All About Me Archives - Page 4 of 51

Project 52: Sign of the Times

May 10, 2013 By Paola 1 Comment

Wow, I have become Chatty Cathy on here all of a sudden.

Anyway, just thought I’d close out the week with my latest submission for Project 52. Our assignment was to take a photo for the cover of a book entitled ‘Sign of the Times’, all about the advances made in technology in recent years.

I’m always seeing the Minx with various screens casting an eerie glow on her face, so I thought I’d make it into feature for this shoot, where she just got to sit in a darkened room and play games on the iPad.

She’s never been so happy to be in a photoshoot before.

But when did my baby get so GROWN UP?

Project 52: Red Balloons

April 3, 2013 By Paola Leave a Comment

So last week’s assignment was simple. A concept shot inspired by “Red Balloons’.

Because I wanted to do something a bit different, and because blowing up balloons makes my cheeks hurt, and because I’m trying to improve my food photography, I decided it might be easiest to just whip up a bunch of cupcakes.

In that I was almost certainly wrong. Trying to organise and tame that ridicuously curly gift ribbon with tiny bits of sticky tape into strands that might possibly look like they were floating through the air tested my patience to the very limits. Food and product stylists everywhere, I salute you.

I was worried that the photo above might be insufficiently conceptual, so then dug up a photo I had of a tiny Minx chasing balloons. I used my still extremely crappy Photoshop skills to turn her into a Brush and included her in the picture.

I wasn’t entirely happy with this shot either as I couldn’t help wishing that the Minx had been stretching up towards the balloons, and the composition just didn’t look right. The Minx thinks it’s fabulous though, so I think I’ll make a canvas copy for her toyroom.

In the end I decided to use the same conceit but have the cupcake balloons wafting in front of the Space Needle.

This involved taking a photo of the Space Needle, converting it to a Brush and then using a mask to reveal the bunch of ribbons. My Photoshop ‘skills’ pretty much exploded at this point.

To be honest, I think this is my least favourite of the Project 52 images I’ve produced to date, and I’m not sure that red flying cupcakes look particularly appetising, which, after all, is the point of food photography. But it was a fascinating creative exercise and certainly tested my Photoshop skills, such as they are, to the very limits and beyond.

HOW TO CONVERT AN IMAGE INTO A BRUSH IN PHOTOSHOP

You can convert any image into a brush in Photoshop which gives it an interesting flat effect and means you can colourise it, move it about, multiply it, turn it, stamp your photos with it and do all sorts of jiggery pokery (note use of correct Photoshop terminology). In fact do all the things you can do with the standard Brushes, but with a photo.

– Use your preferred selection tools to select the area of the image you wish to use. (I had trouble selecting the Minx as you can see, the Space Needle was much simpler).

– Go to Select –> Inverse and then delete the areas of the image you don’t want to use, so that you end up with your image on a transparent background.

– Convert the image you want to use to black and white, remembering that grey areas will show up in the brush but white areas will be transparent.

– Adjust contrast etc. to get a good strong B/W image

– Draw a box around the image with Rectangular Marquee Tool and go to Edit –> Define Brush Preset. And that’s it, you’ve created a new fancy Brush!

– If you want to save your brush permanently go to Window –> Brush Presets –> click on the Brush Presets Icon (second from left along the bottom) and Select the Brushes you want save. Then save them in a named set.

If you want to download some groovy premade Brushes for your digital artwork, check out Brusheezy or TwoPeasinaBucket.

And if you want to see how Photoshop Brushes can be used to make all sorts of crazy and inspiring art then check out this CreativeLIVE course with the incredibly bubbly and charming Khara Plicanic, which was one of the most fun courses I attended at Photoshop Week.

I spent the last couple of days at CreativeLIVE again, doing a course on Photoshop Working Foundations with ace photographer and Photoshop guru Ben Willmore. My only regret is that I wish I’d done this course before Photoshop Week as I would have got so much more out of all the other courses I sat through.

I can’t recommend this course highly enough if you want to get the basics of Photoshop – selections, layers, masking, adjustments etc. down pat. One of the most useful courses I’ve ever done and it would be a great purchase if you are fairly new to Photoshop.

