#happilycreating

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Colouring Pages from Photos

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.

Firstly import the photo you want to use into gimp.  I used this lovely shot from christmas.

Once you have the photo imported into Gimp go to colours on the top menu bar and then  hit desaturate from the drop down menu.  Choose from Lightness and hit OK.  This will turn your image black and white.

Next go to filters on the top menu, and go down to artistic on the drop down menu, and then click photocopy on the new menu.

A new pop up menu will appear.  Set your mask radius is at 13, set sharpness and black all the way up, and percent white is below 1, mine was at 0.3.  Make sure preview is selected so you see, and then play around and make slight adjustments for your photo.

When you are happy, press OK.

It really is that simple.  

We printed it out and mounted it on a card.

Ivy then went wild with the pens (perhaps coloured pencils may have been a better option as to see the original picture through.)

A lovely easy 5 minute craft.

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Harry Potter cake

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.  

Harry Potter cakes can be very amazing and intricate - I somewhat lack that still; So this simple fondant iced cake was right up my street.

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The Littlest Giraffe

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Rabbit hole cake

A fun little baking project with Ivy, using layered up chocolate cake covered in chocolate butter cream.  The idea was to make the icing look rough like a tree trunk - so perfect for icing bodgers like me!!!  A few flowers and a rabbits bum (much to Ivy's delight) and we were done.  A lovely spring/summer cake!

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Crane light

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!  

I commissioned a load of cranes made out of maps and the odd bit of purple paper to tie the light into the room as a whole.

I then, using thin white thread added them to a plain paper shade from ikea.

I added them at different lengths to add to the effect, and love how they sway in the breeze.  It was a fairly easy, but beautifully effective make which I am delighted with.

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Recycled Garden

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 sourced the tires from a local dump, the paint tins are from all our decorating (eco paints are fab and the tins are wonderfully plain).  We have even managed to get 3 very large Belfast sinks off freecycle (the amazing recycling community) from a laboratory that was being gutted.

We all like getting our hands dirty!

Who says you can't be frugal and green! 

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Thank you

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.

I hope this gets your creative juices going!