Presenting...

Our dragon baby, born in August, which makes her a lion dragon (a particularly fiery species I believe).

The dragon just hours after she was born

N, the princess, holding N, the dragon after meeting her for the first time

the dragon taking a nap in her bassinet

I'm still adjusting to life with two girls, still trying to find a place to live in Canada (real estate is hard to come by, sheesh), and still not able to access my crafting tools.

But I've got the itch to blog, so one way or another I'll be stopping by to post.

Yellow }{ The March Equinox Project

One more week has gone by, one more color I enjoyed out there. Yellow.

Daffodils and dandelions. I do love dandelions, and I don't care that they are considered weeds. Maybe that makes them even more... of an underdog.

One of the cool things about this project so far is it's teaching me which flowers come out in early spring versus later. I know. I should know that by now, considering that I like to add flowers to my garden every year and that I'm always buying indoor flowers as well. But, there you have it: I'm not sure what comes out when and how long they last. 

Even worse, I don't even know the name of lots of flowers I see and like. So I've been asking. Another good thing coming out of this project  - I'm realizing how friendly many people are around here. If I ask the name of their flowers and permission to take a photo, they open right up, smile, and give me all kinds of information about gardens. 

I really need to do things like this more often.

What's your favorite way to strike up a conversation with neighbors?

Vacation, had to get away

I've been away now for a while, visiting family. Where my mom lives, internet connections are very, very slow. But I figured I had to share at least some pictures of the trip so far. 

Can you guess where we are? If you know me fairly well, that's an easy answer. 

I hope everyone's having a wonderful new year so far.

N. at the beach with tio Erick (my big brother)

Relaxing in the pool after the beach 

My cousin's pet - a very talkative parrot 

The backyard at the beach house 

Some flowers my husband really liked

The beach

Crabs at the beach. We eat them like this, yikes.

N. and her cousin on a kid sized VW Beetle. They didn't actually drive it, but there was an 8-year old boy driving it before.

This is what a cashew fruit looks like for those who don't know it.  

My 18 month old nephew. He was eating some fruit, that's why his mouth is lopsided.

N.'s ice cream one night.

Monkey statue at the beach house

Portrait }{ Texture Tuesday

The prompt this week was "people." Could I do a portrait of anyone else?

(maybe the husband but since he's not around lately...)


Sometimes I feel things in black and white, sometimes in color. But she's always beautiful to me.

• original image
• BW background copy on normal @20%
• BW gradient map on overlay @30%
• Copper gradient map on soft light @25%
• Kim Klassen's "Portrait" on lighter color @35%
• Kim Klassen's "warm sun" on multiply @40%
• Added layer mask to "warm sun" and with opacity @50% removed some of the texture over her face

• original image
• BW gradient map on overlay @50%
• Copper gradient map on overlay @20%
• Kim Klassen's "silence" on darker @50%
• Kim Klassen's "stained linen" on multiply @55%
• Added layer mask to "warm sun" and with opacity @50% removed some of the texture over her face

Freedom }{ Texture Tuesday

It's Texture Tuesday again.

It's one of my favorite posts of the week along with WIP wednesdays, tutorial thursdays, free for all fridays, and illustration friday (yah, I know that means every theme I post is one of my favorites - it's just how it goes).

This week's prompt was open for us to choose - just use one of Kim's textures on a photo we like. Freedom of choice.

So with Fourth of July coming up and all, I decided to do a tribute to freedom. I can't think of things freer than animals in the wild. And yes, I know that a marina is not "the wild" exactly... But he's not in a cage, right? Here's to freedom in a modern setting with a textured old look.

• original photo with minor adjustments
• make background copy BW on normal @26%
• sepia tint copy on normal @100%
• gradient map BW on multiply @32%
• solid navy blue layer on exclusion @20%
• Kim Klassen's "mayzee" on linear burn @50%
• Kim Klassen's "just cause" on soft light @50%

How would you represent freedom?

Words }{ Texture Tuesday

This week's Texture Tuesday prompt was "words." Oh boy, oh boy! Of course I had to do something with books. It doesn't matter that photos of books have been overdone to the point of boredom. I never get tired of them.

