One thing that I’ve always wanted to do is create coloring books. I used to hand draw some and give them as gifts to younger siblings. But now I finally have the tools and can get them printed! The only down side is it is just something else to add to my plate.

I don’t really care, this will be enjoyable for me to do. I think I will start out with a simple cat one and take it from there. I am thinking about doing special orders too but I’m not sure yet since that would be more time consuming since I would have to do special art for it and I might charge extra…. Just ideas I’m tossing about.

Now to get my day started.

Kenneth Greene has spent the past 35 years doing photographic studies in contrasts, lines, colors and glimpses of life in a moment of time. When Kenneth photographs people, he captures a feeling for that one moment that really matters in their lives.

He may not know what happened just prior to the photo, and he almost certainly won’t know what their lives will be like after that instant he memorializes. He captures that moment in time alone, but it somehow tells their entire life story in a second. I’m looking for the instant the tide recedes and washes over the rocks; the moment a diver propels herself upwards and her feet leave the diving board; or when a couple embraces…just before the waves crash down upon them. These are the moments in life when you hold your breath, wondering what comes next.

The former child protective services professional recently retired from San Diego County after working for almost two decades with victims and families of child abuse and violence. Now it is time to pursue my passion full time for art and design. The act of creating nurtures my soul.

I love taking photographs and I love to draw and paint. Kenneth’s whimsical drawings appear in a line of coloring books and note cards entitled, Pictures From My Mind. Geared to young children, teenagers, and adults, these images can be colored, will spark new ideas with readers, or can just be enjoyed as they are. His newest collection is called Havana @ 1/500th of a second.

It is a memorable experience of the people and countryside of Cuba, portraying a land stuck in time with a nation yearning to leap into the 21st century. More information about Kenneth, his collections, and his work is available at http://kennethgreene.smugmug.com/

Be an Artist in 2 minutes with Segmation SegPlay® PC Botanicals by Kenneth Greene Photography and Design (see more details here)

Segmation

FREE Newsletter

Join us on Facebook

SegPlay® Mobile iTunes now available for iPhone and iPad

www.segmation.com

In the evening of that same day I took a book of fairy tales and started browsing it through just for fun. I didn’t have the patience to read any of the stories, but I actually found something funny. It is my sister’s old book, and her name is written on the first page, but when I was leafing it through I found my name written all over the pages! The last fifteen pages all have my name written on them, plus the back cover. I was apparently taking over the book and over-compensating it just a little… How much the times have changed! I don’t claim anything like that anymore. Maybe I should? I’ll start writing post-its with my name written on them (or alternatively just: ‘mine’), and stick them everywhere (mostly on people who are unfairly sexy).

Even later on that same evening I got the urge to read Nancy Drew. I must have been ten when I’ve last read them. They’re so thin! I don’t know how much I am enjoying it after all these years. To my more ‘mature’ taste, they’re a little too easy. Too predictable and poorly translated into Finnish, but they did awaken my hunger for detective novels. Real ones, not children’s.

So while I am being pushed to my adulthood, I am desperately trying to hold on to my childhood or at least willing to visit some golden memories. When you were a child all you had to think about were coloring books, fairy tales and toys. Now it’s all messy and complicated. All you wanted was to be an adult and now that the adulthood is looming over you, all you want to do is to be a kid again, even just for a day. So as embarrassing as my resent activities have been, it’s not a bad thing to let go for a while and be a child. People should never let their inner child die. That’s what I think. Be independent and responsible, but play a little every now and then! (God I hate such know-it-all endings… Blah…)

Dover coloring books have different themes and categories like these books “Knights and Armour” and “Victorian Houses”.

These Mindware coloring books have beautiful, intricate (somewhat complex) designs that will keep you busy for hours and the results turn out beautiful! You can buy a simple mandala coloring book from Mindware or something more unique like “Mirror Transformations”.

These doodling books are great for the young and old. They have different scenes and scenarios and will ask you to complete the scene and/or write a story about it. They’re great resources for teachers, students, artists, and writers!

I dedicate  Activity Pages to Jack—an unlimited spirit.

