This has been an Instagram week of raincoats and snuggles, marmalade and bundt cake, polka dots and salted caramels, with a hint of spring green peeking through.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
Day two of the Blogging Your Way workshop (other pics here and here), found Leslie Shewring from A Creative Mint taking her day in the sun (quite literally as the sun came out in New York after two days of Seattle-like torrential rain).
After hearing Leslie’s inspiring story of clicking with Holly online and subsequently striking up a great blogging and teaching partnership, we settled down for a day of more practical creativity.
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The biggest thing I took away from the workshop is that styling is ALL about telling stories in an image.
Whenever I’m styling something I know I always look at the colours and shapes first, forget about the mood or story I’m trying to convey, and then wonder why the image seems flat and dead. I can be very dense sometimes. Of course, it’s all about the storytelling. Well, duh.
Leslie showed us how she pulls together inspiration boards to figure out moods and colour schemes. She’s just one of those people who can instinctively pull together a bunch of random stuff and magically turn it into a coherent and pleasing whole.
It does help that she has some great props – she gave us lots of sources for what she called ‘curated hoarding’. This was the second most useful thing I learned at the workshop. Now I can explain to the Husband what I’m doing when he complains about the crap on my desk.
We then talked about composition, lighting and the basics of photography and Holly gave us a ton of tips about styling and photographing interiors. Then for the rest of the day we had time to play ourselves and make the most of the lovely light at Divine Studio and Leslie’s pretty props.
Here’s a little ‘inspiration board’ I pulled together, with things I’d pulled off my desk at home.
And here are a few shots I styled and photographed of the beautiful food. Can you see what stories I’m trying to tell?
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At the end of the day we all had fun taking pictures of all our new-found fri ends. Of course a huge part of the value and pleasure of doing these sorts of events is meeting a ton of inspirational and creative women. New friends include Tina, Audrey, Michele, Natalie and Gretchen, Jessica, Ashley, Amanda and Fiona (seen below, who’d flown in all the way from England). Also special thanks to Marianne, for being the most charming and easy-to-live-with roommate one could wish for. I highly recommend taking a stroll through the links above, you’ll find some super charming and talented women and some new and fabulously inspirational blogs.
And once more a HUGE thank you to Holly and Leslie. You ladies rock SO hard.
One day I’ll have a picture taken with Holly where I’m not looking either blurred or deranged (See also San Francisco pics).
This week on Pinterest we’ve been getting ziggy with it.
Source: Chevron iPhone case from Society6 via Leah Dent
Source: Faux Feather Neon Aztec Earrings from lovesexton via Marcia Prentice
Source: Design Crisis via Hammocks & High Tea
1. Paint the canvas all crazy like 2. Use painter’s tape to create a herringbone pattern with some missing 3. Paint over the canvas in white 4. Remove tape and voila!
Source: Cozamia via Melanie Hernquist
Source: Pattern of the Day from Karina Maranin via Poppytalk
Oh and have an extra one this week. You guys are so SPOILT.
Source: How to Make a Chevron Pattern in Photoshop from Ashli Nixon via Uncle Beefy.
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This is what’s going down currently chez moi. Early tomorrow morning I’m flying off to New York to attend Holly Becker of Decor8’s first ever in person Blogging Your Way workshop, which will include a day of photography and styling tips with the lovely Leslie Shewring of A Creative Mint.
I’ve long wondered what could happen if I took my blogging a bit more seriously, so I’m hoping to get a ton of tips and tricks to take this blog to the next level and beyond, now that I’ve got my mad Photoshop skillz in hand. (Haha! – Ed)
I’m back on Monday night so there won’t be any blogging over the weekend. However I’ll be taking pictures like crazy, so follow me on Instagram (@mirrormirrorxx), Twitter or Facebook.
In the meantime, tell me all your favourite unmissable shops in NYC, I’ve got a free day of mooching around on Monday.
Last week was a wintry week of knitting, hotpot, pancakes and new sweaters, with a haircut, a pedicure and some new pencils thrown in.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
Last week was an Instagram week of hearts and flowers, grey skies, cuddly cats and a newfound love of the colour yellow.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
I dug out this little flip book I made the other day, and thought I’d share it with you, even though the great day has passed, as it’s obviously an idea you can let your imagination run wild with throughout the year.
The Minx and I made this a couple of years back when she was five and old enough to wield a pen. I dressed the Minx up, stuck her against a white background (I should have moved her a little to the right to leave room for making ribbon holes on the left).
I made ten copies of the photo and then asked the Minx to draw one heart on the first picture, two hearts on the second picture, three hearts on the third picture and then so on up to ten. You get the idea. She also wrote a message on the back of the last picture.
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I then tied the photos together with a pretty ribbon (and yes the holes are on the wrong side, but we couldn’t be bothered to do the whole thing again) so the Husband could flick through the book.
Of course this post is mostly about showing off that I learned to make animated gifs in Photoshop at Blogshop last week. Let me know if an animated gif tutorial on the blog would be of interest.
This was a golden Instagram week of baking, coffee and wintry walks, with a few signs of spring poking round the corner.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
It’s been an Instagram week of blue skies, sunshine and hearts, with a bit of bread baking and crochet thrown in.
It’s also been a weekend of attending Blogshop here in Seattle. My brain is fried, by backside is numb and my Photoshop skillz are still frighteningly amateur as you can see. But at least they exist, which they didn’t before the weekend. I’ll tell you more about it during the week. (Above images are all Instagrams as usual, but silly old Photoshop doesn’t have a Polaroid frames tool such as I have on my usual blogging software).
Happy Monday!
It’s been an Instagram week of sunshine and baking, turquoise, spring green and yellow. Come and find me. I’m ‘mirrormirrorxx’.
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