Dragons, Paczki and Packing

Happy Fat Tuesday!  Or, around here, Happy Paczki Day!

I had to stop at Buckeye Donuts to pick up a receipt. Darn.  So I had to get a Paczki, since it's Mardi Gras and all. The receipt wasn't ready, so I have to make another trip tomorrow morning.  Double darn.

And Happy New Year!

The Dragon team from Crystal's Tai Chi school.  It was a fun show. They performed 30 shows over the past few days. The New Year holiday keeps them busy!

The year of the Snake....Not sure what it means, but so far I think it's lucky for me: We left this Chinese New Year celebration on Sunday night, and I found a $20 bill! 

It's a busy week of anticipation around our house.  Vacation is coming, so most everything we do is in preparation for packing and traveling.  As I expected, between getting over a cold and the travel plans, I haven't accomplished any scrapping, so you won't see much work around here for the next couple of weeks.  I like my house to be pre-vacation clean , including my scrap room.  Now that it's clean, I don't want to make a mess.

So for now, we're just living life, and I thought I'd share a few Instagram pictures from the past week.  As I've mentioned before, I'm trying to use Instagram more regularly this year, and I'm hoping for good enough wireless reception at our resort to be able to post a few photos from Mexico.  If you'd like to follow along, I am Rldelo on Instagram. Also, you can now follow your Instagram feed from a desktop computer; Just log-in to your account to see that feed.

Until then, this is about as exciting as it gets around here.  Gas station news.  Anyone else as saddened by this news as I am?!?!

One last picture for today.  I have several posts to do regarding photo apps, but this one is quick and easy to share. The InstaWeather app will add a weather overlay to any of your pictures.  I paid the $1 for the pro version, which gave me several options for placement of the weather info onto the picture.  

This one worked perfectly on this picture I snapped last week.  I pass this sign at an art building on my way to work every day, and I finally got out of the car to take a picture.  Anyway, the weather overlays can be placed wherever they fit best on the picture, in several different formats.  Lots of fun for a Project Life picture, don't you think?

I'll get back to the scrapbooking related posts later this month, but thanks for reading today.  Have a great rest of the month!

February Counterfeit Kit

Welcome to February! A new month means a new Counterfeit Kit Challenge. 

Update: I just rearranged this post's text and pictures this morning, so I'm back in action.  My complaint for the day: Blogger is pretty user friendly from a desktop, but the Blogger app for mobile devices, frankly, stinks.

Now on to the kit!

This month's inspiration kit is Chasing Pavements from Scraptastic Kit Club.

The inspiration kit.....full of greens and blues.

I had none of the Chasing Pavements contents, but I had some very similar papers, so I went from there. I've put together a lot of stuff (you might actually find a kitchen sink in there somewhere) just because I couldn't stop pulling these blues and greens from my stash. I used my scrap bin and Cricut to make a bowl of arrows and confetti, too.

My kit - papers are mostly from years of collecting Jillibean Soup, with a few other pieces thrown in there, too. I guess those colors have been popular for awhile! I pulled scraps from my red, yellow and orange scrap bins to cut the arrows with my Cricut, a counterfeit of that sheet of Studio Calico arrows.  I added lots of other bits and pieces that included the colors of the inspiration kit, so I have plenty of stuff to work with this month!

I usually pick pics first, then kit. But this month i have no idea what pictures I'm going to scrap. That's pretty scary for me!  But my biggest challenge for the month? We fly to Mexico in just a few days, so I imagine this big kit will be a work in progress for months to come. Who knows, maybe it will end up being the start of my next Mexico album.

Oh, almost forgot to mention that I made my collage picture with the PhotoGrid app that I mentioned last week on a post about photo apps. Last night at 9pm, when I was in a mild panic because of some laptop issues, I had to figure out how to get my pictures into this post with just the use of my phone or iPad, and that PhotoGrid app saved my night.

I am the last stop on the Master Forger hop today, so please visit the CKC blog for this month's challenge info and the new Mr Linky page for links to all your kit work.and I'll be back later this morning to clean up/rearrange my post a bit. For now, my kit pics should be below:

Photo Apps

I don't have a "tried and true" pin to highlight this week, so I thought I'd instead focus on another hobby that's floating around my head right now.  Since I don't already have enough social media distraction in my life, I'm making an effort to get into Instagram this year.

Junior makes himself at home at the vet's office.

Maybe I'll work on adding the photo feed here on the blog.  but for now, if you're on Instagram, you can see me at RLDELO.

A little sneak for tomorrow's blog hop project :).

I've been playing with lots of photo apps this week and wanted to share a fun find from the Google Play Store.  It also looks like you can use it from a desktop computer, too.  Pixlr-O-Matic is like other photo apps, where you can apply various effects to your photos.  But it was the first one I found that includes lots of Bokeh effects - those little spots of light you may have seen on photos, sometimes in shapes and colors. If you've never noticed it, some examples are here.

I used a glittery Bokeh on this picture. My friend Jeanne pointed out these huge, really beautiful light fixtures at the restaurant where we went to lunch on Saturday.

And then if you want to get the picture into a true square, open it in Instagram and add it to your Instagram feed. 

I played with one of the Bokeh options on this picture of the gelatto case at the coffee shop at work and did the same as above (added the saved picture to Instagram). I doubt the gelatto was a booming business this week.  Brrrr......

I am not a photographer. My fanciest photo equipment is the camera on my Galaxy S3 phone.  I know very little about the mechanics or the artistic design of photography. Those points may be very evident from the pictures I posted above, I wouldn't know.  But they look pretty to me!  I'm loving playing with these apps because it's just so easy to do from the pictures I take on my phone.

And if you don't have a fancy phone, try googling for similar applications that can be used on your desktop.

If you are a fellow app junkie, here are some photo apps I've tried:

Pixlr-o-matic: The one I used above for Bokehs

Instagram: You can follow me at RLDELO!

Polamatic (for iPhone/Pad) or Polaroid Camera (in GP Store): Similar to Instagram, but more specifically creates Polaroid-type pics instead of the square pic.

Hipstamatic (Called Disposable on my iPad; Haven't used it yet, but Retro Camera looks to be the parallel app in the GP Store for my Droid): Similar to other photo apps, except you pick your camera/effects and use that same camera for a whole roll of pictures, like a disposable camera.  The fun is that when you are done with the roll, you can forward the roll of pics to Facebook or an email address, and the pictures save to your device's camera roll (or some other folder on your device, depending on how your settings).

Word Foto (App Store): You can add a word set on top of your photo. I don't have an example right in front of me, but I'll show one here later.  There are some examples online here.  I did a really cute one from a picture in Mexico last year and forgot to include it in my album, so I'll show it here when I find a way to add it to the album.

Skitch (App Store): Has some fun features to allow you to write and draw on a photo.

PhotoGrid (GP Store): This one is useful and fun! You can make a collage from your phone pictures in several different styles and add text on the photo pretty easily, too.  I did a test shot with some Junior pictures, just to show you the idea:

Aviary Photo Editor (Google Play Store): Same idea....but the fun feature is that you can add that fun Meme text that you may see on your favorite funny cat pictures.  Here's an example:

Next week I will post about more apps and fun photo stuff, including my experience with printing phone pictures.  If you have anything you think I shouldn't miss mentioning, please let me know! There are probably 100s of great apps to choose from; a quick Google search for "best photo apps" brought up lists here, here, and here just to highlight a few.  You can really get lost in all the options!

I'll be back tomorrow with this month's Counterfeit Kit blog hop. Please join us - I'll have the hop order here, and you can always find your way from tomorrow's CKC blog post.