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Miss Lamb, Norfolk Age and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security Consultant Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate Student Engagement Date: January 2009 Wedding Date: January 2010 Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera House About Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
About Miss Lamb

… which make me think of board shorts, which make me think of the beach. And down the rabbit trail… (lamb trail?) I go.

Anyboard, I pieced this bad boy together for a long time. Who knew it would be so difficult? Somehow, Snippet & Ink manages to make one every other day. She may make hers in Photoshop, but I was going non-technical and cropping my images in PowerPoint. I’ll show you a little tutorial and then the finished product!

  • Step 1: Open PPT. duh.
  • Step 2: I find it easiest to start with a blank slide, so just delete the default text boxes.
  • Step 3: Go to Insert>>Picture>>From File and then choose your file from the myriad of pictures you’ve inevitably downloaded during marathon searches.


  • Step 4: Start by inserting an “anchor” photo, one that you think is important and that you want to be the focus. Crop it and make it the size you want it to be.
  • Step 5: Insert some other photos you like and start to arrange them around each other, being mindful of the color interplay.


See, this one isn’t floating my boat. Even though I love the paper doily lanterns, they’re too warm for the board. I’m going for a cool and wintery, sophisticated wedding. This is more of “Home and Hearth” warm. Lovely idea, but for another board. Off you go doily lanterns!

  • Step 6: Arrange and rearrange. Save a copy, then save it as something else and change it all around. At some point you have to stop and be “finished”, but make sure you’re happy when you do.
  • Step 7: When you’re happy, click and drag your mouse around the entire block until all the photos are highlighted. Right click, Grouping>>Group.


This will keep them all together. Right click again and choose “Save as picture.” I’ve found the best luck changing the file type to a .png - it seems to upload to the web the best and keep my image intact.

  • Step 8: Upload the pic to your blog or whatnot.

Now here’s the hard part… remembering where you got your images from so that you can easily cite the sources. Anybody got a foolproof way of doing this? Because my list below took me 30 more minutes to recreate. Boo, lack of forward thinking while I was collecting these boogers.

Anyways. From L to R starting on the top row:
Art Deco Rhinestone Drop Earrings: Tees and More
Vintage dress display: Vintage Glam Weddings
Bridal Bouquet: Design Whimsy
Custom Feather Bridal Shoes: Emmy Custom Made Wedding Shoes
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: Liberty Film Festival
Lauran Bacall: Janez Life and Times
Wedding Dress: Pronovias 2008 Collection
Flawless Invitation: eInvite
Maui Coconut Cake: Marney Cakes (accessed through Inspired!!)

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31 Responses to “Inspiration Boards Make Me Think of Short Boards…”

1.
tea
Member
tea (message)  2,616 posts, Sugar bee

i’ve always struggled to get the right feel for a board but then i tried style me pretty’s style circle thing and they have a board builder! you can use images they have on the site to include and wouldn’t you know, i finally made a board i liked.

i’ve been using google’s notebook to help keep track of sources but they’re not open for new sign ups.

 
2.
PattyG
Member
PattyG (message)  86 posts, Worker bee

Wow! Great tutorial, I’ve always had a tough time with inspiration boards too!

 
3.
jduck84
Member
jduck84 (message)  341 posts, Helper bee

I just logged into Style Me Pretty’s Style Circle last night, and they’ve added a new feature where you can upload your own images, as long as you credit the source!

http://circle.stylemepretty.com/jduck84/blog/2009/08/21/picnic-wedding/

 
4.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Lamb (message)  463 posts, Helper bee

@jduck84: I had no idea there was another site! I’m guessing you have to be a member to use the features . . . I’ll have to play with it later tonight!

 
5.
ashlle
Member
ashlle (message)  92 posts, Worker bee

I love it. Powerpoint is definitely a faster way to go than Photoshop. My new favorite program for these, though, is Google’s Picasa, using the “collage” setting. You can’t control the placement as well as you could doing it manually in Photoshop/Ppt, but it’s got a randomize option that makes the whole thing super fast! I agree with you about the sources, though…that one’s hard.