Flower Sugar Cookies

February 6, 2013 By Paola 1 Comment

We celebrated a very special birthday a couple of weekends back.

The Minx, would you believe, turned eight in January. No I don’t believe it either. I wonder if there are any of you around who remember her when she looked like this (oh, how innocent those blogging days were).

To celebrate we had to suffer through a party at the American Girl doll store in Seattle, followed by a birthday sleepover with eight of her closest friends and their dolls. I believe I deserve some sort of mothering Oscar.

(For those of you not in the US or in possession of an 8 year old daughter, American Girl dolls are something of a cultural phenomenon. They’re very high quality, INCREDIBLY expensive dolls – some dressed to be fictional historical characters and some from the present day – that come with every possible expensive accessory you can dream of. Even to my adult eyes, the store, with its teeny dolls’ hair salon and bistro with special chairs so the dolls can sit at the table, is faintly mind-blowing.)

Unfortunately a fancy cake came as part of the package at the store, so I was unable to emulate my birthday cake extravaganzas of yore, so I decided instead to apply myself to sugar cookies that the girls could have with milk while watching their American Girl movie. The tiny cookies are of course for the dolls.

As you can tell I’m a rather slapdash cookie icer. One day I’d love to learn how to ‘flood’ the cookies properly with icing and pipe neat intricate details on them, but this time round I made do with dipping the cookies in royal icing – the pink worked best because it was wetter and runnier – and then piped some rather wobbly outlines on them.

I used this trusty sugar cookie recipe from the Joy of Baking, which I highly recommend, together with their royal icing recipe.

For the record here is my baby blowing out the eight candles on her cake.

And here she is with her freaky ‘Look Like Me’ doll.

I do want to improve my cookie icing skills and so to that end I’ve purchased Decorating Cookies by Bridget Edwards which looks amazing. Not that I’ve actually used it yet mind you. I find it’s always easier to buy the craft book rather than actually DO the craft. The blog which inspired the book is here.

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Reboot

February 5, 2013 By Paola 13 Comments

There’s been quite a lot going on behind the scenes here at mirrormirror global headquarters over the last month or two. The mysterious backpain has been coupled with days of utter and total exhaustion and nights of bizarre dreams, insomnia and very unrestful sleep.

I read everything the Internet had to offer on piriformis syndrome – the clenched muscle in my left buttock that was squeezing on the sciatic nerve and radiating pain all down my left leg making it impossible to sit and often to sleep – and discovered that some people think it’s stress related, that the muscle spasms due to stress or anxiety in the same way that we might get a tension headache when we’ve got too much on our plate.

And just believing that I needed to relax and that the pain wasn’t due to a major structural issue, and that I could walk and sit as normal, immediately started to bring relief and now the pain is pretty much gone. I’m convinced that for me the pain was stress-related. I can even feel the muscle start to tighten again if I get agitated. (If you think you might be going through something similar, you could do worse than check out John Sarno’s book Healing Back Pain. It’s a terribly written book and could be condensed into one chapter if you got rid of all the padding and filler. But I’m certain he’s onto something.)

As all this was going on, it slowly started to dawn on me that, what with being the mother of a young kid, moving countries, trying to run my business from afar and finding time to blog, I’ve actually been living with a mountain of stress for years. I’ve always been a very type A personality – rushing about everywhere, and with a ton of stuff on my plate – and although many of those stressors have now abated, I realised that I had absolutely hit a wall, that the chronic insomnia I’d been suffering from since the Minx was born was not going to go away on its own, and that the exhaustion I was increasingly feeling during the day was not exactly normal.

And then I started reading about adrenal fatigue – where you are literally running on empty and caffeine, – where your adrenal glands, worn out through years of pumping adrenaline and cortisol into our body in response to stress, stop producing the cortisol and adrenaline you need to make you feel wakeful and energetic and just respond to stress and anxiety. I was waking up exhausted, struggling through the day, getting more stressed, producing more adrenaline and cortisol in response to the stress and then ending up so stressed out that I had trouble sleeping. And the following day the whole vicious cycle would start up again worse than before.

