Mood boards and Mosaics in minutes!

Good morning! I have to say being at the beach has me in a different frame of mind. It is so crazy how as soon as I am about 5 miles or minutes from arriving and just being  near the ocean, I can feel the stress slowly leave my body and mind. It is the most natural decompresser there is. As soon as I catch a glimpse of the royal blue ocean and see the majestic seagulls circling above almost to welcome me, I know calm and peace is inevitable. The first thing I did when I arrived was change and make a beeline for the beach, book in hand. I sat for two perfect, blissful, uninterrupted hours. I belong by the ocean year round all the time, It is where I feel my absolute best. How about you? Does it have that affect on you too?

Moving onto mood boards and mosaics as promised I would a few days ago........I must admit when I was reading a few blogs every now and then a few years ago I had no idea they were even blogs, in fact I didn't even know what a blog was! It was only in January when the light bulb went on and I realized what they are and that I in fact, could do it too! At first though it seemed daunting to put one together then to begin the job of managing it seemed like too much.  I found out it really wasn't difficult at all and plunged right in. So here I was humming right along and I spot a beautiful mosaic one day, I was enthralled and captivated. Of course, it was yet something else to feel intimidated by, how could little old me figure this out? Then one day I happen to be on Jan's blog, The French Tangerine (I know I love that name too) and she gave a basic tutorial and the rest as they say is history!
 So I am doing just great with my little mosaic inundating many of my posts with them and then I keep seeing these mood boards. Now THIS is something I really want to know how to do because its such a fabulous way of seeing things together in the flesh as opposed to having to "imagine it". I was determined to figure this out. The few tutorials I found lost me after 2 sentences and like a frustrated student I walked away mission unaccomplished. THEN I discover the easiest most user friendly site just by searching (amazing what our will and determination can motivate us to do) and it was love at first sight! I found the perfect and soooo easy way to create mood boards. Its a new discovery so I am still getting the hang of it but its such fun and because so many of you asked, I had to share!


So here we go..............
MOOD BOARDS. First make sure you have your pictures at the ready, saved or on your online photo album. Then go to your new best friend, www.olioboard.com. You will have to sign up/register but its free and very easy. Once you have signed up you are ready to create your first mood board!1. On the far right click on "create your olioboard"2. It will then ask for you to name your board, it can be "bathrooms" or whatever, under that it will ask if you want to make it public or private. That is up to you, if you want others to be able to see it and you want to share it then make it public otherwise private3. Then click create board and launch editor4. You will then see a blank board, with all of your photo resources to the right. You have a few choices here, you can use the preloaded images from Oleo or import your own. If you want to use your own, click on my items then upload on the far right.5. A new little window will appear and you click on add images, at that point it will give you an option to upload images from your computer.Once you have selected all your images, just hit upload.6. If you are uploading multiple images it can take a few minutes, but for one or two images its pretty much instant. It will also prompt you to "name" the image so it can be categorized. You will then see your images on the far right under "my items".7. Then the fun begins! All you do is drag your images onto the blank board and start creating! You will see a round thing that looks like a compass, this will enlarge or shrink as well as rotate your image just by clicking on your mouse. On the top left there are other options though I don't think I have used those so far.8. Once you are at this point, its all trial and experimentation. Add as many pictures as you want and create away. Be sure to save your board to go back to and edit or use for inspiration and that my friends is pretty much how you create a mood board!! Promised it won't hurt!
And here is a little example of a recent creation,  being at the beach I was inspired to create a mood board of how I would furnish my beach house....

MOSAICS. This to me is even easier. Come meet your other new best friend at www.bighugelabs.com (you will see that in addition to mosaics they do a ton of other really fun and neat photo projects)1. Sign up for an account, again its free and easy3. You will be taken to the mosaic maker page where you will first determine how big you want it to be, 3 pictures by 3 pictures, a straight line of pictures, the choice is yours, you can click on background color and border color but I normally do that at the end when I see how all the pictures look together4. You are ready to start adding pictures, click on "choose photo" then it will show you a small bar, click on choose file click on whatever picture you want to use then click on the right tab which says upload. It will upload your pictures(s) to the little bar and all you do is add them one at a time to your mosaic in the making.5. When you are done on bottom click create. It will show in seconds your finished mosaic, you can click edit to shuffle the pictures around and this is when I normally go and experiment with the color wheel to determine what color I want for the background/border. Once you are totally enthralled with your creation, click save and you can save it however you wish.6. It is so easy and so much fun!
And here is an example of a recently created in minutes mosaic

And in honor of my being at the beach, had to do a little beach mosaic!

See, its not really that bad! Don't be deterred by all the writing above, I assure you it seems more involved than it is. I wish I could say you have to be a tech genius to be able to do this, oh how I would love to make that claim! But I assure you even the most tech leery blogger will be making mosaics and mood boards in no time! So have fun, relax and enjoy the process of creating something uniquely that is you!