 
6.
proBM2008
Member
proBM2008 (message)  83 posts, Worker bee

With Powerpoint, you could insert comments for the sources. This won’t show up on the actual slide unless you’re in editing mode. They look like tiny post-its.

 
7.
Member Icon
Member
DollyLava (message)  34 posts, Newbee

So here is the part I don’t understand about inspiration boards. After you’ve decided you want to use that certain element on your board, how do you go back and find the site to buy it on/directions on DIY/store it came from?

Everytime I see an inspiration board posted, all of the comments are “OOhh where did (certain image on board) come from?”

It seems like the solution would be to link every picture but then it would be more than just a jpg or png file. Anyone else find a solution for this?

 
8.
fiftyfootbride
Member
fiftyfootbride (message)  3,688 posts, Sugar bee

Wow, I’ve only ever done mine in photoshop, but this seems like a good quick and dirty way to do it!

 
9.
Guest Icon
Guest
stee

can you keep the hyperlink with the image so the inspiration board is clickable or at least when you hover you have the source info to credit below??

 
10.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Parfait (message)  588 posts, Busy bee

Oooh, lovely board, Miss Lamb. I really need to try out this whole inspiration-board-making thing. Thanks for the tutorial!

 
11.
ColorCoated
Member
ColorCoated (message)  951 posts, Busy bee

I mad my last board in InDesign. . . but I try to do everything in ID - we’re in love.

I have done it in photoshop though. I haven’t ever tried to do one in powerpoint. Glad you could make it work.

 
12.
ColorCoated
Member
ColorCoated (message)  951 posts, Busy bee

I made my last board in InDesign. . . but I try to do everything in ID - we’re in love.

I have done it in photoshop though. I haven’t ever tried to do one in powerpoint. Glad you could make it work.

 
13.
kmattso2
Member
kmattso2 (message)  990 posts, Busy bee

I just put one of mine together the other day and searched for like an hour trying to find all the sources!! From now on I think I’ll start saving the web address as the file name so when I need it I can find it easily.

 
14.
Miss Poodle
Bee
Miss Poodle (message)  3,020 posts, Sugar bee

I love inspirations boards! great job Miss Lamb

 
15.
jduck84
Member
jduck84 (message)  341 posts, Helper bee

@Miss Lamb - you do have to be a member, but it’s a pretty easy process. It’s fun and addicting because SMP has so, so many gorgeous images to play with. I’m excited to try uploading my own images to work with, though. Have fun! :)

 
16.
Bee Icon
Bee
Mrs. Mouse (message)  3,302 posts, Sugar bee

Cool! Great tips. I usually bookmark sources as I go, and then go ahead and source everything as soon as I publish the photos. It helps if you don’t make a whole lot of inspiration boards at once.

 
17.
Miss_Carmel
Member
Miss_Carmel (message)  317 posts, Helper bee

Yummy! I love all of the old muscials. Sinigin’ in the Rain being my personal favorite. I love that you added Fred Astaire to your inspriation board. Are you planning on a Astaire-esque first dance?? I’m trying to talk to fiance into it (problem is he can’t dance - hello dance lessons!!)

 
18.
Charm bracelet
Member
Charm bracelet (message)  817 posts, Busy bee

Just last month I started saving images by first typing what category it is and what website I found it it.
Ex: centerpiece with fuschia color weddingbee
This way I know who to give credit to. I know it’s a long name but it’s a clear description of the pic and it’s source.

 
19.
Member Icon
Member
fromcharleston (message)  87 posts, Worker bee

that’s a really great and easy-to-follow tutorial!!!

i have another way that might be even easier:
picasa (a free photo editing software from google) has a feature that will make different types of collages (including the mosaic style like your board) and automatically make everything fit! takes minutes!

 
20.
bunnylovesbear
Member
bunnylovesbear (message)  386 posts, Helper bee

great tutorial. I finally made an inspiration board! :)

Now I’m just struggling with how to make it small enough to upload onto weddingbee. Help!!?