So I’ve been resting and relaxing as possible, clearing a lot of stuff on my plate and working with a naturopath to rebalance my sleep cycles. Hence the lack of blogging in recent weeks. The good news is that I think I’ve turned the corner. I’m sleeping better, though not always soundly, and the dragging exhausted feeling during the day has lessened. So I’m hoping to start up regular blogging again. To my one remaining reader, I have missed you!

Reboot – Part 2

The other big change has been in what I do with the rest of my life.

I closed mirrormirror over Christmas. It’s been pretty much on hiatus for the last couple of years and you might have noticed that I’ve been completely uninspired by it for the longest time. In fact you probably thought it was already closed. It just became too complicated running it across the different time zones and since it seems that we are here in Seattle for the foreseeable future, I had to bow to the inevitable. It was HARD to say goodbye to my baby – at one point it seemed like we were running a successful little shop – but I wasn’t doing right by her. Sometimes you just have to let go.

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the shop in the past, by buying from it or promoting it. I really appreciated all your help and encouragement. I was hoping to hold a big sale before Christmas but all my health issues got in the way, so we do still have a bit of stock. If there’s any stuff you remember liking let me know and I can give you a fabulous price. I’ll also be hosting some ‘Bargains of the Week’ via the blog over the next couple of weeks and months.

As to what I do next, that’s a good question. All I know at the moment is that food and photography are drawing me somewhere.This blog is probably somewhere in the mix too. Where it’s all leading I’m not exactly sure but I’m intrigued and excited to find out.

I’ve signed up to do ace commercial photographer Don Giannatti’s Project 52 PRO course, which is a year of critiqued professional level photographic assignments, which should help me build my portfolio. I’m renting some beautiful studio space so I’ve finally got a proper place to work. And I’ve committed to working really hard at building my blog, my photography and my foodie credentials over the next year and I’m excited to see where I end up. Watch this space. And I hope you can join me on the ride.

And yeah, just while I’m supposed to be relieving stress we start our kitchen and bathroom remodel next week. Oh my lord!

Oh and as a further aside, our first Project 52 assignment is to ‘photograph a stranger’. Is there a Seattle-based blog reader whom I’ve never met who would like to meet up for coffee and a quick portrait session? I don’t normally take many people shots, except of the Minx, so I don’t promise they’ll be any good, mind you. If you’re interested drop me a line.

Hanging Gingerbread Cookies

January 5, 2013 By Paola 3 Comments

It’s still sort of Christmas round these parts. The Minx doesn’t go back to school until Monday and we keep the tree up until January 6th as is traditional in the UK.

So I wanted to share one of the most fun things we did this Christmas, which was make gingerbread cookies for the tree.

I wanted to do something to pull together the hodgepodge of ornaments and decorations we’ve gathered together over the years, so I decorated them as simply as possible with white frosting and assorted pinkish ribbons from my ribbon box.

The very cool thing about them is that you’re always prepared for unexpected kid guests, of which there seem to be very many over the holiday period. Kids seem to love being able to choose their own cookie from the tree.

If you want to make some next year I can highly recommend this recipe which made easy and extremely tasty cookies.

I used this recipe for basic royal icing using egg whites but halved the amount (ie. 1 egg white to 1.5 cups of sugar). You really don’t need much icing for these babies.

I then pushed a little sugar ball into the cookie dough before baking, which could be pushed out at the end and left a little hole for hanging without the need to do dangerous things with skewers. This worked fantastically for the heart and star-shaped cookies, but I think next time I need to find a way of creating slightly smaller holes for my gingerbread girls and boys, so they don’t all look like that have frontal lobotomies.

As you can see, my icing skills leave an awful lot to be desired, but they were hugely fun to do and I think they have a certain, er, rustic charm.

I think this is the start of a new Christmas tradition anyway, though I bet I’ll be cursing these come December-time. Did you guys start any new traditions this holiday?

Walking in a Winter Wonderland in Whistler

January 2, 2013 By Paola 4 Comments

Good morning dear hearts and a happy new year to you all. I am BACK. Thank you so much for all your good wishes and butt repair tips here, on Facebook and via email. This thing has been a complete BITCH but I’ve got it down to mild sciatica in the morning and a sort of bruised feeling in my bum at all other times, so definitely making progress. I can also sit which is a Christmas miracle in and of itself.

