Art + Craft Archives - Page 2 of 21

Things I Am Loving: Forms in Nature

May 10, 2013 By Paola 1 Comment

This sort of stopped me in my tracks when I saw it yesterday.

Created by artists Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz, this ‘light sculpture’ entitled Forms in Nature is designed to cast spooky shadows reminiscent of a wild forest all round the room. I have long been fascinated by the beautiful shadows cast by chandeliers and I love how they’ve taken this to the next logical step and made the shadows the star of the show.

At the moment it is still a conceptual artwork, but according to their website they are looking at putting this into production.

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.

Eggstra Special Easter Ideas

March 26, 2013 By Paola Leave a Comment

Yay! It’s that time of year again when I get to make terrible, tired puns and pin up pictures of crafts and foods I have little chance of actually making (particularly with my current less than adequate kitchen arrangements).

Actually these decorated eggs(not edible) look eminently doable with the right sprinkles {via Studio DIY}.

Loving these beautiful painterly paints from the lovely Leslie Shewring {via Decor8}.

We have managed to indoctrinate the Minx into the true British ways of the Cadbury’s Crème Egg, which I import from the UK via the British Food Shop.

These crazy cupcakes have a whole crème egg baked inside of them {via Key Ingredient}.

These cupcakes are slightly less insane {via Recipe by Photo}.

And here are instructions to make crochet covers for blown eggs. Wish I’d seen these sooner they would be great to make for the Easter tree. {via LVLY}

Here’s last year’s round up of Easter-related puns crafts.

Time to eggs-it stage left, methinks.

Things I Am Loving: Nicole Porter Hardwood Bowls

March 12, 2013 By Paola Leave a Comment

Yet more things I don’t have either the money or room for. They’re absolutely stunning though.

Buy these unique handpainted wooden bowls, plates and servers at www.nicoleporter.com or on her Etsy shop and then send them to me.

Things I Am Loving: Journals and Notebooks

March 6, 2013 By Paola 3 Comments

Turns out I have a little bit of a notebook problem.

They’re just too pretty to resist and cheap enough for lots of impulse purchases on my travels round the web. Here are a few that have recently er, caught my eye, I have bought .

1) I won a Julia Kostreva journal at the Blogshop workshop last year and love the colours and graphic simplicity of her covers. Nice quality paper inside too. Really liking the colours and style of her new ‘Mon Petit Notebook’ range.

2) I’ve been following Greek graphic designer Tomy K on Instagram for a long time and ended up buying some of his small graphic notebooks. They come in complementary sets of three and are therefore very useful for bribing small similarly notebook-addicted daughters and including in cheesy Instagram vignettes of one’s desk ( though I rarely do this as it’s not often my desk is tidy enough for human consumption).

3) I recently bought a few Moleskine-alike Ecosystem notebooks. Beautifully made in the US from 100% post-consumer recycled paper, you get to choose your size, cover colour (from six juicy hues) and inside style (blank, lined or grid). Like Moleskines they have silk bookmarks, elastic closures and an inside back pocket and the paper itself is of beautiful quality. But unlike Moleskines they have perforated pages. This is a great organisational feature for me, as I’m always scribbling crap in the wrong notebook.

4) No notebook roundup would be complete without a selection from Rifle Paper Co. I have a couple of Anna Bond’s old pocket notebooks, but her new Botanical journals are the prettiest yet. I might have to do a little shopping.

Are you a notebook addict? Or have you moved over completely to tablets and such like? And if you are, seen any pretty ones recently? For research purposes only of course.

Things I Am Loving: Walnut Birds from Gretel Home

February 15, 2013 By Paola 2 Comments

The sun is shining here in Seattle and the photography studio is calling me, but I quickly wanted to share the gorgeous present that I was lucky enough to receive yesterday for Valentines Day.

Pinterest may have set back cause of feminism by several hundred years, but it sure has made it easier to give husbands a list of acceptable presents.

This little carved walnut bird with the pink lacquer chest has been a cover picture on my Pinterest boards for a long time, so I was thrilled to actually get one in the ‘flesh’ yesterday – along with four little birdie friends.

As with most wooden things, these are so much more lovely than any picture can show – smooth, warm and tactile and most beautifully carved and finished. Exquisite craftsmanship at its very best.

The birds are handmade in the UK and are available at Gretel Home.

Here are my tweeties having a chat.

I haven’t had time this week to trawl the Internet for design WTF**ckery. If you chaps ever come across anything that you think might be suitable to feature, do please let me know.

Last Minute Valentines’ Ideas

February 14, 2013 By Paola 2 Comments

As has become traditional round here, we’re all about the last minute Valentines. And since it’s Valentines’ morning already we are taking the definition of last minute to new extremes.

Still here are some things you can do to surprise the family this evening.

Get the kids to work on this cute colour mixing chart courtesy of Art Projects for Kids.

Or make or buy pink and white loaf cakes (pound cakes) and have fun with cookie cutters (courtesy of Matthew Mead).

Set the kids to work again. This time with buttons (courtesy of Hands On As We Grow).

Or let them get busy with heart-shaped doilies (from Say Yes to Hoboken).

Have breakfast for dinner tonight, and break out the squeezy pancake bottle (via Recipe By Photo)

Or if you’ve been organised enough to get a gift, but not any wrapping paper (er, that would be me), here’s a cute gift wrap idea from Babble.

Or maybe you could just arrange some fruit and make a pretty Valentines’ photo. From DaitoZen.

However, and with whomever, you are celebrating today, make sure you tell someone you love them. To all my lovely readers out there, I LOVE YOU very much!

(If none of these float your boat checkout last year’s last minute ideas round up here.)

Things I Am Loving: Doodle Bowls

February 12, 2013 By Paola 4 Comments

I’m sitting here gently blogging to the sound of banging, the odd crash, and builders noisily chatting about skateboarding. Yes, the kitchen remodel is underway. We spent a glamorous weekend taking a huge mountain of STUFF out of our upstairs kitchen and making the downstairs kitchen one where actual food can be cooked (until now we’ve most used it to make breakfast).

I knew I had a lot of kitchen paraphernalia, but seeing it all boxed up is rather mindblowing. Anyway, onwards and upwards. April 26th can’t come quickly enough as far as I’m concerned.

Just time for a quickie today.

Saw these wooden Doodle Bowls and Plates from HappyDoodleLand on Pinterest (where else) and loved them. Unfortunately the artist doesn’t seem to be selling them at the moment (though her prints are also super cute).

But wouldn’t it be nice to be able to doodle as creatively as Flora Cha?

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.

< /td>

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?

< previous page

next page >

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts

Related posts