A little from column a, a little from column b…

I thought I might combine two topics into one post today, the lovely Lola Nova you see, put me in mind of people who can “pull off” yellow hair, and Kate & Claire would like to learn how to do photo mosaics… so…

I present a photo mosaic of yellow haired beauties!

I used picnik, because I luffs picnik, and although I have a premium account, you can make a mosaic like the one below without paying a cent. You can also use the mosaic maker over here for free.

Go to picnik, click ‘collage’.

Under the ‘Basic’ tab, click on the last option, the four large squares together like a window, you can select how many columns & how many rows you would like at the bottom of the menu on the left, obviously here I’ve gone with 3 columns & 2 rows. You can mess about with the spacing too there, background colour, proportions or “Kookiness” which means throwing the pics out of line & rotating them randomly.

I had already uploaded the pictures I wanted to use, if you haven’t yet just click “Upload Photos” down the bottom there & choose your pictures from your computer. Hold down the crtl key to select multiple pictures at once.

Drag & drop your pictures from the bottom row into your collage. Depending on the proportions of your pictures & the proportions of the boxes in your collage, a vital piece of the picture may be cut off in this step – to move your picture all you have to do is right click on it & hold the button down & move it until it’s in the right position.

In my Punky collage I edited each pic separately & added the text for the months & just uploaded them like this, for this one though, I added the text to the finished collage.

When you’ve got your collage looking how you want it, click done on the right at the top. You’ll be in the ‘Create’ tab, click ‘Text’, then click in the text box to write. After you’ve added the text you can keep it selected & use the Text Properties box to change the colour, size or font.

To rotate the text, click on the circle at the centre top of the white box surrounding it. When you’ve added all your text, click the Save & Share tab up the top and… Save & Share!

Nothing too earth shattering there I know, but it’s fun!

Crazy Collage Cupboard.... Craft?

So here is that other "thing" I bought yesterday. It was $10 and I couldn't resist, even though it had that delightful woodgrain laminate....

I didn't think until I got home about how I would actually get rid of that lovely laminated wood look... a quick google search revealed laminate paint to me - voila! 'Problem solved' I thought, I'll just paint it a lovely colour, probably red, as that is the colour I like to paint things... then I rang the local hardware stores & was told that the necessary primer was $47, the paint itself was $47 & they only had it in white.

Phooey.

I would not be spending almost $100 to paint my $10 bargain white. I would not.

So I sulked for a while & then.... remembered these;

Some time ago I revamped a tellie cabinet we found in the garabage room of our apartment block by decopaging pictures from 1950s magazines onto it, then, a couple of years after that, I did the same with a dodgey IKEA coffee table... So when I remembered I still had a stash of vintage mags I was doing nothing with....

I spent from 2pm to 9.30pm working on this - refused to make dinner, so The Boy & The Punk had to fend for themselves. I loved doing it all, was working with that crazy energy you only get when you're really excited by the idea for a project. Had to ride down & get some varnish for the final couple of coats this morning, if there were such a thing as an all-night hardware store, I would have been there...

I just LOVE it. I keep looking at it, which is easy since it is now pride of place in the loungeroom, and smiling. It has such a nice feel to it, in more ways than one. It feels nice, it feels "familiar" in that the images all over it have already been absorbed into the collective conciousness, but it also feels nice in the tactile sense, the different levels of paper & the satin varnish finish is lovely.

What do you think?