Puff out your cheeks, and suck them back in. Squint at the Shoe and let the magic begin…

Like his brother and sister, that cousin never writes enough; like his brother and sister, I wish he lived closer. Unlike his brother and sister, he’s black.

So at a very young age, I was witness to an entire family of white people searching for ways to affirm and support my young cousin’s sense of himself as an African-American.

His parents bought him black baby dolls, and our grandma, Queenie, made him a black Raggedy Andy. There were subscriptions to Ebony and what I think was Jet, Jr Ebony, Jr. (thanks, @ampalm!) floating around the living room. There were books and friends and conversations held, and an overall, general awareness that being family meant helping everyone in the family be their best selves.

But the things was, this process made me painfully aware of how little there was available for black kids that actually reflected them back. Queenie made that doll not just because she was a wonderful craftswoman, but also because there were none on the market.

One would think we would have improved a bit more by now.

We kind of haven’t.

It’s still pretty hard to find black dolls that look like actual black people, for instance, and if they’re girl dolls, they almost always have very straight hair. We all know the situation on network television wherein black actors who aren’t Bill Cosby (or starring in A Black Show Marketed To Black People) are ever and nearly only The Friend (likely sassy and/or wise) or you’re non-existent. And there’s stuff as simple as language — I went on a rant once about the use of the word “nude” (it’s kind of a funny rant, and involves pictures of things like fascinators, so go ahead and click. Management promises you won’t be sorry!).

And then there’s coloring books.

A couple of years ago I was printing out coloring pages for the wee ones at our block party, and wow. Unless it was Kwanzaa or church-themed, I found literally not a single coloring page that featured black kids. It finally dawned on me to try Disney, since they’d just released The Princess and the Frog, and that kind of saved the day. But I’m here to tell you, it pissed me the hell off. Coloring books, people! How hard can it be?

SO. When I learned this weekend that an extremely talented young artist named Miss Gee has launched a Kickstarter campaign to try to fund the production of a truly gorgeous coloring book featuring little girls of color, I got kind of excited! She did the first few drawings for her little girl (the appropriately named Miss Zee), realized the potential, priced out the printing costs, and she needs $5000.

The beauty part of Kickstarter is two-fold: 1) You can give as little as a couple of bucks to the campaign you want to support, and 2) if the campaign doesn’t reach its monetary goal, your money stays right in your pocket. The Kickstart-er only receives the funds if the goal is reached.

AND SO.

Please, please: Click through to see Miss Gee’s delightful artwork and watch the brief video in which she describes the project. If you have $5 or $25 or $50 to help her out, please do! And either way, please also pass the word on. She’s not quite half-way to her goal, and she only has another 12 days to make it. I would really hate to see this lovely project fail for a lack of a measly (as of this writing) $2,668.

It might seem like a really small thing, this idea of not seeing yourself in coloring books. But when you’re little you absorb everything — and if you’re invisible, you absorb that.

Please help Miss Gee!

 A few years ago, Marc discovered that most existing coloring books were boring, so he started taking 3D Models from our SketchUp 3D Model library, and creating some great coloring pages for his son Raef (then 3 years old). Raef loves construction equipment.

Fig. 1  FormFonts 3D coloring page, by Marc Fredrickson.

Fig 2.  FormFonts 3D coloring page, colored by Raef Fredrickson.

colAR was developed last year by members of the Human Interface Technology Lab in Christchurch, New Zealand. It takes the colored page one step further – converting it into a 3D augmented reality with some animation.

The software is dead easy to use. After coloring the pages (provided with the app), simply hold up your coloring to the camera of the computer installed with colAR software.  It scans the coloring and within a few seconds, a 3D image of the drawing shows on screen.

Fig 3.  colAR software scans the colored page, and then singulates the figures in the image and stands them up into a 3D drawing. Some figures even transform into fully 3D animations.

Most features in the picture look like flat paper pop-ups. The kiwi and penguin, however, show up as round, and the 3D birds are animated to stretch and nose around the leaves in the scene. A transformation that is sure to delight young children.

