DIY Camera-Themed Party Favors

August 31, 2015 ElaineDIY & Crafts

This past weekend was my friend’s bridal shower! As a first-time bridesmaid, I had no idea what to expect, but it turned out really well and our bride was overjoyed!

She loves photography, so her entire bridal shower was photography-themed. We had a scrapbook, a “caption this” game, a giant polaroid frame photobooth, and camera puns galore (one of my favorites: a “Say Cheese Platter” of various cheeses, nuts, and crackers)

I made the guest favors for the event, and I wanted to share this fun DIY idea: Photo-balms! (get it? like photobomb?!)

Materials needed:

Kraft paper favor bags (I got them at Michael’s)
Camera stamp (mine is from The Plaid Barn)
Alphabet stamp set (mine is from Oh Hello Friend)
Stamp pad (I’ve had this one since I was a kid)
Washi Tape (mine is from Daiso)
Lip Balms

A really easy way to turn alphabet stamps into word stamps is to just tape the letters together! Here I have two: one says “phot” and the other says “balm”. I only have one alphabet set, so I had to do the second O in “photo” separately.

Stamp the words, then the camera!

Stuff your lip balm into the bag at a diagonal so it fits snugly. Then, fold the top part of the favor bag over and secure with washi tape.

All done! :)

August Wallpaper Roundup

August 6, 2015December 2, 2015 ElaineResources

This was really fun to put together for July, and it looks like there are some really awesome August designs popping up in the creative blogosphere again! Here is a collection of the prettiest wallpapers for this month :)

Florabunda for desktop and mobile, by Ban.do via Brit + Co.

August Calendar for desktop and mobile, by The Blog Market

Hand-lettered wallpapers for desktop, from DesignLoveFest

Watermelon Wallpaper for desktop, by Clementine Creative

Live Life to the Fullest for desktop and mobile, by Something Peach

This last one was actually posted last month, but I somehow missed it. It’s too pretty not to share, so it’s going in this month’s roundup!

Owl Tech

July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 ElaineResources

This post is inspired by the Cortex Podcast — in Episode 1, hosts Myke Hurley and CGP Grey delve into a serious discussion on the art and philosophy of device home screens. I devoured this episode, as many of the points Grey brought up were similar or identical to ones that had run through my mind… (of COURSE the Phone app and the Messages app can’t be next to each other, THEY ARE BOTH GREEN!!)

I was recently prompted by Toffer to show my home screen, and thought I’d go ahead and write up a post about the tech devices I use. So, in the key of Lifehacker: I am Owl Ink, and this is how I work!

MOBILE

Device: 16GB iPhone 5s, Gold. December 2013.

Wallpaper: A photo I took on a foggy drive down Highway 152, edited with VSCOcam.

Applications:

Before I begin, I must credit Toffer with the simple yet brilliant “emoji as folder titles” idea. Thanks Toffer! :D

Dock: Messages, Safari, Phone, Music. Sorry Grey, couldn’t get behind the 3-icon dock.

Screen 1: Calendar, Clock, Weather, Settings, Mail, Camera, Photos, YouTube, Google Maps, Overcast, Trello, and a folder containing: Yelp, Mint, Tip Calculator, Venmo, Sleep Time, Google Authenticator

Screen 1 holds my “daily life” things. Honestly, I don’t need the weather app, but I put it there for aesthetics as I think it looks nice to have some blue in the top row.

Screen 2: Facebook, Feedly, Pinterest, Strava, and four folders.

Folder 1 is camera/images related: Instagram, VSCOcam, Hyperlapse, InstaSquarer, InstaCollage, Lumify
Folder 2 is chat related: Snapchat, Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Twitter
Folder 3 is reading related: Goodreads, Quora, Bible, Alien Blue, Vocabulary Quizzer, and iBooks
Folder 4 is Apple related: App store, Notes, Apple Maps, FaceTime, Health, Calculator. Apple things I never use are buried deep in this folder.

Screen 2 holds my diversions, hobbies, and distractions. Since I only have two rows on screen 2, I could technically fit everything onto one screen. However, I tried it and immediately felt claustrophic. I think I’ll be sticking with two screens, as I like the action of switching between the two, and I like seeing my wallpaper!

DESKTOP

Devices: 13″ Asus UL30A Notebook. June 2010.

27″ Samsung LED Monitor. June 2015.

Wallpaper: A beautiful space wallpaper that you can find here

Notable Applications:

Rainmeter: Desktop customization tool for making your desktop pretty + functional!

