Inspiration: Kara Layne

Today I watched an interview with lifestyle photographer Kara Layne from the "How'd They Do That?" series on AdoramaTV with Mark Wallace. The piece of advice she shared that really stood out was: "know your equipment." Kara shoots solely in manual mode to really challenge herself to learn and understand all that her camera can do. Here's the interview:

Lifestyle Photographer, Kara Layne: How'd They Do That? from AdoramaTV on Vimeo.

It's Party Time

Two weeks ago, while chatting over lunch at a local cafe, my friend Suzi and I decided to throw a party. We thought the following weekend would be a good time, so we quickly set up a Facebook invite and got to work inviting our local friends. Unfortunately, we forgot our selected weekend also happened to be Father's Day weekend. As the week progressed and more and more people told us they couldn't make it, we started to have second thoughts. In the end, we figured it would be fun to plan regardless of the number of attendees so we just jumped right in and went for it. We settled on a Pizza and Prosecco party theme. I got the idea from this article that I read in Bon Appetite magazine about a year ago and have wanted to try ever since.  We didn't make any of the appetizers or the fancy toppings but we did have a nice selection of fresh veggies, herbs and pepperoni. The pizzas were delicious and it was lots of fun decorating Suzi's front porch.

This is what the front porch looked like before we got our hands on it:

And here's what it looked like after:

We found these adorable REKO glasses at Ikea. At $1.49/6 pack, you can't beat the price. It's cheaper than plastic! We loved that they can be reused over and over again.

Suzi made this delicious punch. I love the floating berries.

We decided to try to keep the decorating budget under $20, so all the flowers are from my garden. The votives below are covered with hostas (also from my garden) using this tutorial from Martha Stewart's website.

The "vases" below are actually tin cans spray painted white.

In the end, since there only ended up being four of us at the party, we viewed it as a sort of "dry run." It turned out great and was a lovely evening hanging out on the front porch with friends.

At Home: The Etsy prints are finally up!

You may remember the master bedroom used to look like this:

And then it looked like this:

And then this:

Well now it looks like this:

Yes, I finally decided what to hang above our bed.

I bought these adorable prints from a shop on Etsy called Bee Things. It's run by a husband and wife team and is filled with the hippest collection of animal and bird prints reminiscent of Charley Harper. I first fell in love with the terns, but then I saw the cute little owl hovering over the snowy barn. And then I saw shipping was free on the second item, and that sealed the deal.

When my two prints finally arrived, I pulled them out of their paper mailer and admired them for a while and then carefully slipped them back into their safe little cardboard home. I repeated this process every so often for quite a while until finally deciding it was time to order some frames. After carefully weighing my options (you must know by now, I'm a VERY slow decorator.), I decided I wanted a silver metal frame with no mat. I always choose to mat artwork, so this was a major departure for me. But I really liked the way they looked in just a frame in the sample photos on the Etsy site and decided there was enough negative space around them to go the sans mat route. So I sent away for a selection of silver frame samples from Graphik Dimensions, my favorite frame supply shop. Then I took some more time deciding on which silver frame looked the best. I finally selected a simple, slightly frosted version. I think they "terned" out great. Wow. Did I just type that?

What the heck is ixxi?

I discovered ixxi this weekend. And let me tell you, I'm hooked. "What's ixxi?" you ask. Only the coolest photo mosaic collage thing-a-ma-jig ever! Okay, maybe I should let them tell you. According to their website:

ixxi is a modular connecting system. With x's and i's you can make your own photo enlargement or photo collage in any format possible.

How cool is that? I'll tell you. It's very cool!

And if mosaics aren't really your thing, no problem. You can make a collage out of lots of small photos if you rather. Like this one:

Or one big photo. Like this one:

The possibilities are really endless. So pop on over to their website and check 'em out. You can find all the photo collaging goodness here.

Sewing Projects: Ruffled Shirt Refashion

It's time for another thrift store find refashion. I bought this shirt at Goodwill almost a year ago with the intension of refashioning the sleeves, and now I'm finally getting around to working on it. This is how it started out:

I really liked the collar but wasn't so excited about the three-quarter length sleeves. I wanted to shorten them so they hit just above the elbow. The cuffs had these adorable little fabric-covered buttons on them and I didn't want to lose that detail. I had to figure out a way to include them in the refashioned cuff, so I cut the cuffs off the bottom of the sleeve and then sewed them back on the newly shortened sleeve to get this:

And here's the final look:

Time to make a birthday card

My dad's birthday is this week and I decided instead of just buying a card, it would be nice to make him a card. So I dug out my collection of decorative paper and other supplies and got crackin'.

I started by cutting out a print of a linocut I recently created of a forsythia branch.

I then cut out and folded my card stock using a bone folder to get a nice clean edge.

I then cut and glued some decorative paper onto my folded card. I've bought lots of different types and brands of glue over the years and have had mixed results. I've read a lot of positive comments on Coccoina glue so I figured I'd try it out. I'm not sure it's any better than other glue sticks (I'm still deciding), but it smells like almonds which is pretty great.

I glued the cut out forsythia print on top of the decorative paper and voila - done!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Indie Ink

Guess what?! My photo School's Out was featured on Indie Ink last week! And this is the really good part...someone wrote a comment about my photo! I know it's not really that big a deal compared to the amazing feats others are performing on the web, but I'm super excited. You can check it out here.

UPDATE =====================================================

Well, its seems that Indie Ink is no more, which is a shame. Since you can no longer view my photo from the link above, I've added it here.