Smoke trails

I recently purchased a fantastic photography book from Amazon called 'Camera Creative' and have been pouring over it almost nonstop! I have a terrible habit of collecting books on my favorite topics and just reading them over and over but never actually putting the information to practice. But, as I have not been able to leave my house I decided to take some photos. The first project was taking pictures of smoke, which turned out to be amazingly easy and I ended up with some great results, I'm so hooked! A wee bit of editing was required. I try to avoid that in my photos but you really can't with these, mostly all I did was darken up my background and reverse the colors, and presto! Instant eye candy! I have no idea what I'll do with these, but it was soooo fun to take!

Snow day!

Yesterday we had a blizzard.
At least that's what the weatherman said it was. Here in the mid-western part of the U.S. we don't get a lot of snow, much less a blizzard. I have to say it was a bit disappointing, when I think of of a blizzard I think complete white out, zero visibility, but sadly it wasn't all that. None the less it was gorgeous!This is a picture of my back yard during the storm:
I think we ended up with about 13 inches of snow.
Unfortunately, my road is still snow covered, so it looks like I'll be stuck at my house for a few more days. For the last two days I've been indoors, staying warm and trying to catch up on some projects ( Lots of robots on the way!), watching old 1960's Italian versions of The Great Hurcules and listening to Leonard Cohen, what better way to spend a snow day!
Check back tomorrow and you'll see the new fun photos I've been working on.

Neck Tie Creative!

For the last week and a half, I took a small vacation just to work on art and relax. I drove about 90 miles away to some of my family's and got snowed in for a week. It was a good for me as all I could do was projects, within the next few days I'll be posting some of the fantastic and not so fantastic art forms I worked on. One of those days, I bundled as warm as I could and walked in the snow to one of the greatest antiques stores I know of! In the back was a basket of mens neck ties, so I picked one up knowing something wonderful could come out of it. So here is what I came up with, along with instructions. Behold the neck tie headband!

Step One: Acquire yourself a nice vintage neck tie ( NOT a bow tie).
Step Two: wrap the tie around your head to determine the length. Be sure to add a few inches for overlapping. It should fit fairly snug. Mark and cut off.
Step Three: In the case of the tie I chose, one end was quite a bit wider, so I needed to slim it down. To do this, slit the stitches in the seam on the back side of the tie, fold the sides in until its the right width. Now slip stitch closed. Fold the raw end of the tie in and slip stitch.
Step Four: Set the tie aside and take the leftover that was cut off. Measure down the tie about 2 inches, and cut. Turn this rectangular piece inside out and stitch one whole side and half of the other. Turn right side out and slip stitch closed. Now try on the headband again and pick a spot somewhere in between the side and top of your head, mark this spot. Wrap your rectangle around that spot, scrunching up the tie, (so it looks like a bow) turn over and sew the rectangle in place.
Step Five: Try it on again, overlapping the ends on
backside of your head, make it somewhat tight, mark it with chalk and on the flap that will be on the bottom, (the one touching your head) pick a nice slightly big, flat button and sew on the spot you marked. Directly under the button on the other side make a button hole a teeny bit smaller than your button. Try it on to make sure you have a good fit and viola`! Your new fashion accessory!

New Year, new Robots

It may seem odd, but I really do look forward to Christmas every year. I'm like a kid, I count down the days after thanksgiving and can hardly sleep Christmas Eve! But then the grown-up in me is so glad when its over! I can finally sigh in relief and relax.
Although, now that its over the next to is Valentines Day, not exactly my favorite one but it comes anyway and happens to be a great month for sales of plushy robots. So like Santa's elves I'm back to work sewing and drawing sweet nothtings for BFFs and lovers alike. Here are a few things I've been working on in the past week, my favorites are the tiny Mr. and Mrs. with their Valentine balloons, Check out my Etsy shop in the next few days to see more!

This one here is an experiment, sometimes I tire of making cubes so much, so I decided to branch out and try dinosaurs, the Mr. Dino is still being worked on.

Like most goals I set out to accomplish, my goal of 365 picture has change somewhat. Instead of a photo a day, it is being updated to 7 photos per week, which is a bit more doable. The last few weeks have been super busy and I have not taken as many as I would have liked, but here is my seven for last week. As you can see I have been baking for Christmas, these pinwheels turned out so lovely I couldn't resist a photo shoot:



Not far from my house down a rinky dink gravel road is one of Missouri's last suspension bridges. I'm not sure when it was built, but I'm going to guess in the early 1900's, most people are afraid to walk across it much less drive, but I love it! I hope it stays forever!My latest library treasure was a Jamie Oliver cookbook, this was Chicken stroganoff; delicious!
And last but not least, I photographed my God-daughter and her Daddy, which turned out to be one of the sweetest pictures I've taken:

As it turns out, I am not a very consistent blogger. I am so busy taking pictures for my blog I never get around to posting them. Over the last few weeks I have taken more than fifty pictures, most of those were over the holidays and are of my family and friends, which I don't care to post. However, I have taken many others. I always try to teach myself whatever it is that I'm interested in learning, I fiddle with my camera in order to take more exciting pictures instead of adjusting them is Photoshop.
Recently I rediscovered that if I take off my lens and turn it around backwards it transforms into a super macro! I have had so much fun with it, taking pictures of anything I can get my hands on! Whether its book matches, beads or even rocks! The amount of control is extremely limited and its almost impossible to hand hold, but the results are fantastic! Try it sometime. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Sweet, sweet robots

So far I have been failing on my project. I have not taken a photo a day, more like every other day, some days I have taken them only to delete them later. Oh well, I will just have to make it up. For the last few days I have been finishing up some tiny robots in order to get ahead for Christmas, these little girly ones are some of my favorites, sadly the pink one has no arms or legs at the moment...