Photoshop Day 7

The challenge was to post photoshopped pictures for seven days straight and I was going strong for the first 6!  Now it's after 8 pm on the 7th day and I'm rushing to squeeze this post in at the last minute so I can say I met my goal.  I didn't get to play in photoshop at all last night so I've just done these last photos very quickly.  I may have to revisit them at a later date and try again because these were the ones I've been wanting to play with since I first got photoshop.  Let's get to it... Alternate title for this post could be "The Seasons, According to Bren" or something like that.  Every time Bren is at my parents' house, all she wants to do is "fwing," so I have tons of pictures of her on the swingset.  These swing pictures could almost be her own version of a growth chart.

Here are the original straight-out-of-camera shots.

The pictures are arranged in order of the seasons, not necessarily her age.  I think she's the youngest in the summer one, and the spring one might be the most recent.

Here are the touched-up photos...a little sharpening and color boosting, and then just an added text box for the season.

Do you have a favorite Bren season?  I can't decide.  I really like the picture quality in the Fall one (like how you can see all her little hairs flying) but I like her smile in Spring.  The Fall one's cute too, and her fuzzy legs in the Summer one kinda make me laugh...

Photoshop Day 6

I couldn't decide what picture to play with for today's post, so I scrolled back through the ones I've already done.  Then it hit me...duh!  I'm missing one of my favorite cuties: Jett! This picture is actually from last summer.  After dinner at our house one night, we walked down to the playground around the corner and the kids played hard while I snapped photos.  This pic of Jett is one of my favorites; it hangs on our fridge.

First, I did all the same steps that I did on Bren for Photoshop Day 1.  I slightly sharpened the whole photo, boosted the colors, brightened the eyes, and then selectively sharpened some of the details on his face and the swing (that chain was a pain!).  I tried to dial it all down a tidge this time, though, so it wouldn't seem too fake.

Once I was satisfied with all of those adjustments, I decided to run some more of the Pioneer Woman's actions to see what they looked like.

First, I ran the Sepia Tone action.  Of course, I know was sepia tone is, so I kinda knew what this one was gonna do.  Instead of it being straight up brown-tones, though, I scaled it back a hair so a little of the color still showed through.

Next, I took off the sepia layer and applied an action called Heartland.  I had no idea where this was going to go.  I feel like it was kinda like putting on a pair of lightly tinted sunglasses.  Everything is just kinda less bright.

This next one is called Vintage and I think it makes sense.  The photo looks kinda grainy, like an older photo.

The last one I tried is called Old West, and the outcome is not at all what I would've guessed it to look like.  I think it made the picture look warmer and softer but without losing its sharpness, if that's even possible.

I've changed my mind several times, but right now I think my favorite version is Old West.  What about you?  Which one do you like best?

Photoshop Day 5

Today's photo edit is really nothing fancy, but it's a picture that I think is funny so I'm sharing it anyway. Meet Lolli, my crazy, floppy-eared puppy.  She's smilin' atcha.

My photoshop edits are barely noticeable...just a boost of colors, a little bit more definition in her fur, and that wonky hair in her eye is gone.

She's got an appointment today to get all of her hair buzzed off one more time before fall.  Can't wait to see my almost-bald pup-pups later this afternoon!

Card Table Tent

I'm excited to finally reveal the card table tent, also known as the super secret project that my mom and I have been working on! But first, let's back up.  Waaaay up.  All the way to March.  That's when my sister-in-law, Bren's mom, emailed me a link to this super cute idea.  It was one of those afternoons where it was clear neither of us felt like being at work, as we kept sending fun links back and forth to each other.  With this particular link she wrote, "This is so cute!  I'd never get around to making one but Aunt Lucy might!"

Y'all, it's like she was daring me to do it.  Game on.

That was March.  At the time I thought, "Brennie's birthday isn't until August.  This will be a fun project for me to tackle over the summer."  And then the summer got busy with things like trips to the beach, weddings, and that really big surprise party we threw.  Before I knew it, it was the last week of July and I was just a couple weeks out from Bren's birthday.

I did some googling to refresh my myself on the project and ended up finding this handy tutorial.  At just thirteen bucks, I ordered the pattern without hesitation.  Sure couldn't hurt to have the dimensions listed out for me, right?

Here's the picture from the pattern that I would be recreating for my favorite 3-year-old little girl.

Cute, isn't it?  The idea is to make a fabric playhouse that fits right over the top of a standard card table.  Then it can be folded up and put away easily.  Genius!

Originally, I thought I'd try to tackle this sewing project by myself.  I knew my mom would be super impressed with me if I could pull it off.  But then the pattern came in and I started reading through it and there were a lot of words in there I didn't know.  Plus, time was running out.