You see, I love books. In fact, I love the printed word - magazines, books, even newspapers. In my collages (one day I'll share those) I always add some printed words element somewhere. 

These first two photos show a book that fates back to when my grandparents were still engaged. But this copy isn't my grandmothers - I ended up hunting for one of my own when I was a teenager. Still, my grandmother read this story when she was in her late adolescence/early twenties, my mother read it when she was a teenager, and so did I. My mother liked it so much that she named my little sister after the main character in the story. The story itself isn't anything great, too sugary as my mother used to say, but still... At this point I feel like it's part of our history. 

• background with minor adjustments
• Kim Klassen's "Trust" on linear burn @25%
• Kim Klassen's "Sweettart" on color @20%

• original image with minor adjustments
• convert background copy to BW on normal @26%
• add solid white layer and use clipping mask to background copy. With opacity of brush on 65%, add some black on portions of the flowers.
• Kim Klassen's "Portrait" on darker color @30%
• Kim Klassen's "Stained Linen" on darker color @25%
• add layer mask to the this last layer and with brush opacity on 65%, remove some of the texture from the flowers 

Speaking of history, this last photo shows an interesting book. It's a collection of short stories compiled by a 16th century French writer (Pierre Boaistuau) who said they were true accounts of amazing events, and guess what? Romeo and Juliet is in there somewhere... yep, before Shakespeare, but we knew that. His incredible ability is not always in what he wrote, but in how he wrote it. Boaistuau himself did quite a bit of plagiarizing, incurring the wrath of many during his lifetime.

• original with minor adjustments
• Kim Klassen's "Just Cause" on linear burn @ 40%
• Kim Klassen's "Warm Sun" on soft light @50%

Gardening }{ Texture Tuesdays

Partake as doth the bee

Abstemiously.

The Rose is an Estate -

In Sicily.

Emily Dickinson

Gardening was the theme for today's Texture Tuesday's challenge.

small flowers from one of our flower beds

• start with original and minor adjustments
• background copy desaturated -25%  on luminosity @70%
• gaussian blur on background copy
• Kim Klassen's "stained linen" on multiply @26%
• layer mask to erase the texture over the flower
• Kim Klassen's "warm sun" on soft light @80%

N. playing with one of the flowers we picked

• original with minor adjustments
• convert background copy to BW on lighten @30%
• Kim Klassen's "warm sun" on linear burn @26%
• Kim Klassen's "love" on luminosity @26%

These were my attempts at minimalist, simple photos involving our garden.

I'm not an orderly person. If you see my crafting areas, things are a bit... disorganized. Still, there's a side of me that likes everything in order, neat, absolutely logical. When I get around to organizing my closet, about once every month, it has to be done just so - sleeveless shirts, short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, button down shirts, jackets and cardigans, sweaters, skirts, pants, cocktail dresses, business suits and dresses, and finally a few formal pieces I still have; and within each of these categories, they have to follow a progression of light colors to dark colors; and they all have to face the same way.

Back to gardening. Like me, my garden is messy and orderly all at once. Flowers follow a color based distribution, the spaces between them having been measured, trying to achieve a balance and order in quantity and shades. And yet, there are spots with overgrown grass, weeds that I never get around to pulling out. How do you reconcile all of this?

Lately, my organized side has been winning the battle. I've been in full "simplify" mode, getting rid of clutter, donating old clothes, shoes, toys, packing away things I don't need for a while but that I'll take when we move. 

This has been a long post for a photography based challenge. My apologies. Like my house, I'm trying to get words out, de-cluttering my thoughts. 

ps.: in case you are wondering what's with the quoted poems lately, I've been in the mood for poetry, revisiting a lot of my old favorites.

Fog }{ Texture Tuesday

This week's challenge over at Texture Tuesday involved using this texture called "yesteryear."

Fits my mood.

I've been pensive, thinking of places I've been and memories made (mostly happy). And how it all disappears into a fog in the recesses on our mind.

