Souvenir du Luxembourg.

Le Luxembourg, or Le Luco, is a garden in Paris' Left Bank. 
It's the place where I used to play when I was a little girl, and hang out when I was a teenager.
When springtime is in the air I always miss my beautiful garden.
And No, I never ever was blonde, ever. It's not me on the picture.
We are moving on Tuesday, I won't be able to post this week, have a nice week!

Springtime07

Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007

Le Luco c'est mon jardin d'enfance, et celui de mon adolescence aussi. Quand le printemps arrive il me manque toujours un peu, meme si j'ai acces a un grand jardin avec des bisons, des tortues, et meme parfois des coyotes, le printemps ce sera toujours le Luco.

(Et non je ne suis pas blonde, je n'ai jamais ete blonde, jamais!)

Nous demenageons cette semaine, pas de posts tant que je n'ai pas l'internet!

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Aging your patterns

Gulls01

Now you know how to make your own patterns ( a tutorial here). But still, they have this peculiar digital look and you would be very pleased to add a little texture to give them more reality. I'm going to show you today 2 very quick ways to age your patterns.

1.First, scan a sheet of paper. Colors are better, a lot of grain is welcome. Cut a  square the exact size of your pattern ( here 256x256 pixels).   Or half, third if you want to repeat it. I make all my patterns in  a restricted array of sizes to be able to mix and match  (512x512, 256x512, etc).

Mauve3

2. Apply the filter>offset  with (here ) an offset of 128 pixels. A seam will appear in the middle of your picture. Make it invisible with the stamp tool or the healing brush tool to create a seamless pattern.  Then you can make the grain more visible with one of the Sharpen filters.

Mauve_sharpcan you see the difference with the precedent picture?

3. Aging with no change of the original picture colors.

Desaturate your picture ( ⌘+shift + U)
Then apply the filter>Other>High Pass. Set the radius so the picture keeps only the grain. Too large of a radius will create a seam. This filter keeps the grain and equalize the picture to a medium gray.

Mauve_nb

4. copy and paste this texture in a new layer over your pattern ( here my bird pattern). Set the layer in overlay mode in the layer palette. Change the transparency of the layer to your taste, et voila! A bird pattern on paper.


Gulls_overlay

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Here is another solution:

3. Aging and yellowing the picture.

Prepare your paper texture as in (1) and (2). Then using Image>adjustments>curves and Image>adjustments>hue saturation, change your texture to a pale yellow one with a lot of grain.

Mauve_jaune

4.Copy and paste this texture in a new layer over your pattern ( here my bird pattern). Set the layer in multiply mode in the layer palette. Change the transparency of the layer to your taste, et voila! A bird pattern on paper, with just enough of yellow to make it look vintage.


Gulls_multiply


Comme d'habitude, j'ai besoin d'aide a la traduction que vous trouverez ici:
Je patine mes textures

 

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3 sugar grains

2 sugar cubes. I played with the paper packing.
I'm not impatient. Am I?

3grains2chuck

3grains

3 grains de sel, 2 morceaux de sucre, 1 feutre, froissons l'emballage...non je ne suis pas impatiente!

Notez que le sucre est importe de France, le sucre en morceaux dans un emballage papier c'est super rare ici!

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happy new Year!

Today is the beginning of the year of the pig, happy new year to you all!

Newyear
Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007


Aujourd'hui c'est le debut de l'annee du Cochon. Une annee pleine de promesses: tout est bon dans le cochon! Bonne annee a tous :)

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bad hair day

I'm cranky. For some reason the internet cable is not really working for a week ( thank you Comcast Ⓡ) Today my email box is a total mess. I can't send anything, and I receveid a second time all my emails since July 2004 (6067 emails+ junk). I went for a little baby shopping and it's just getting worse.

You know I have nothing against cuteness. I love anything cute. I love drawing and collecting cute things. But I'm fed up with baby cuteness. Sometimes it's too chichi, I feel lobotomised after an hour of looking for a bed spread without any teddy bear-cute bunny on it.  I just bought a car seat with a pattern of cows and stars, the cows look stoned, really.
I'm trying my best to find some cool stuff , it's really difficult. I'm overwhelmed with these patterns of sissy bears, sugar rabbits, naive birdies and other stoned tiny tiger. I mean, I like cute. But everywhere? My, let me breath!

So I did this pattern, for a change, as a reaction. It's a fun pattern for toddlers. I'd be happy to turn the Farting Giraffes pattern into a pyjama before my son is 2 so he can wears it and have a good laugh. Now I'm thinking of pooping triceratops, what do you think about it? Could be fun!

Girafes_08

Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007
You can use this seamless pattern for personal use only, thanks.

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tapet_kotori

   Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007

Tapet means wallpaper in Swedish
Kotori (ことり) means Little bird in Japanese
And Delphine means イルカ in Japanese, I know it's quite a shock, but it's a very cute name in France.

Tapet ca veut dire papier peint en suedois ( une bonne recherche google ceci-dit)
Kotori ca veut dire petit oiseau en Japonais
Et Delphine ca veut dire イルカ en Japonais, ce qui fait bien marrer mes potines, mais c'est un tres joli nom quand meme.

tuto.gifchiyomonday.gif


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All about non dairy diary

En francais ici

Nondairy_03Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007

Few people ask about the name of my blog. Of course, it's a bad pun, but there is more about it!
Non dairy products are not common in France. There is less dairy intolerance there. There, if you can't drink milk, you go without, that's it. Few replacements, no non dairy creamers.
We go for plain milk, and some people like me drink a lot of milk.
So when I took the plane to come here in California, I was quite surprised : there wasn't a drop of milk in the plane. Only non dairy creamers.  It was really a surprise. The flight attendant had to explain me this brand new concept. Because some people were allergic to dairies, everybody had to go with some weird non dairy stuff. It sounded a bit paranoiac to me. I could have had the "may contain traces of nuts" cultural shock, but the non dairy thing struck me before. A complete new world in a nutshell.
So I tried this brand new thing : non dairy creamer in regular coffee. I only had real milk in expresso before. It was quite an experience!

To me, non dairy creamer in regular coffee will always stay my first taste of America. I switched to mocha very quickly, with delight. But somehow it's a precious memory, the first of a lot of good ones, about adapting myself to a new world and a new culture. So far, so good, I enjoyed every moment of the 3 years I spent here. And I remembered this moment when I choose my weblog's name : Non dairy Diary.

So that's what the Non Dairy Diary is about : serendipty, joyfull moments, sweet memories. Enjoy!

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At random

Sometimes I work too quickly and I end up making mistakes.Some are good, here's a bird coming from ⌘shiftC instead of ⌘C...I liked it and kept it.

Oiso_del4yo

Parfois je vais trop vite sur le clavier, je derape et ca pedale tout seul...Cette fois ci hop, un cul de lampe oiseau sans le faire expres. Tant mieux!

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