I Did It! I Did It! I Did It!

I’ve been trying for weeks now to figure out how to capture my sketches on Tablet so I can share them here. (I know..... you’ve waiting with bated breath! LOL) Anyway……I’m fascinated with watching time lapse YouTube videos of other people’s drawings. I figure if I’m captivated by it you would be too.

Nothing too long, just a minute or so.

I thought it would be cute.

Nice simple idea.

Easy peasy.

Not so much as it turns out.

Tablet is an android device and because of this it needs to be ‘rooted’. A fancy word that means you have to go into places the normal user shouldn’t go to unlock certain settings. (I don’t recommend doing this, you risk ‘bricking’ your device or losing things you don’t want to lose.)

But I figured if I did ‘brick’ it I could just buy a new device (’walk towards the lowercase ‘i’……) that already has the capabilities to screencast without messing about in the settings. 

So I Googled…..

And downloaded and tried and failed and Googled again and tried and failed. Called on my personal tech support and tried AGAIN and failed.

Then I found a site online that would do it for you. I broke down and paid. It was worth it. The frustration level had outweighed the nominal charge.

I now had a rooted Tablet that was working.

I did some research and found a simple screencast app, downloaded it to Tablet and thought I was all set.

Ummmmmm…….no.

The app was glitchy, only captured the first few frames and then stopped, wouldn’t play back, wouldn’t capture audio…..you get the idea.

More Googling, and trying and failing (have I mentioned I don’t react well to failure?)

Turns out you need to ‘tweak’ some of the developer options….who knew?

Sooooo……..finally I had it all set. Aaaaaand……..crash!

Uninstalled, reinstalled……well you’re getting the idea!

BUT…………. I FINALLY GOT IT TO WORK!

The sketch sux but that’s not the point. The point is I DID IT! I GOT IT TO WORK!

Now I just have to polish my editing skills (and find better music!!!! LOL) 

It Doesn’t Take Much To Get Me Excited!

I’ve wanted to do this kind of binding on my journals for a while now.

I looked EVERYWHERE online to find a tutorial.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zip.

So one day I sat down and punched holes into a piece of scrap cardboard, got out some floss and a needle and proceeded to play.

(Think old fashioned sewing cards.)

It frustrated me.

How to make it look like an ‘X’ on the outside but straight on the inside to hold the signatures together.

I’m sure someone who has an analytical/mathy kind of brain wouldn’t have trouble with this at all.

But being math impaired IT DROVE ME CRAZY!

And then I got it!

Except, I didn’t write down how I did it!  LOL

But after a few more attempts (and taking notes) 

GOT IT on paper!

I’m like a kid in kindergarten whose teacher just put a gold star on my forehead!

I GOT IT! I GOT IT! I GOT IT!

Here's how I did it: 

‘X’ Binding for Hand Bound Journal

Each ‘X’ takes two signatures.

You can search YouTube if you need the directions on how to make a journal (there are tons) this is just the binding part.

It's a little unwieldy the first time but it gets easier and makes more sense once you’ve actually done it.

(Now that I've done it a few times I'm wondering why it seemed so hard, duh!)

Light Bulb Moment!

I think I’ve finally solved the problem of how to corral all my loose journal pages!

I was trolling the internet and came across this YouTube video.

This would be perfect to use for my pages because it doesn’t bind them permanently! 

Perfect!

 score and fold 

 punch holes

 add brads

 mark (inside) center of cover

 glue accordion binding to cover

 slip in journal pages

Voilá!

Many thanks to Laura at Following The Paper Trail for a great idea and tutorial!

finally made a “light box”

I’ve always wanted a light box to photograph my ‘stuff’. But the price (for what they are) just seemed too ridiculous. What to do…..? Google it of course! (I love Google!)

Most of what I found seemed a bit too intensive for what I wanted, and then I found this tutorial http://www.studiolighting.net/homemade-light-box-for-product-photography/ and ran with it.

I used a presentation foam core board (the kind you use for science fairs) so I didn’t have to do all that taping. I added two pieces of poster board. One for a ‘floor’ and one to hide the seam where the foam core meets the ‘floor’. Just use some poster putty to tack it up (if you look closely you can see the shadow of the putty at the top of the poster board in three spots) tape the other end to the ‘floor’ piece, so it curves. I don’t need a top.

The shop lights were $6.08 apiece at Home Depot (I only used two because the house is very bright. I was only looking for a little added light to deal with the shadows)

I used GE Reveal bulbs. (But I’m thinking of trying the Daylight bulbs suggested in the tutorial.)

It’s easy to set up and break down and it’s easy to store, just slide it into a closet and clip the lights on a shelf.

Voilá!



Thank you, Studio Lighting.net!

And here are a few shots using the light box.