I love playing around with Rainmeter! The skins I am currently using are:

Elegance: Clock, Date & Time
Enigma: Album art, Volume control, Systems monitor, Notepad

Rocketdock: Hover-over application launcher that mimics Apple’s menu bar, but for Windows.

My docked items include browsers (Chrome and Firefox), music players (iTunes and Spotify), graphic design programs (Photoshop and Illustrator), and basics like documents folder, etc.

I like unobtrusive icons, so I make grayscale versions of all my icons in Photoshop and deleted the icon caption. As Grey and Myke discussed, the entire point of the icon is to tell me what app it is!

BetterDesktopTool: Exposé and Spaces for Windows

Though I do like the Windows 7 Alt-Tab view, sometimes it’s just easier to hover. I set my upper right corner as the hover point to show all open windows.

The Spaces function is great when I’m trying to keep my creative work (Photoshop, images, etc) and diversions (Facebook, email) on separate grounds.

F.lux: Screen color adjuster that dims based on daily sunset time.

Adjusting the colors to yellow hues instead of blue hues makes screens easier on the eyes, and supposedly improves your sleep!

Thanks for reading this long post about my devices, hope you found this interesting! Personally, I really enjoy seeing what tools people use, which is why I’ve taken such a liking to podcasts like Cortex and Dot Grid. It’s quite intriguing!

Watercolor Bouquet

July 24, 2015 ElaineDIY & Crafts

Recently, I’ve been getting into watercolor painting! I was given a palette as a birthday gift in high school, along with some brushes. While I played around with it occasionally in college, I didn’t have as much time as I hoped to work on new paintings.

This past weekend, one of my friends and I decided to dust off our paints, watch some YouTube tutorials, and try to pick up new watercolor techniques.

The video we watched ended up being WAY too advanced for us… our “roses” look nothing like the instructor’s, but we still had fun trying to paint something that looked like a rose! At some point we gave up on following the video and just went off on our own, adding bits of purple and orange here and there.

I took some progress photos while we were painting, and thought I’d share!

Materials used:

Loew Cornell 36 Color Watercolor Palette
Robert Simmons No. 5 Brush
Strathmore Cold Press Watercolor Paper – 140 lb

Review: Levenger Gemstone Green

July 15, 2015March 21, 2016 ElainePen & Paper Reviews

When I was a kid, my mom bought me these plastic stick-on gems for me to do crafts with, and I am surprised by how often I’ve run into practical uses for them since then… like my first ink review!

As a relative newcomer to fountain pens, my ink collection is still pretty small. I started off with the standard colors: one black and one blue-black (reviews to come), and I was contemplating my next “fun color” purchase.

While I was browsing shelves at a thrift store, I was pretty happy to find two bottles of Levenger ink! I didn’t know if there was anything I needed to be cautious of in terms of buying used inks, but they were 50 cents each and a $1 risk purchase seemed reasonable to me.

Levenger Gemstone Green is a dark emerald ink that is primarily green, but with a slight turquoise hint to it. It is definitely a cool green, as opposed to a warm green, and made me think of spruce trees and other evergreens.

If you really layer it on, you can even get a bit of reddish purple sheen — kind of like the new Emerald of Chivor! (but sans the sparkle)

The ink writes nicely in a Lamy Safari with a fine nib, on Maruman Mnemosyne paper. However, I did notice a little bit of feathering and show-through, so if it feathers on Mnemosyne then I wouldn’t try my luck with cheaper paper.

It doesn’t shade very much in a fine nib– the color is pretty consistent throughout the words. However, put it in something like a Pilot Parallel and that’s when some real shading action comes out to play.

Unfortunately, it does not play nice with dip pens… at least, not straight from the bottle (not sure how it would be with a bit of gum arabic mixed in to thicken it).

As a mini experiment, I dropped it into a glass of water to see what it would look like! You can really see the teal color emerge as the ink begins to dissolve.

The full review!

Finally, just for fun, I made a collage inspired by Gemstone Green :)

Gemstone Green Mood Board — Dioptase Gemstone | Emerald Green Walls | Forest Watercolor | Emerald Green Silk | Vintage Vogue Poster

Other recent emerald green ink reviews:

Visconti Green, by Alt.Haven. This green is quite similar, and I always love her reviews!
J. Herbin Emerald of Chivor, by Ed Jelley. Includes a stunning video! I’m lucky that I’ve gotten to play around with this ink, as a sample bottle was shipped to JetPens HQ. Can’t wait for more reviews on it!