I sprung the idea on my mom the weekend I stayed at her house.  I had a feeling she'd think it was cute but I didn't realize how excited she'd be about it.  We headed to JoAnn's first thing that Saturday morning and ended up spending over three hours there!  We decided to go with a pink and green color scheme so that it'd match Bren's room, and in addition to being the right shades of those colors, we also wanted them to be cheap.  We spent a lot of time pulling bolts of fabric and then putting them back before we were finally ready to stand in the ridiculously long line to get them cut.

Later that night, my parents had a wedding to attend so, since I was left to entertain myself, I went ahead and got started cutting out all the pieces.  The nice thing about having the pattern is that it had all the detail pieces drawn to scale so I could just trace them onto a piece of Wonder Under and then iron it to my fabric.  No guesswork - my kind of project.

Now, some of you that have been reading along for a while may be a little confused about the hint I gave.  How do a tree, door, and mailbox fit into this project?  Well, I never said they were a real tree, door, and mailbox.  I'm sneaky like that.

See?  Here's the tree laid out on the kitchen table after I'd cut out all the individual pieces.

I have to say, I had the easy job for this project.  I did all the tracing and cutting out while my mom did all the sewing.  She even took it one step further than the pattern and lined it so you wouldn't see all the seams on the inside.

I didn't do a very good job of photographing all the steps, but here's a shot of one side laid out on the table.

The whole tent is made out of fabric except for those flowers.  We did those out of felt so that we could just sew them down in the middle for a 3-D effect without having to worry about the edges fraying.

We barely got the tent finished in time for the birthday party.  In fact, we were tacking on the curtains just a couple hours before the party started.  Here's where I goofed again.  I should've taken some good pictures of it at my mom's house.  Since I didn't do that, all my pictures were taken while dodging the birthday girl and her friends as they crawled in and out of it.  I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the pictures - it's super cute in real life!

The tree wraps around a corner, in between two windows complete with shutters and curtains.

Close up of window.

The opposite side has the two bushes with felt flowers.

The address for Bren's playhouse is her birthday: August 18.

To the left of her front door is a light.

And to the right is this really cute mailbox.

It even has a pocket so she can receive mail!  I had every intention of putting her birthday cards in the mailbox, but then I forgot.  Bad, Aunt Lucy.

You can see in this picture of the front that my mom lined the hole for the door in white to make it look like a door frame.  (You can also see the doorbell in this picture.)

I waited til the tent cleared out before sticking my head in to get a picture of the inside.  The inside is lined in white even though it looks pink from the sun shining through in this picture.  The curtains are one of my favorite parts of the playhouse.  They're a super cute polka dot on the outside and then lined with this cute green fabric on the inside.  They're tied together with a piece of pink ribbon and then tacked down to the window frame so they don't move.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the birthday girl liked it.  Here she is sticking her head out to tell us to come in and play.

Later on in the afternoon, I caught her 6-year-old cheetoh-eating brother hanging out in the tent.  Busted!

So there you have it - our first attempt at the card table tent.  There's a good chance you'll get to see our second attempt at it very soon.  It was a fun project to work on and I hope Bren has fun playing in it!

More pictures from Bren's birthday party coming soon!

Photoshop Day 4

Wanna know how much time I wasted playing in Photoshop this past weekend? I spent so much time either on the couch or the bed with my laptop in my lap, that I managed to injure my tailbone.  For reals.

At least, that's the only reason I can come up with for why I woke up Monday morning in excruciating pain.  Felt perfectly fine when I turned off the light Sunday night (after almost a 3 hour stretch of photoshopping), and then woke up the next morning with shooting pains every time I moved.  After some very careful movements to figure out where the pain was coming from, it was decided that I've got a bum bum.  I guess I just spent too much time sitting on it?

The pain definitely subsided a bit as the day wore on, maybe thanks to all the ibuprofen I popped, but I'm still walking a little funny.  My fingers are crossed that it's just a 24 hour ailment.  A girl can hope, right?

Back to the 3 hours I spent playing in photoshop before my bum became bummed...I kept my word and didn't use any actions this time.  Which means it looks baaaaaaad.  But, learning's the game and that's what I did.  I altered the overall colors just a tidge, and did a little bit of burning where the sun bleached out the ground, but mostly I spent all my time using the clone stamping tool.

Here's the original picture - our family photo from last October.

You really can't tell that much difference in my touched-up version, unless you look closely.  I tried to use the clone stamping tool to remove all of the sun spots on our clothing.  Now, up close, everyone looks really "flat" since I've colored in their chests, legs, etc.  My clone stamping looks pretty rough, especially if you zoom in.  In hindsight, I probably could've matched the colors and painted in the sunspots using the paint brush.  Oh well, maybe next time.

Four days down, three more to go!