In case others think they might have the same problem I’ll be writing a post in the near future about all the treatments I did and how they did or did not help.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season in the meantime. We made our annual trek to Whistler, wherein I pack the Husband and the Minx off skiing and then take myself off on snowy walks with my camera and my thoughts. This year we had plenty of snow and plenty of sunshine and it was quite breathtakingly beautiful.

One thing I did in Whistler was to read This Year I Will… which is full of tips and tricks for actually sticking to New Year’s resolutions. One tip that is resonating hugely with me at the moment is to concentrate the mind and give the year a title.

So for me this year is going to be The Year of Getting Organised, The Year of Photography, and The Year of Getting Fit. I like the idea of not making specific resolutions, but instead choosing areas of focus and attention. That way I can accommodate my butterfly mind by doing lots of different things in a certain category and not have to beat myself up if I fail to keep specific resolutions.

Have you made any resolutions for 2013? What will be your areas of focus? Do you think I’ll actually manage to tidy my desk this year?

A Right Pain in the Butt

December 10, 2012 By Paola 7 Comments

So it turns out that I have something called piriformis syndrome, where a small muscle in my butt (just under the glutes) has tightened up so much (through sitting) that it’s pressing on the sciatic nerve and causing a lot of pain in my lower back, butt and right down my left leg. Unfortunately sitting is incredibly painful and seems to make the pain a whole lot worse.

Things are getting gradually better after a lot of acupuncture, chiropractic, deep tissue massage, Rolfing, stretching, hot baths and heat treatments but progress is slow, and as you can imagine, blogging is almost impossible.

So I’ve reluctantly and sadly decided to stop blogging for a bit and just focus on resting my hip and getting treatment, hopefully back at the beginning of January.

In the meantime I wish you all a very happy holiday season, with lots of love and laughter. I will miss you all horribly.

If anyone has had this and can recommend any treatmets that helped you, let me know in the comments. I’m dying of frustration here.

Advent Calendar Day 1: Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar

December 2, 2012 By Paola 2 Comments

Still suffering with back pain (looks like I have something called piriformis syndrome), but I’m going to try a short, sweet Christmassy blog post every day as a little Advent Calendar for you all.

First up you must get your kids (and yourselves) a Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar. These magically beautiful online calendars feature gorgeous animations, and lovely music, with a new little interactive Christmassy game or a charming little story or scenario every day. As you open more windows the scene becomes more detailed and beautiful, and it changes through the day to reflect the time and the phases of the moon. The Minx loves the little games such as decorating the Christmas tree and cutting out snowflakes online and spotting how the scene changes from day to day. (I’d say this was perfect for 5-10 year olds).

The Minx is now excite to be working on this year’s beautiful Alpine village, but we retain a soft spot in our hearts for last year’s gorgeous London calendar which is still available.

Things I Am Loving: Studio Mela

November 26, 2012 By Paola Leave a Comment

As it’s Cyber Monday and I’m awesomely well-organised (haha! :- Ed), I’m sitting at my desk gently shopping for Christmas presents for the Minx.

Since she is now almost eight years old (how the heck did THAT happen?) I ‘m trying to get her a few more things which will still be very much loved and appreciated, but don’t fit into the ‘plastic tat made in China’ genre of presents.

First up are these gorgeous prints from Studio Mela. I love how artist Shelli Dorfe’s charming illustrations are ridiculously cute, colourful and inspirational enough for any small girl, but never quite make it across the borderline into twee.

Just the thing for the discerning girlchild in your life.

Here is the Studio Mela Etsy shop, which is offering free shipping this Cyber Monday.

Leaf Apple Pie

November 14, 2012 By Paola 2 Comments

My back is still killing me, so trying not to spend too much time at the computer. I’ve now tried Rolfing, chiropractic and acupuncture without a whole load of success. If anyone has got any good ideas on how to treat lower back pain then I’d love to hear from you – especially about practitioners in the Seattle area.

In the meantime I made a Bramley apple and raisin pie, and had a little play while making the crust.

I got a set of four different leaf shaped stamps/cutters at Williams-Sonoma a couple of years back, which I use all the time. Unfortunately they don’t have the same set for sale at the moment, but do have fall cutter sets that include at least one leaf. And you could always make a pie covered in overlapping turkeys.

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