#happilycreating

This year for Simon's birthday I decided it would be fun to make a card for him out of a picture of him and Ivy.  But of course we had to make room for Ivy getting her art on too!!!  So this is what we created!

In essence we turned a photo into a colouring page.

I had seen this idea on pinterest but searched for an age for a decent tutorial.  In the end I played around and figured out a simple way to do it on the free editing program Gimp.  I hope you find this helpful.

I have a wonderful Harry Potter loving friend who is always the first to bake loveliness for all her friends.  I wanted to make a little something to celebrate her birthday, and let her know how much she is valued.  

When we set about decorating Ivy's bedroom I had this idea of a mobile/light thing!  I really wasn't sure what I wanted but knew I wanted to use maps (as we all know I am obsessed) and loved the idea of origami, so it seemed the logical idea to combine the two!  

We don't have much outside space.  Boo!  But that doesn't stop us spending lots of time playing in it!  We have had great fun over the years acquiring things for planting in.  From Tires to paint tins our little garden - we love our little eclectic space. 

We love getting the children involved in making thank you letters.  This year we had lots of fun getting them to pose for the photo and then letting them dictate to us how they wanted to say thanks. 

They really enjoyed posing for the photo and got very into the idea pulling lots of funny faces (the foster children's faces have been blurred) 

I took the photo just on the playroom carpet, then cut them out using the free select tool on Gimp ( my tip, zoom in as close as you can, before you lose sight of what the object it - and go slow!)  Then inverted the selection (go to select, click invert) and then add an alpha channel to the layer (go to layer, then transparency, then click add alpha channel) Then click delete to get rid of the background the background. You can then move the image onto any background you like.  I placed them on a chalkboard background, added the balloons and letters in the text.  When drawing the balloons I used the dissolve feature on the brushes.  The fonts I used were - In balloon Grutch Shaded and in letter, a song for jennifer.