Tutorial: DIY Personalized iPhone Contact Photos

So excited! The A Beautiful Mess iPhone app came out last night. I'm a huge Elsie and Emma fan, so when I heard they were coming out with a photo app I knew I had to have it!

This app came out last night when I was laying in bed -- too tired to be doing anything else, but not tired enough to actually fall asleep. I started playing around with all the cool features -- borders, text, doodles and thought that these would make the best personalized photos for when people call my phone!

Design your very own contact photos for all your friends using the brand new A Beautiful Mess iPhone app. Designed by Elsie and Emma of A Beautiful Mess blog; this app lets you add awesome text and art to your photos. Modeled after the design style of A Beautiful Mess, the pictures come out both trendy and whimsical at the same time. I can't wait to use these pics in my project life spreads.

Follow the directions below to make your own awesome personalized iPhone contact photos for each of your friends!

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Quick Tips to Better Pictures

This is the first in a series of articles about using the camera in your mobile phone for memory-keeping. These tips were written with a camera-phone in mind; but most of the principals apply to all photography. 

• Composition -- framing your photograph. The easiest way to improve your composition is to understand the rule of thirds. Imagine a tic-tac-toe board or a hashtag (#). The lines and the intersections are the main focal points. Try to place important objects on those lines & intersections. 

I laid a grid over this picture of Navy Pier to indicate the lines and intersections of the rule of thirds. The top left intersection lies directly over the ferris wheel, and the rest of the photo tapers off throughout the middle third. 

• Lines -- lines are your friends. The eye will naturally look at the lines in a photo, so make sure to play them up. Vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, they will all draw you in. 

The ferris wheel has these spoke-like lines radiating outward. The varying sizes and the crisscrossing of the lines results in lots of cool shapes. 

• Focus -- Crisp, clear pictures. Make sure your subject is in focus. Too many potentially great photos are ruined because the subject is blurry and not in focus. Play around with both the auto-focus as well as physically moving the camera lens around. Learning to focus on your subject is a key to improving your photography. 
• Zoom -- Just Don't Do It. EVER. Never use the digital zoom function. If your camera does not have a lens that moves, do not use the zoom function. Digital zoom is actually the camera cropping your photograph before you take the picture. You will get the exact same quality photo if you crop it afterwards & this way you still have the whole photo to work with. 

• Lighting -- Be aware of your surroundings. I'm not going to say always do this, or never do that -- because you can't always get the perfect lighting conditions But here are a couple general tips: 
• Don't use your flash. The light doesn't make anyone or anything look better. It gives off a very harsh glare and you're better off just steering clear of the flash totally. 
• Its okay to take pictures in the dark. Play around with the dark photos in an editing app -- increase the fill light, or throw on a cool filter.
• If the light is behind your subject you will get a shadow on your subject. This isn't always a bad thing, you can get great silhouette portraits this way. But if you want your subject to be well-lit, then the lighting source should be behind you. 

This two photos of Jeff & Jill illustrate the difference between the location of your light source (in this case the sun). In the photo on the left, the sun is up in the air and behind them; in the photo on the right, I rotated around and started taking pictures with the sun to my back. 

Quick tips to better pictures is the first in a series of articles about better using the camera in your mobile phone for memory-keeping. Future topics include: using your phone as your primary camera, printing/scrapbooking mobile phone pictures, and more. 

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A Week in Instagram: July 28th

Instagram is my favorite social media platform. Each Saturday I share some of my favorite instagram photos from the past week. My instagram username is rukristin. Please feel free to follow along and leave your username in the comments for me to follow back!

Have a great week!

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A Week in Instagram: July 21st

Instagram is my favorite social media platform. Each Saturday I share some of my favorite instagram photos from the past week. My instagram username is rukristin. Please feel free to follow along and leave your username in the comments for me to follow back!

This week I'm in Chicago for the CHA (craft & hobby association) trade show as well as a little bit of sightseeing.



On my way to La Guardia airport in NYC to head out to O'Hare in Chicago.



A big cup of my Starbucks drink -- passion iced tea shaken lemonade, lightly sweetened.



My CHA badge. Many thanks to Cheryl Bogliolo for all her help and kindness (she's also a kick ass scrapper and teacher).



Downtown Chicago -- view from the hotel room.



The Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier. Loved my ride on it. Incredible views.



Out on the ledge at the Skydeck at the Willis (Sears) tower. It was definitely an experience.

Thanks for stopping by! I'll have a more in-depth Chicago post next week with my plans for a (not-so-mini) mini-album.

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A Week In Instagram: July 14th

Instagram is my favorite social media platform. Each Saturday I share some of my favorite instagram photos from the past week. My instagram username is rukristin. Please feel free to follow along and leave your username in the comments for me to follow back!

We went to a rockin Fourth of July party at my cousins' pool 

I LOVE my new business cards! moo.com definitely the best. 

Sliced strawberries for an awesome cookies and cream desert 

A self-pic with the 3-D glasses from Prometheus

Driving home from the drive-in theater on the infamous Clinton Rd

My washi collection sorted by color 

Have a great weekend!

--K

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Introducing: Project Life 1.5!!

Project Life: Version 1.5

After spending the last six months filling up a 12x12 double page layout for each week, I was getting a bit overwhelmed. I was struggling to fill the pages, and then putting it off because I wasn't sure how to finish up. 

But I really love Project Life. I love the concept, I love making little mini cards, I love the everyday snapshots. I love my spreads when they are finished. So I decided to step back and figure out how to make Project Life work for me. 

First: I'm making one page a week. 

Second: I'm cutting down my pages to 9"x12" (or about that)

Third: Blog photos don't have to be perfect

One page a week lets me concentrate on the fun things that happened during the week, instead of having to manufacturer (or drag out) the same mundane events. When I have weeks with extra stuff to document, I can easily make fun inserts and interactive pages -- keeping my book fresh and fun. 

I also cut my page protectors (these are Becky Higgins Design F) down by 25%. I've been scrapping a lot of 8.5x11" layouts lately, and cutting the page protectors down made it a lot more comfortable to work with. Like I said before, I'm making this project work for me. 

The third thing that I really wanted to stress to myself is that sharing is more important than making pictures look perfect. Project Life is so hard to photograph --  any light on the page protectors, and there is glare all over the place. So I just said screw it -- I'm gonna share the imperfect pictures. 

A lot of these pictures are taken on my iPhone, its easy to take, easy to edit, easy to upload. 

I'm not concerning myself with a little bit of glare -- or a little bit of weirdness. 

  

Thank you so much for stopping by! I can't wait to keep sharing Project Life.

PS -- Over the weekend I'll be sharing the Silhouette file used in the Gilmore Girls (above left) journaling card. 

PPS -- Look for a new issue of the Project Life Inspiration Newsletter right after CHA!

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