Users can also move the drawing or the camera around to view the 3D scene at different angles. To see how it all works, take a look at the video of colAR below.

Fig 4.  colAR is a computer program that brings coloring book pages to life with the magic of Augmented Reality. YouTube.

To try colAR yourself, you can download the software for free on the HIT Lab’s website. Unfortunately, it’s Windoze only.

In short, coloring books are now a doorway into augmented reality. By coloring the pages first, and then using the software to transform them into 3D, kids get to experience the power of Augmented Reality.
Thanks for reading and subscribing – FormFonts 3D Models

Source:   Human Interface Technology Lab, New Zealand

May the summer be ever in your favor,

Meagan

Tall Father + Short Mother =  Short Me

Thin Father + Generously Proportioned Mother= Generously Proportioned Me

Tanned Father + Fair Mother= Fair Me

Hammer-toed Father + Pretty Footed Mother = Hammer-toed Me

Fine haired Father + Thick, Lustrous Haired Mother= Fine-haired Me

Two Asthmatic Grandmothers + A Father with Plantar Fasciitis = A Wheezy Person with Sore Feet

I realize that I have just portrayed myself as a pasty, round, dwarf with a balding head and claws for feet.  This is not true.  I also have very thin lips.  No really, I’m not that bad.  I’m no Jennifer Aniston, but I’m not Godzilla either.  I think we all have things we’d change about ourselves, if we could.  First of all, I’d love to be about four inches taller.  I have thought of hanging by my feet in the hopes of stretching myself.  I’ve never seen a short bat.  This stretching thing would also make me much skinnier.  Think Stretch Armstrong.  Only permanent and without the really long arms.  And no black tighty whities.  Can tighty whities be black?

I really do believe in the old adage, “Never judge a book by its cover.”  Unless you come across a cover like this.

1)  This is just weird.  Someone actually thought that children all over the world would want to colour female genitalia.  What’s worse is that a publishing company also thought this would be a great idea.  And that someone out there has probably paid hard-earned money to buy it.

This raises another question.  Aren’t colouring books supposed to be colourful.  Last time I looked, my parts were monochromatic.

I had to check out a few sample pages at Amazon.com.  Curiosity got the best of me.  Well, here is what I found:

If you think your children would benefit from this colouring book, they have places for people like you.  Oops.  Must really learn to censor myself better.  As I was saying, if you would like to order this “educational” book for your child, you can get it here:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Coloring-Book-Vaginas/dp/B000R0HU92.

I’m sure there will still be several in stock.  Bet these would make a splendid stocking stuffer.

2)  Sometimes, our appearance is not hampered by any genetic flaws, but by the choices that we make.  Anyone who watches Coronation Street will be familiar with Deirdre Barlowe and her horrific eyewear choices.  If you are unfamiliar, these will illustrate my point.  Lenses the size of garage doors.  I hope they at least help her see better.

So we met her, and her visiting niece, for lunch at Altitudes. She had her adorable dogs, so we needed a dog-friendly patio, and Altitudes is known for that, among other things. After a tasty lunch, we walked over to a local microbrew’s tap room, Mother Road. And sampled some tasty beers.

Today’s photo comes from the wall outside the restroom at Altitudes. It reminded me of Sugar Free, and her impressive talents. If her new promotion doesn’t work out, she could probably get a great job here!

We got back from our road trip to Missouri late Thursday night, and I learned a LOT about traveling with a toddler. I’d like to share a few things with you in the hopes that your future travels with a little one will be successful!

