Day: February 22, 2011
Places to Go: Beijing Botanical Garden
Situated in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, the Beijing Botanical Garden covers an area of 564,000 square meters. While the garden is counted among the major tourist attractions of the city, it also is an important base for science education and research. The Botanical Garden features many different areas, including a lake, the Perennial Garden, Peony Garden, Ornamental Peach Garden, and various other gardens featuring camellias, bamboo, tree peonies, ornamental cherries and many others. The most important attraction within the Garden probably is the Conservatory, a greenhouse, about 10.000 square meters in size. It holds the Rain Forest House, the Orchid House, Desert Garden House, and other various exhibitions. Several thousand differing plant species can be found throughout the gardens, some of them famous or very rare specimen. The metasequoia, for example, is one of these rare species. Discovered in the 1940s, these fast-growing, large trees that belong to the same family as the famous Californian Giant Sequoia, have been cultivated in one area of the Botanical Garden.
Behind the Scenes: Looping Elements
When it comes to traditional scrapbooking, many things seem to fall into place just naturally, while with digital scrapping nothing is coincidence. Everything that is on the page is there, because we deliberately placed it there. For example, while on a traditional scrapbook page you can randomly scatter elements by just throwing them on the page and adhere them wherever they fall, you can’t just “throw” things onto your computer screen, and hope they’ll stick with your digital page. It just doesn’t work that way. Another thing, that comes rather easily on a traditional page is the looping of elements, for example through a ribbon. You just tie the ribbon around the element, and place it on your page. Not so with a digital ribbon. Wrapping a digital ribbon takes some extra effort and knowledge of your graphics program to achieve the desired look. But no need to worry – it actually isn’t all that difficult. Let’s take a look at this page, for example: If you take a closer look, you will see that …