 
21.
RecessionistaBride
Member
RecessionistaBride (message)  3,347 posts, Sugar bee

Wow thats so helpful! haha it beats my lame-o attempts on Microsoft Paint. lol

 
22.
pvaulter718
Member
pvaulter718 (message)  1,594 posts, Bumble bee

I tried to use Publisher and it just wasn’t quite working the way I wanted! I should have tried pwpt! At one point, I seriously printed out 10000000 photos at work and pushed them around until I had a giant posterboard size inspiration board. Talk about inspiration overload!

 
23.
amandabyoung
Member
amandabyoung (message)  7 posts, Newbee

Hahah! I love you for posting this. I’ve actually made boards in both photoshop and powerpoint and, well, I PREFER powerpoint. It’s so EASY. And you can hide parts of photos and get them back again… honestly, when I admit that I make them in powerpoint [which isn't often] people’s jaws usually drop. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one!

 
24.
amandabyoung
Member
amandabyoung (message)  7 posts, Newbee

Ooh and P.S. to track where I got the images from - I just paste the links as I paste the images into the “notes” field at the bottom. It works like a charm!

 
25.
lcneiny
Member
lcneiny (message)  170 posts, Blushing bee

LOVE! Thanks for the tutorial.. my storyboard is sitting in my office with tons of magazine clippings. It would probably be much easier in a computerized version.

 
26.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Lamb (message)  463 posts, Helper bee

@ashlle: Great alternative!
@proBM2008: Yes! That would work if I had built it as I went along - def. moving towards a better solution!
@DollyLava: if it’s a published board from one of the bees or another major site, they should all be cited below - I agree, it’d be awesome if each pic could be hyperlinked! I’m sure it can be done, but I’m not sure what level of effort that would take
@Mrs. Mouse: Great tip! I just saved the images to my hard drive, but bookmarking them would have saved me a lot of hassle!
@bunnylovesbear: If you have Paint, you can use the Stretch/Skew function to resize it!

 
27.
Ruby Slippers
Member
Ruby Slippers (message)  482 posts, Helper bee

I made a totally similar board when I was planning! My wedding ended up nothing like it, but still. I even had Fred and Ginger too! You can see it here. (like you, I had trouble knowing where I got the images):

http://rubyslippersbride.blogspot.com/2008/06/old-hollywood-inspiration.html

 
28.
bunnylovesbear
Member
bunnylovesbear (message)  386 posts, Helper bee

thanks! I’ll try that.

 
29.
alishaneva
Member
alishaneva (message)  1,524 posts, Bumble bee

What a pretty inspiration board!

 
30.
Guest Icon
Guest
Mel

To find your images - use http://tineye.com/
It’s an image search engine. Upload the pic and it will search the web and come back with all the places the image has been posted!

 
31.
Bee Icon
Bee
Miss Lamb (message)  463 posts, Helper bee

@Ruby Slippers: Love your board! Now I’m super curious as to the new direction you went :)
@Mel: Perfecto! I’m totally bookmarking it now :)

 


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Miss Lamb
Miss Lamb Miss Lamb, Norfolk Age and Occupation: 25, Homeland Security Consultant Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, Graduate Student Engagement Date: January 2009 Wedding Date: January 2010 Venue: Trinity Presbyterian Church/Harrison Opera House About Me: I’m a Homeland Security Consultant with a tendency towards pulling office pranks, taking lunch breaks, and drinking Wawa shakes. I’m also an English major with a serious obsession with alliteration and rhymes. While I’m not keeping America safe, I’m training for half marathons and the Escape from Alcatraz swim. Or moving for the third time this year. Or baking. Or wedding crafting. Or crying about wedding planning. All the while, I’m getting myself into Lucille Ball-esque scrapes and making Jim Carey-esque faces. Our big fat Czech/Baptist/Jewish/Italian wedding is a combination of vintage eclectic, DIY, and little spoonful of sugar from our Event Coordinator. It’s going to be a Norfolk flavored wedding with the verve of an only-daughter-blow-out bash!
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