Wednesday, May 23, 2012

enabler: noun

To enable the individual with the addiction, the mutually dependent person makes excuses and lies for the addict, which enables the addiction to continue.

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I blame a lot of you WOYWW enablers for my latest shopping spree, almost every desk I visit has TH goodies spread about! It's all your fault! lol So this isn't a picture of my desk but my craft chair! I am hoping to be ready to play along with the monthly tags that I keep seeing on everyone's desks!

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My card for the Paper Crafts Gallery Idol contest:
I love all the little beads I used to make up the watermelon! The little ant is a brad, but I did have to alter him to make him look like he was carrying the watermelon!


Bazzil Card stock
Eyelet Outlet brad
Mary's CARDZTV stamp set
TOHO beads
Sakura
DMC floss
Really Reasonable Ribbon

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And tune in tomorrow for a new week of Project Pinterest!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

exposure compensation

camera setting that helps you control the amount of light entering the lens


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Last night, our photography club went to downtown Asheville to eat and drink and learn how to take pictures at night. Now I don't play with a big girl camera, mine is the baby in the bunch but I did learn how to use my exposure settings on my camera which lets in a lot more light. It was amazing for me, that my little 16 exposure could change the scene so much at night.

All the pictures have the same ISO 100, and same aperture of 4.0, and all used the timer and tripod. Pictures taken at 9:22 pm, not really dark enough to truly play with this wonderful feature.
The only difference is the exposure settings.


1 second exposure

( I love this shot because of the car blur, the car on the left is a police car, they weren't going fast at all as it's a 4 way stop there, but they look like they are speeding by )


2.5 exposure


4 second exposure
( notice the cars at this exposure, is reduced to just tail lights , and I like the ghosting of the people as they walked down the side walk )


13 second exposure
( You can see that it wasn't dark enough to use all of my 16 second exposure that I had available :)

So it is very cool to play with this feature, I want to do another sequence shot like this one to show how much light can be added during the night just using street lights and building lights. This really did amaze me!

Do you know where the exposure setting is on your camera?


Monday, May 21, 2012

scavenger hunt: noun

A game in which individuals or teams try to locate and bring back miscellaneous items on a list.
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1. Rainbow

I was hoping all week for a rainbow, but it didn't happen, so I made my own rainbow!
"Rainbows apologize for angry skies"
Sylvia Voirol

2. Fluffy
My kitchen chicken doesn't come any fluffier!

3. Letters
Cards getting ready to go out for Cricut Card Fairy group which is an organization that send cards out to people in the hospital, death in the family or just a general thinking of you greeting.

4. Metal

Last night our photography group me in downtown Asheville to take some night pictures, this was taken before it got dark, but I love the big metal pig that stands in the square :)


5. Trees

This one is taken from my "archives", from a hike back in April at Cove Creek Falls, the weather was drizzily and the skys dark.  It is one of my all time favorite picture of the trees.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

edible: adjective

suitable for eating by human beings, or bugs

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I love growing plants by seeds, there is just something about them sprouting up from the earth and coming into their own that makes me smile. I love checking on them everyday to see how much they have grown, and I especially love it when they flower...

my first Nasturtium flower:
This is one of my easy to grow from seeds plant, I hope you might try it too, it actually likes a neglected home, so perfect for anyone who doesn't have a green thumb. Do not fertilize it or you will get all leaves and no flowers, weird but true!
"Both nasturtium flowers and leaves are edible as long as you don't use pesticides. They give a peppery punch similar to watercress in salads and pasta dishes, and the flowers add a hit of color and flavor."
Someone thinks they they taste good too and  has been chomping on a leaf..
I am wondering who the culprit is?
The only bad thing about Naturism's is that their heads turn to face the sun, leaves too for that matter. So to get the above picture I had to hold the camera way out over the balcony's edge, the picture below is the view I have usually!

I also am a succulent lover and this is one of my new additions, it's a Jade Rose. It is a hybrid alpine ground cover succulent, aka Hens and Chicks :) I love the fuzzy little tips of the leaves!


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Well tonight my photography group is heading downtown Asheville so that we can practice taking night photos. This should be interesting, I am looking forward to it! I'm hoping there will some pictures worth sharing!

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Don't forget Project Pinterest!
In the hills of North Carolina

Saturday, May 19, 2012

cartoon: noun

a humorous drawing published in a newspaper or magazine and commenting on a topical event or theme
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ART = ME


Over at my Digital Photography group we are to do a self portrait. There are some imaginative minds at work over there, trying to show who we are through a picture. :) I used an effect called "cartoon" on mine.

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Then for Inspiration Avenue, Art With Heart:

The best and most beautiful things in this
world cannot be seen or even heard, but must
be felt with the heart....
Helen Keller.
I took the above picture and created some digital over lays for it. I actually like this one better than the first one!


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Don't forget to link up your Project Pinterest Project!
In the hills of North Carolina

Friday, May 18, 2012

proverbial: adjective

well-known: widely known and recognized, and often viewed as stereotypical

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Well, I got a little behind so I combined a few Elements of Design from Lesson 7 into the first lay out for Lesson 8. In Lesson 7, I was to show line, form, shape, space and texture. 

