Artful Journey

Just got back from an idyllic retreat of days filled with Yoga, Art and camaraderie

. I took DJ Petit's class 'A Bird in the Hand' and learned how to paint on photos, sew random bits of fabric to paper and cloth and create a sumptuous book with a button binding.

A crafty evening

I just spent a fun evening at a crafting event sponsored by the staff of Anthropolgie and Uppercase. It was great to hear about the behind the scenes artistry that goes in to the displays in the store. I met up with Janice from Papier Valise and we had a great time playing. We made books, buttons and a weird sputnicky thing that I am not quite sure what I'll do with !

My little Easter garden!

I used some brown egg shells as mini garden containers to amuse myself this morning..... So much less fattening than chocolate!!!!

Testing out my new Bogg boots

Spring storm!

Why did I put the snow shovel away!

Earth Hour

I shut off all the lights, lit some candles and journaled by candlelight in honour of Earth Hour last week.

Putting my credit card to good use!

Lemonny yoghurt on a lazy Sunday morning!

Lemons... A zester...some honey and plain creamy yoghurt..... Perfect over fruit or inside a crispy crepe! Yum!

Repurposing a little shelf unit

Quite a few years ago I inherited a little shelf unit and never quite figured out how to put it to good use. This winter a light bulb went off and I decided it needed little drawers made. Here is the before and after!

Daylight savings time begins soon

So to welcome March into my home I took down the hearts and put up my light bulbs... And used them as hanging flower vases! I love it!

Whispers from the past

Applying a painterly effect using Kim's tutorial I tried several photos without much success. I eventually persevered with this one and you can see the before and after ....I got rid of some of the distractions using that great lasso tool and content aware feature things I had never heard of before let alone tried!

Photographically speaking

Our assignment this week was to set up a still life and then use a gradient to create a vintage effect. Another new thing learned about Photoshop!

Time Capsule

This week's challenge was to take six photos
documenting your day and then place them into a template in photoshop. Kim's excellent video instructions really helped as I have tried this before without success!
This is a visual of a typical day right now.

Challenge Week Two.

Vision and Blur is our theme for this week's challenge.

 I took my Canon SX30 out of Auto mode and put it in Manual....set the aperture as low as mine will go and opened up the shutter and clicked! Then in Photoshop I added Kim's new texture Organic which I loved watching how she made....thank you for the demo. This is making learn  more about what my camera can do.

6 words to describe myself!

This is the latest challenge in The Beyond Layers    class. I took a photo using Hipstamatic's Susie Lens on my iPhone and then processed it with some bokeh and Kim's scripted edges texture set to screen blend mode.

My new Ikea muffin pan

I just baked a batch of savory cheesy muffins in my new tall and skinny pan... They turned out amazingly well.... I am always amazed when anything I bake is a success!

Awaken

I took this photo for the Beyond Layers class. The assignment was for a simple composition and lots of negative space...this was quite hard for me!  But I am happy with this result. i added Kim's "Awaken" texture
and reduced the saturation levels a bit.

What to do on a cold and wintry day!

Make jam of course! I came across several bags of fruit taking up space in the deep freeze so I hauled them out and got them simmering.....now my shelves are filled with jars of dark red yumminess! I had some for breakfast this morning!

Spontaneous mark making

I just spent the morning doodling along with a Traci Bautista video class sponsored by strath more papers ... It was fun being free!

OPEN

 Today is Texture Tuesday , the theme " Open", and I used Kim Klassen's Texture "Serious Magic"

put blending mode to "Screen" and after a few tweeks with curves I was done!