a collaboration album kit called Curated. It's kitschiness meets minimalism. And, wow, is it fun! Just this week, the kit is available at JessicaSprague.com, although I purchased my copy here when it was first released.

After I purchased the kit, I was itching to do something with it, but didn't have anything in particular in mind. I did however, have on hand a batch of beautiful photos of my sister's family, shot and edited by my cousin of Jill Riese Photography. They were perfect to use with the Curated kit! Take a peek at the first few pages of the book:

I love the overload of kitsch balanced out by the minimalism. It's such a fun combination. To take a look at the entire album, click play. To view a larger version, click the link below.

Click here to view this photo book larger

The pages on the left came as is, and i didn't really change or add to them. The pages on the right, I created using filler templates, and even altering some of the primary template pages.

Another product new in store today at JS.com is this lovely template by Linda of In the Making Design. I created a New Years tribute to Nate using one of my favorite photos of us. Click on the image for credits.

That's it for today! Happy Monday :)