Visual Inspiration #4 / Packaging

Side note: my semi-regular series called "# Visually Inspiring Pins" has been renamed "Visual Inspiration" because often times, my inspiration comes from places other than Pinterest. :)

One of my favorite boards on Pinterest is my 'Packaging' board. When I'm out shopping, I know that I'm so much more likely to buy something if it's packaged well than I would have been otherwise. You know what I mean--those really cute cards at Target that you don't really need, but come on they're boxed up so pretty! 

I find it so interesting how we can be drawn to something simply because of the way it's presented. If you think about it, this is an idea that can be translated in every area of life. Do you want to be the delicious smelling coconut-hibiscus candle in a plain jar that no one ever smells? Or the brightly colored one that smells just as good? Sometimes, it really is just about getting people's attention.

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Want more visual inspiration? Follow me on Pinterest or view more design inspiration posts.

4 Visually Inspiring Pins

Early early this morning (read: before 5 am), I took H to the teeny-ten-gate airport near me and sent him off back to North Carolina. And though I know in my heart that I'm meant to be in Michigan for this season of my life and he's meant to be in NC, I'm still thoroughly pouting that he's gone. To cope, I'm trying to occupy myself and my mind with anything that I can do without thinking of him. So pretty much, I've settled on Netflix and Pinterest. 

Despite my mood, I'm still (as always) gravitating towards bright, lively greens and yellows. It just feels like summer!

Something about these colors never fails to cheer me up just a little bit. Leave your Pinterest URL so I can follow you! Follow me here.

door / dress / cacti / calligraphy

5 Visually Inspiring Pins

Hi loves! Here are five photos and illustrations that I've found that have been inspiring me lately. As always, feel free to follow me on Pinterest if you like my aesthetic (link in sidebar).

(Source)

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(Source, as best I can find)

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Feel free to share your pinterest links and/or favorite pins below!

4 Gorgeous Color Palettes Inspired by Plants

Lately, as spring has been exploding all around me, I've been inspired by plants. Even when we think of nature in spring, it's always about the flowers. You know, the tulips and the daffodils and all. But I've just been enjoying the green. 

Behind my house, there's a little forest separating my street and the next street over. All through the winter, we can see the other houses, but as of the last week or two, the new leaves completely block our view. As I've been noticing and admiring those new leaves and all that lovely chlorophyll, I've been amazed by all the colors within the leaves. At a glance, they look like they're all the same color but there are all sorts of shades of green and even other tones of blues and yellows if you look closely. 

I'm using these color palettes to inspire my design, my attitude and even my writing as I work to breathe life back into this blog and into everything that I do. 

Particularly in that last palette, I just love admiring the colors. For the record, I used a color picker to take all of these colors directly from the picture. That bold purple in palette #2? That's all nature at work. How can you not feel happy looking at that + knowing that you get to live in that world!

Have a lovely day!

All images are from F L O R A. 

5 Visually Inspiring Pins

I just wanted to pop in today and share with you a few of the things that have been inspiring me lately on Pinterest. I've been using Pinterest more and more lately for various parts of my life: getting in shape, decorating a dorm room, inspiring my designs and satisfying my need for visually beautiful things. I've heard a lot of backlash against Pinterest lately about how it's a waste of time. Personally, I think it's gotten a bit of a bad rap + I'm a tried and true Pinterest fan (even if they are incorporating more ads these days). How do you feel about Pinterest?

(Oh So Beautiful Paper)

(Swan Dive)

(Source)

(Nature's Doorway)

(DesignLoveFest)

Holler at me, y'all. What's inspiring you lately? Do you think Pinterest is valuable or a waste of time?

For more lovely things, follow me on Pinterest. And leave your username with a comment so I can check yours out too!

Weekly Wishes #24

Hello loves! Happy Monday! Ew. Mondays. I saw this on Pinterest the other day and just about peed myself since I'm pretty sure that's me on Mondays. Poor lady. Side note: if you ever need a good laugh, the humor section on Pinterest is gold. Gold, I tell you. Last week, I just pitched a hissy fit because I was stressed about my move (which okay, I know isn't for like eight months, but still) and generally made everyone around me miserable. Half an hour on Pinterest? I'm just peachy. You know it's sad when Pinterest cheers you up more than friends...

Annyyyways, I'm gonna attempt to start my week off right with some of those weekly wishes. But let's recap. Last week I made two goals: successfully transition back into classes and stick with my new checklist system. I think I aced both of them! I didn't have to stay up too late with class work and I used my checklist every day but one! And since it seems like some of you are curious about this mysterious checklist system, I'll be sharing it in the next few days!

Moving on, I'm setting a few goals for the upcoming week! Firstly, I've been basically Wonder Woman since last weekend, actually getting things on my editorial calendar and written ahead of time. Someone please congratulate me. I want to continue writing posts in advance so that things can be a little more consistent around here.

I also have a project that I'm working on that I'd like to work on a lot this week. I'm making a drunk driving info site for a local law office + I've got a few more pages and some code to finish up. My goal is to finish or be at least 80% done by the end of the week!