Lesson 7
Form and shape to show 3 dimension: I did this several ways, by letting her hair overlap the scroll, and by having her hands disappear under the scroll and over the clam shell. This gives an otherwise flat form, dimension.

space, to show distance or area between, around, above, below, or within shapes and forms: I did this by placing the mermaid up front sitting on the clam shell and the flying pelican is smaller and in the distance. To quote Elizabeth "As a rule of thumb, larger objects tend to appear closer to the viewer and smaller ones tend to recede into the background. Also objects placed lower on the page appear closer in distance than those which are placed higher up."

Texture to give your surface quality which can be either tactile or visual: I actually have a lot of textures going on here, the texture of the sky, since it is pieces of magazine paper glued on and then white washed with a pale blue. There is texture on her tail fin from stickles, and added texture in her hair with Pearls as lines...( also shows movement, like her hair is blowing in the  ocean breeze ), and texture in the ocean.

Lesson 8

To create a background with one of the color groupings: I chose an analogous color selection starting at yellow and ending with blue. That meant I had yellow, green and blues to play with. The only things that don't fall within this are the pelican and the clam shell.

I combined the lines portion from Lesson 7 with Lesson 8's sgraffito technique. I painted green paint over the gesso, then my layer of blue paint and used my embossing tool to scratch the lines to represent the ocean's water flow. ( again, implies movement ) I really enjoyed this, felt like I was back in kindergarten where we use to do this with crayon!

Design a color wheel using paint chips, junk mail, or magazine images

Yikes, really? A color wheel with a mermaid themed book? Now this was a stumper...thank you BJ for helping me to think outside the box! But don't blame her if you think I went too far outside the box!
Now, my color wheel, really is outside the proverbial box, and I hope you will be able to follow the pattern, ready?
here we go:

bubbles represent the color wheel, beginning with violet red, and ending with red. They are in order but to get them all together on the 2 pages, your eye has to travel up and down, so next would be the violet bubbles....
then
each fish assigned to the bubbles shows the complimentary colors. So the violet red bubbles have a yellow green fish, the violet bubbles have a yellow fish, and so on...
and finally
the 3 fish along the bottom of the page that are facing opposite to all the other fish are the primary colors, yellow fish, red fish, green fish


It goes without saying that Dr. Seuss's book was running through my head so I incorporated it into my page, lol Just couldn't help myself! I love the google eyes on the fishies combined with the words to this book, they all seem to be looking around, kinda goofy!

and speaking of goofy...!
 I made a mistake and thank you BJ for pointing it out for me, as soon as I read what she wrote, I was like "duh me"!! I had gotten so excited thinking I had all primary colors lined up on the bottom row but I didn't, I had a secondary color in there, so a quick run back to the crafting room to remove 2 little fishes and invert them ( I am not going to redo the entire pages to make all 3 primary colors fit on the bottom of the pages like I originally planned )......course now, there are 2 little fishes farting bubbles.....lmao..I think I love it! Thanks BJ!

the 3 fish that are facing opposite to all the other fish are the primary colors,
 yellow fish, red fish and blue fish


This was my chart in the making, I have to say that so far, this assignment really made me think.
My brain hurts now.....

what I learned from using magazines
  • When you paint over pieces of magazines, I learned to keep in the mind that paint will follow the waft of the magazine paper, so unintentionally I have lines going vertically and horizontally in my sky, but it's OK, I actually like it this way! 
  • I also learned that not all magazines are a like, some have very thin paper and they are hard to cut, while other magazine pages have more substance. It's easier to get a crisp punch from the pages that are thicker, ( on my color wheel lay out, I had to double the pages to punch out the circles! )
  • I also learned that if you find one color of red in the magazine, then it will be used again. I guess it's easier for them while printing to use one dye: whereas there would be many more shades of blue and green in one issue. I discovered this with several magazines, and became obsessed with looking at their color choices. The one primary color that was the hardest to locate was yellow which kinda surprised me. makes me wonder if yellow cost more to produce or they don't consider it a good color visually? 
  • I also was very surprised to find images for my particular theme, the pelican and the clam shell were definitely a bonus discovery!

I am not doing the other color lay out, I have completed a monochromatic one with :Mermaid Humor:, but I want to save my pages to make sure I can do all the remaining classes. If I have space at the end I figure I can always go back and add.

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In the hills of North Carolina

Thursday, May 17, 2012

boiling: verb

To undergo the action of boiling, especially in being cooked
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Hi everyone, how are all the Pinterest peeps doing today? Busy pinning away? Well if you decide to make something from a pin, blog it and then link up to mine and Sarah's Project Pinterest!

Here is my simple pin project: boiling eggs. Boiling eggs is suppose to be easy, yet my eggs were so hard to peel that I had given up on making deviled eggs and began only making them for special occasions. That's so silly, but I really didn't give it much thought until I saw this pin, by Kitchen Riffs, who explained how to get eggs to peel every time. It does work!


Now to announce my featured pin gal from last:
Thanks for playing along with us and letting us see your project, I'll send you the I was featured button in the mail!

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Play along with us:

Here are the guidelines for Project Pinterest:
1. Decide which pin on Pinterest you’d like to recreate.
2. Create it!
3. Flop or success, create a blog post about your re-do and include the original pin’s url.
4. Add the Project Pinterest button to your post so others can join in too!
* From now on to be considered a "Featured Pinner" you need to add the Project Pinterest button to your blog please.
5. Link up and check out other bloggers’ posts!


In the hills of North Carolina