Friday, March 21, 2014

Organized Mind

So I'm a bit of a messy person, and by a bit I mean on the regular there is stuff covering every open surface in my room in a jumbled disarray. Lately its been worse because of the additions of a metric shit ton (smaller than the American shit-ton) of VHS tapes have been strewn about the floor. Since I cleaned my room and laundried every item of clothing I own this week the one last issue was my VHS tape collection laying on the floor.

This afternoon I made a quick run to Ikea to buy just a basic floating shelf that could hold all my movies up and outta the way. And wow it worked like a charm!


 They all fit (two rows deep) on one shelf right above my bed for easy access! I like having a place to put things that fits those things perfectly, literally every inch of table-like space in my room is occupied by something that fits just right. I just have a strange need to fill in open spaces which is why I can't stop buying random, unnecessary crap.

I also bought some candles while at Ikea because they were all super cute and pretty cheap, the containers were what sold me on all of these even though they also smell really good.


This one smells floral but not overwhelmingly so, which is the case for many flowery candles and it give me bad headaches. 


The two teacup looking candles are rose scented and I love the light scent of rose, plus once they're gone I have two cute teacups. Best of all is the butterfly one in the middle. It smells like grass and happiness and a fresh spring morning when you were 4 years old and you're dad stayed home from work that one time to take you to Camelot mini-golf. Or you know...it smells like grass. 

Anyway it feels good to sit on a bed that's been made for the first time in months and look around at everything in its right place. All my clothes folded or hanging away, my records and books tucked away, and my VHS's and DVD's organized by genre and director. It feels good to be organized for once in a very long time. 



Thursday, March 13, 2014

So...I bought a Pin Maker

Recently I...let's say I was in my right state of mind so this sounds like a great decision...bought a badge maker from Badge-a-Minit. It's great! I got the $29.99 2 1/4 in starter kit to make pins for fun/my band/FOR FUN. I've only made 2 with my own machine, but my friend also bought 2 pin machines from them. She bought a 3 inch one and and also the same starter kit I got.

These are the pins I've made so far...


The smiley face one was a practice pin and the image came with the kit but I love smileys so much, the 3" one is a prototype for my band, trying to juxtapose the harshness of the lettering to the backgrounds they're on, and the Oz pin I made because ily Oz so much what a cutie. For the last pin I made I used some pretty neat, free, internet tools to help out. 

Basically I just started with googling an image of Oz and a few heart shapes and candy hearts. Then I went to Clipping Magic  to make the images transparent. Here's what it looks like, its super easy to use.

This is a photo of my mom and dad I used to make a collage from my dad's Christmas gift. It's a really simple to use tool and this is a quick edit, but if you want to smooth out the edges of your imaged just slowly click with the red marker around the edges of the photo (I don't recommend long brush strokes for the detail work because undoing at that point is a bummer).

Then to put it all together I picked a bokeh hearts stock photo I thought contrasted well with the images I would be layering over it and used Beezmap to make a free form collage. You have to sign in with either a facebook or twitter which can be annoying but at least you don't have to make yet another account. So yeah just click make a collage and then select "free form".

The actual interface is super easy, they have background colors to choose from if you don't have an image you want to use as a background. They have a "move back" and "bring forward feature that are really simple to move the layers around. And in the end you can download it and do whatever to it. 

So if you wanna make collages for pins like I do or just for fun these are really helpful because I know photoshop and all that can be confusing. I like making gift and b-day cards and whatnot on here its always a big hit! :)