• Bring a portable DVD player- This one was HUGE for us. Linnaea doesn’t typically watch a ton of TV, but the DVD player and her favorite movie was a life saver for us. It really helped distract her from the fact that she had to sit in her car seat for 14 hours.
• Bring Snacks- I kept a supply of Linnaea’s favorite snacks in the front seat with me, that way I could hand her things as we were driving.
• Bring your little one’s favorite lovey- Linnaea is attached to her blankie. It’s SO important to grab whatever toy/stuffed animal/pacifier/etc that your child is attached to.
• Coloring books- To keep things clean, I handed Linnaea a coloring book and would give her a couple crayons at a time. I switched out colors occasionally, and she was happy as could be.
• Fun kid’s music- Bring along a CD of fun songs that your kids want to listen to
• Stop to stretch often- Your toddler will be much happier if you let them stretch their legs often. We stopped at several rest stops along the way and took short walks with Linnaea.
• Bring along new/different toys- We were able to borrow a few toys from a friend, and these were a huge hit! Linnaea showed interest in them longer because they weren’t the same old toys that she’s used to playing with daily.
• Bring a small stash of medicines- Tylenol/allergy meds/band-aids/etc…. We learned this one the hard way. When we got to Missouri, it turned out Linnaea was teething and we had to go find teething meds. It would have saved us some hassle if we would have packed a few items.
• Change of clothes- Put a change of clothes in the car. Linnaea got car sick along the way and we were left digging through the trunk for her clothes. It would have been much easier had a tossed an outfit in the back seat.
• Diapers- Keep a stash of diapers/wipes/changing pad easily accessible. Or, if your kiddo is potty trained, make sure you are stopping frequently for potty breaks.
• When to travel- Make sure you are positive that your child will sleep through the night in their car seat before deciding to travel at night. We thought night travel would be easiest because we assumed Linnaea would sleep the whole way. Boy were we wrong. She only slept one hour the entire way to Missouri. That made for a rough first day there. On the way home, we traveled during the day and she did MUCH better.

I hope you’ll find a few of these tips helpful! And, please, let me know if you have more to add!! Happy travels!

Timothy loves to draw. He started out drawing with crayons and coloring books. But, he quickly lost interest in crayons when he discovered markers. His favorites ones were the really bright ones. Unfortunately I quickly discovered that his favorite markers were not washable. I quickly replaced them with the washable kind. Which is a good thing, because Timothy has decided that his favorite place to draw is on his body. When I remind him that we only draw on paper, he says “I draw paper” and immediately goes back to his body art instead.

Recently, I had to bring Timothy to my office for a few hours. I decided to keep him busy by setting him up with plenty of paper and markers. This kept him occupied for quite a long time and I was surprised at how much I was able to get accomplished. When it was time to leave I discovered why he had been so well behaved – he had been drawing on my office walls! Now I have a permanent reminder of my precious two year old in my office.

Today, Timothy decided to take his artistic pursuits to a new level. He found two Sharpie pens in a desk drawer. In a matter of seconds, he had drawn all over his sisters’ computer that was sitting on the desk. So far we have been able to get the Sharpie off the computer screen (except for a few small marks on the edge of the screen). But, we haven’t been able to get any of the Sharpie off the computer keyboard. My teenage girls are very unhappy about Timothy’s latest coloring adventure so I am now searching the Internet for ideas about how to get rid of Sharpie. In the meantime I am scouring the house for all hidden markers, pens and other writing instruments. This experience has reminded me that leaving a two year old unattended, even for a matter of seconds in a room that you “think” is toddler-proofed, can be a very expensive mistake to make.

Pea plants and potted herb garden

I think I will keep adding to this …. more peas and more potted herbs stretching over to the facing page.  I might leave areas as ink drawings and diminish the watercolor as I move across the page….. It’s a work in progress, a new phase of my ink and watercolor sketchbook drawings.

Drawn in large sketchbook made of watercolor paper.  Drawn first in ink using a fountain pen, followed by washes of watercolor.

Peas and Herb Garden in Clay Pots

I find myself staying within the lines ….. how dreadful!  I rationalize my current obsession by saying that the difference between mine and ordinary coloring books is that I draw my own pictures and my lines bleed into the colors.

I also find myself at the coloring table with small children and ordinary coloring books.  I enjoy every minute of it.

Coloring Book Sketch: drawn first with fountain pen followed by watercolor in handmade watercolor paper sketchbook bound in leather.

Staying within the lines

A 4 hour nap?

Source: weknowmemes.com via Ladybiss on Pinterest

Exactly what I needed!

