My little house(s)

source:  http://www.etsy.com

Cute little houses? That's what I thought when I saw them on etsy.com. The major drawback is the price - a bit too high for something that small. Not to mention I could easily make them myself, right? :) So I dug out some clay and paints and a couple of hours later...here they are:

Well? What do you think? Do they look like the original? :) Anyway, they do look great on my bookcase, in front of an almost 100-year-old picture (my neighbour found it in the attic and said I could have it :D).

Yesterday I also made this quick prototype:

Found some photos of castles and other buildings that I liked and printed the one above. Then I cut around the top of the picture and cut out a few windows. I stuck it together and put a battery operated tea light inside (it even flickers like a real one). Looks great after dark! I'm going to make a few more for a better effect, I'll show it to you in a while :)

Take care,








I'm linking this post to:

  

  

Picmonkey - a few ideas and lots of fun

I mentioned earlier that I would soon show you some fun ways to edit your photos using Picmonkey, so here they come :) There are a few web sites that allow you to edit and alter any pictures for free but I think that Picmonkey is the best. I use it almost every time before publishing any photos just to make them look better, more vivid. Here's one of my latest photos without any changes, despite a good camera the colors are a bit pale:

The easiest thing you could do is to enhance the colors. Just choose 'basic edits/exposure' and change the four options until you're satisfied with the results:

 You can end up with something like this:

You could also play around with the many effects that are available - just to make it look more 'artistic' :) A few possibilities that I liked:

changed 'highlights' settings

'urbane' effect

'boost' effect

'focal soften' effect, the element that you choose is sharp,
the rest of the photo is blurred.

I just love the possibility of adding the 'bokeh' effect, for example:

My version:

The bokeh here looks quite natural. I really like how I turned out in my dog's photo and I'm also pleased with how it looks in the one on the left. I'm not particularly happy about the bottle photo, however. I  went too far with the 'weave' effect :/  Here's how you can add bokeh to your own photos:

Choose 'overlays/geometric'. You'll need the two shapes that I marked below:

When you click on the circular shape it will appear in black as default::

Just choose the color that you want by moving the cursor on the color overlay window. You can also alter the size of  your circle. And remember to adjust 'Fade' so that you can see through the shape:

If you want to have more of such circles, just right click on it and choose 'duplicate overlay'. This is the final look of my photo:

You can add some more interest to your photo by choosing 'textures' and 'weave'. It'll look like streams of light shining down but again make sure to use 'fade' (you don't want to go overboard with it like I did :P ).

Textures/weave

Well, that's all I wanted to show you today. The possibilities are endless so play around with it and have fun!:)

Take care,

Queen Anne's Lace

Ok, so I could understand the name Queen Anne's Lace but...Bishop's Lace? Where do bishops have or wear any lace? :) If you know the answer to my 'how come?', please let me know, I'm really curious. This one's probably some kind of a smaller version of the original Lace:

I just wanted to share some of the photos I took during my 'super professional photo shoot' of the little bouquet. ;)

I was just about to mow them down when I thought they would make a cute bouquet.  It took a lot of picking since the flowers are so tiny but I think it was worth my while. They look charming :) 

I put the flowers in an old bottle I found at the local thrift shop. 

Then I put the bottle on an old stool. We've had it in the family since I can remember. 

The sun was going down when I was taking the photos and the orange rays gave beautiful colors to the bouquet.

I haven't noticed before how the flowers appear in different colors, not just white but also yellow and even pink :)

I love the raindrops on the pink flowers in this one:

I've been trying out different overlays and effects using Picmonkey, some examples:

Take care,

Kate.