I wanted to work with that, with the dreamy fog, with memories. I've getting more and more experimental with my texture play, though I also love clear, well defined photos. This is just play time.

a place dear to my heart with lots of memories over many different points in my life

• Adjusted levels, color curves, and sharpness of original. 
• Copied background layer and converted to BW on soft light @100%
• BW gradient map on overlay @80%
• copper gradient map on overlay @25%
• solid navy blue layer on exclusion @ 23%
• Kim Klassen's "yesteryear" on linear burn @20%
• Kim Klassen's "yesteryear" on luminosity @30%

some fun with friends ended up giving me this frozen in the air look

• adjusted levels, color curves, and sharpness of original
• Copied background into a new layer, decreased saturation 25% and added gaussian blur
• Kim Klassen's "yesteryear" on liner dodge @30%
• Kim Klassen's "yesteryear" on soft light @35%

I honestly don't remember what I did for this one. Serves me right for not writing it down, oops.

How about your happy memories? Are they clear or do you get lost in a fog?

My daughter, my inspiration

I think I'm going to make Sundays days devoted to my little girl. I always end up so inspired by her on weekends. Probably because I spend almost 100% of my time with her on those days. Oh, who am I kidding, every day she's the first thing on my mind - she's truly been my inspiration for life since I first saw those little heart flickers on the ultrasound screen.

(Digital frame from Paislee Press. Check out her wonderful creations!)

Oh, and just to clarify my last post, that's a painting/collage (more painting than collage, but I did add some pattern paper, and other things to it) that I did for N. My plan is to make three more of those - one for each season. That one was summer.

What's your inspiration?

Playing with photography

Here's a confession. I may be addicted to photoshop.

One of my favorite things to do is going over some older pictures and playing with them in post-processing - trying adding sepia, exclusion blue, and gradient layers on the picture to get a moody or somber feel. As with any of my experiments, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Here's what I do:

1) Do all the initial work in camera raw (white balance, exposure, contrast, and whatever else I think it needs)

2) Always working in different layers, I adjust the levels and color curves.

3) I usually start with gradient map layers and add at least two. Then I tweak the style (overlay and soft light are two favorites, but I always try multiples to see what works for me)

4) Depending on what mood I'm looking for I'll add an exclusion blue or sepia layers on top for a soft, older feel.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

For these two pictures of downtown Boston, I added two gradient layers - one BW and one copper - then adjusted their opacity and style. And then I added an exclusion blue layer on top. The only difference between the top and the bottom is that for the top I used BW gradient layer in hard light, and for the bottom I used screen. And just for comparison, here's one without the exclusion blue layer and the original respectively.

And more example, because... like I said... photoshop owns me.

the original

Two gradient maps and exclusion blue layer (she looked a little orange so...)

Different shade of exclusion blue

With an added vignette

"Ma'am, step away from the photoshop, now, before anyone else gets hurt."

Choices

I had a long post written on how unsettling it is to work in academia and raise my daughter like I want to. But I erased it. Because at the end of the day I do believe I'm making the right choice for me, for her, for our family. And I know she's a very happy little girl.

So instead I leave you with a picture of this little human who fills my days, my thoughts, and my hopes. She is my best work of art.

Pretty little things

I've been getting into full on holiday mode lately. Decorations are up, but I'm still doing Christmas-y crafts as I go along (see this post from yesterday).

So today, in the spirit of Christmas decoration, I want to share a giveway that Bluebird Notes is having, because well... take a look at the shop where the ornaments are coming from. I love, love, love those ornaments! *sigh* I'm definitely getting my hands on some, regardless of the giveaway.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

On a different note, can we talk about blur? Does it make me a bad photographer or even a bad consumer of photography if I love blur?

Of course I love crisp, clear, and focused photography as well. But sometimes, I feel that life is not completely in focus, and that's what I want to portray in a photo. This photo of N. wasn't originally supposed to be out of focus, but when I retook it with the correct focus on her eyes, I didn't like it as much.

I love this picture.... but maybe I'm just out of it. 

Are there any pictures that in your opinion came out better as a "mistake?"

Jumping right in...

My first post.

It's finals and I'm in desperate need to release some stress. So I started the blog.

And because I'm snap happy, what better way to start then to share some of my snappy snaps? Pretty raw, actually. SOOC, except for the last one which has very little done anyway.

This is going to be fun.

What soothes you when you are stressed?