Kids, Park and Photoshop

Sooo,  I have been taking this Photography class at the JC and I have to tell you how much I love it! My theory on Photography has always been that if I can get a great photo then why do I need photoshop? I have a pretty good camera too ( Nikon D70S with a 18-200mm lens) so getting good shots has not been to hard. But I thought by taking this class I could strengthen my photo taking skills , not knowing that photoshop would be a key part to this class. Luckily I signed up for this class now because the newest version  of Photoshop[ CS5 ] just came out a few months ago.

 My teacher studied under Ansel Adams so he was taught the "old school" way of doing things , and to my surprise is soo into digital and photoshop. [ I kinda thought he would be the kind to want to preserve the original way of doing things ...Guess not!]  The book the teacher has us using is The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby  [ here is the link in case your interested..] There are some fantabulous fast and easy tricks for editing your pics.

Ok, here is where I am going with this. My Brother-in-law, Nephew, and Mother-in-Law came to visit and all I could think of was to get the kids to the park and take some pictures. Of course the kids were up for it , not knowing my hidden agenda! We have been having some awesome weather and I couldn't have asked for a better blue sky day to take picture. Here is what I got. I will show you the before and after editing.. Its just amazing.... to me..I think... In my opinion..!

My Beautiful Lily with static cling hair.. Before and after. I am soooo Not claiming to be any kind of professional at this. I am just sooo excited about having this program and what it can to!

Here is Chaser before and after [please do no mention the hair doo, we are working on it!]

Again, lily she is so easy to take pictures of! Here I added a little more exposure which blew out the background so I went in my by brush tool and lowered the exposure for the background. Sounds technical, but it is so not!

 My little oocy I Love her Little face!

 Eating a Cheetos

I adore this shot of my Nephew. This was the best shot of the day!

So here is another hobby I have found to spend time on. You should Never eva , eva, eva ,eva , eva hear me say I have nothing to do or that I am bored!

~ Bianca

Organizing and crafting all in one..

Last weekend I felt the strong need to organize my craft space in order to prepare the holidays. I usually have a list of projects I want to do, a few new ones and and few old timers. So anyway , I decided I needed to get some new kind of new storage containers for my yarn stash. This seemed like the easiest place to start . I went to Michaels because baskets were 40% off last weekend, but did not find what I had in mind ( I also did not want to spend a lot on this endeavor). On my way home I had a flash of an idea, don't you just love it when that happens! I went to Wally World ( aka Wal-Mart) and bought some clear plastic containers, but of course they could not stay this way. I did not take a picture of them in their original state, but you can imagine how they looked...boring!

So,  to make these super fancy  I  decoupaged some vintage word flash cards around the entire bin so that you cannot see what is inside (my super hot mess of yarn that I had to buy now not knowing what to do with it but it will someday be something !) .

This is one of my favorite things do. I Love these flash cards, I have multiplication , division, addition and site words cards all bought on Ebay. I have had to stop myself in on gluing these cards on to everything! I have some more ideas of where to put them that will tie in to these storage bins (maybe to come at a later date).

I also added some blackboard paint  I had  hanging around to the center so I could label what was in the bin.

So that is where I started, and since I had my Mod Podge out I started to work on a couple of projects that had been sitting on the To-Do list.

Here are some Ikea mirrors that have waiting for something fab to happen to them. I started  collecting game pieces awhile ago [one of may collections I have]  and thought this might be a fun way to display them.  I used Mod Podge once again since I already had it out and just simply glued them on to the frame surrounding the mirror. The hardest part of this was making sure they lined up equally.

Ta-Dah  below is the finished product, I made a total of three of the domino mirrors and two with  the scrabble tiles.

I haven't decided if I want to

• Keep them because I love them
• Give them as Christmas gifts because I know some family members will love them
• Or sell them on Etsy

What do you think??

~Bianca

P.S. Check out this Mod Podge blog, lots of cute project ideas!