Lunch

After my amazing nap, I woke up with a pretty appetite. So many salad ingredients, so many possibilities! I decided to go with an apple-themed salad with both crumbled gorgonzola and blue cheese in it. Sauteed some chicken breast, roasted some veggies, and diced up 1/4 of an apple for a really great, crisp, delish salad!

I also had 1/2 of a hamburger bun and another 1/4 of an apple on the side of my salad for some carbs before going to the gym for some fun today!

Gym

After eating lunch and letting it settle for about an hour, I headed to the gym for a much-needed session. I didn’t feel like putting the pedal to the metal today, since it’s my first time back in 5 days, so I decided to jump back into the kick of things by just doing some running and some other stuff at the end.

I ended up running about 5 miles, doing this ab circuit afterwards, then doing:

-17 lunges on each side

-17 squats

-21 second lunge hold on each side

-21 pushups

*If you’re wondering why I did the above exercises, I’m trying to follow the Tuff-Butt April and Ab-Tastic April daily challenges, but I didn’t do all of the ab stuff, because I figured that would be over-kill. lol

Results??

Pretty good.

When I got home, I recovered with some sliced fruit and cheese. cheese. cheese!

Left to right: Baby bell, string cheese, sliced apple and strawberries w/ cinnamon

I swear, I don’t know where the cheese thing is coming from, but I’m trying not to question it, while at the same time making sure that I don’t go overboard (like I usually do with nuts and stuff). All I know is, after my workout, string cheese and a babybell seemed good to me. With the fruit, it also seemed to be enough to hold me over until dinner time.

Dinner

After killing some time by surfing the web, I was extremely lazy and just wanted to throw together one of the quickest, easiest meals ever.

Store-bought sushi made that want a reality.

To be honest, the ingredients and nutrition stats aren’t very stellar, but I just needed to satisfy this sushi craving I’ve had since yesterday.

pretty high in sodium, no?

When my school group was at the airport and getting dinner with the $10 each that our chaperone gave us yesterday, I was extremely disappointed to find out that the sushi being sold there was about $8 for 9 pieces! That’s almost a dollar per piece, people! I’m not exactly the cheapest, most frugal and financially smart person ever, but even I wasn’t willing to spend that much money on food that probably wasn’t going to fill me up that much. (it was white rice sushi, too, after all!)

Oh well.. All’s well that ends well. I had a pretty good sushi dinner tonight, with some steamed broccoli and a thai peanut dressing-topped salad on the side!

That looks a lot better (and I’m sure it tastes better) than what they were offering at the Philadelphia Airport yesterday! Not meaning to toot my own horn since I basically just put the sushi on a plate and stuff, but this dinner was good and satisfied my craving!

I’ve still got some leftovers, but I’m saving those for tomorrow! Yummy, yummy!

After dinner, I had another baby bell cheese wedge-thing (Maybe I didn’t get enough calcium/dairy during the trip? LOL, I dunno! ) and half a cup of two percent milk before getting ready to hit the sack.. I really have to watch myself right now.. The last thing I want is to become lactose intolerant of all things!

Fun Things for Today

Today was a pretty good day for me, despite the fact that I spent more than half of it in bed either napping or surfing the web and what-not. I found some fun blogs to start reading and also found this cute little picture!

Boo! My favorite little guy! <3

I found this kind of a coincidence after I’d posted the picture of my friend, Jeff, earlier this morning..

They could be twins, right?

Finally, after work, my mom came home with a little surprise for me, which basically made my day!

…..

A coloring book!! 

My mother knows me too well...

Apparently it’s a free hand-out kind of thing in her office, but I don’t care! I’m just excited that I get to color and stuff!

Anyway, that’s basically it for today! Not much activity, I know, but it was a very nice, chill day for me! The weather was nice, and everything was just so peaceful! The weekend’s almost here for most of you, but that means that my spring break is almost over! Oh well, I might as well start making the most out of it, huh? I’ve gotta go now! I’m tired (again) and am gonna need my beauty rest. Night everyone! Hope you’re all having a good week!

*P.S. Fitness page was updated today!

(via TV.com)

Get yours HERE