My third and last goal (because even three goals might be more than I can handle) is to practice journaling. I go in and out of phases where I journal regularly and then not at all. All in all, I've more or less decided that journaling isn't the thing for me. I generally get impatient with it and it frustrates me to go back and look at what I wrote in the past. But with the current transitions in my life with moving and all, I think journaling is an important habit for the stage I'm currently living. I've been focusing on just taking fifteen minutes ever day or every other day to reflect on my day, not only the bad things but also the good. This week, I'd like to journal at least a page every other day.

What are your goals for the week? Do you journal?

Start Here: 6 Reasons Why I Love to Travel and You Might Too // How to Track and Organize Blogs You Sponsor (Free Resource!) // Top 10 Travel Adventures of 2013

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easy peasy photoshop: make a Pinterest-style collage

Hi everyone! Happy Tuesday! I hope you all have been resting well and enjoying your holiday weekend!

Today I'm sharing something new--my first ever Photoshop tutorial--Pinterest style! Now Photoshop can be really complicated and intimidating, but there's also some really great things you can make with really basic skills. Today we're gonna learn a little bit about 'layers' and how to resize and arrange images.

In the end, I'm going to teach you how to make a Pinterest style collage! I've made a few of these for myself recently and they are just so pretty. You can use quotes and put it on your wall or bathroom mirror. Or you can use fitness photos to keep somewhere that will motivate you! I'm sure y'all could come up with more ideas since you're such intelligent people (:



 

All photos are from my 'Destinations' board on Pinterest.

So we're gonna park on 'layers' for a moment. If you're a little familiar with Photoshop, you can skip these first basics and go to the heading about making the Pinterest-style collage.

Layers in Photoshop is like drawing on a bunch of pieces of transparent papers and then putting them on top of each other. This way you can move around or edit different parts of the pictures fairly easily.

So for instance, the first layer is usually the background, which is plain white. Then, you can put more layers of designs on top. By clicking the little eyeball, you can change which parts of the image are visible. So if you disabled the white background of a picture, it shows a checkered pattern but that means it has a transparent background.

To resize a photo, select the layer you're interested in resizing and go to Edit >> Free Transform. Then you can drag the edges of the picture to make it a different size. This tool is also a great/easy way to drag + drop your pictures.

EXPERT TIP: Watch the percentages of the width and height. You want to make them the same to make sure your picture stays proportional. To resize to a certain dimensions, you can type in the pixels in that little box in the top. Then change your other percentage to make sure it's proportional! Make sure you type in the W/H boxes not X/Y!

And now for the exciting part: making a Pinterest-style collage!

1. Open up a new file in Photoshop. The width should be whatever the width of your text area in your blog is. Mine is 640 pixels for example. The height can be anything, I'd recommend at least 900 pixels and you can crop it later.

2. Select all the pictures you want and copy-paste them into Photoshop. They will all go in separate layers--this is good!



3. In your head (or on a calculator), subtract 30 from your text area width. Then divide it by three. You can round to the nearest whole number; it doesn't have to be that exact. For example: my blog is 640-30 = 610. Divided by 3 is 203. That number is the width that you want all of your pictures to be.

4. Resize all of your photos to that width, using the method above. Don't forget your proportions! I don't want to see stretched pictures. This, below, is bad. Please don't make anyone's eyes look at this.



5. Now, rearrange your pictures (with Edit>>Free Transform) into three columns. Leave a little space between the columns and each picture. If you used my number method, you can have 15 pixels between each column, but you can just eyeball it.

6. Click the little eye next to the BACKGROUND layer. Then click the little arrow on the layer menu and click Merge Visible. And save!

Ta-da!! There you go, your own beautiful Pinterest-style collage.

I think they're prettiest when you mix up vertical and horizontal photographs but it's all up to you!

Get fancy! Make your background a different color! Do not click the little eye (step 6). Instead, select the background layer. Click the little magic wand in your tool box and select magic eraser. Make sure your tolerance box says 1. Click anywhere on the canvas. Press Shift + F5 and select a color!

Now go forth and Photoshop! If you post any to your blog, share the link here so I can see your pretty new skillz! And if you want to be super lovely, you can tweet or pin this lovely tutorial with my icons floating on your left. (:

Catching My Eye 02.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnydFmqHuVo]

This week:My sister got home from Italy♥I cooked cheesecake, all by myself! Usually, the toaster presents enough of a challenge, but not today...♥Went on a frozen yogurt date with the boy♥finished my first book of the summer♥ran many miles.

Now, for the best of the interwebs.

♥This album by Common Labor is so great. It's like rap and folk and awesomeness. Even better? Name your price.

♥Portraits of zoo animals in clothing make me smile. I'd love some postcards of these prints!



♥Skittles burgers? Oddly themed weddings? Sometime Pinterest seems to be drunk.

♥Is this real life? A vending machine that prints books.

♥Try out this recipe for salted caramel cheesecake. If I can make it, you can.



♥This lovely offbeat bouquet.

♥This post from Of Corgis & Cocktails with all things popsicles for summer.

♥Lastly, here are ten yoga poses to do in bed. At the end of the day, I love relaxing with a couple of these poses and find that they help me fall asleep faster and relax more. My favorite? Definitely happy baby.

♥YOU MAY HAVE MISSED: ReverbNation Gems♥June Book Challenge♥One for the Road [playlist]♥The Forest Unseen [book]