Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Caroline The Mermaid Photo Session

Thursday, July 12th, 2018

Sometimes I get creative ideas in my head and they turn into very elaborate events, like the photo book Caroline and I are making where she dresses up as Disney Princesses using Well Dressed Wolf dresses. And sometimes I order a mermaid tail at 6 pm on a Friday and by Monday night we’re already on the beach for our mermaid photo session. We didn’t even brush her hair before we jumped in the car with my camera bag, but that’s ok because mermaid have wild hair.

Please enjoy Caroline’s dream come to life.

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

 

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

mermaid photo session

 

The mermaid top/shorts and tail all came from Mystic Cove Mermaid on Etsy.

The special effects I added in Photoshop also came from Etsy – this shop here.

We did the photos at Seaside State Park in Waterford, which used to be a tuberculosis hospital/sanatorium and is now just abandoned buildings. It’s a super awesome photo spot.

Painted Shoes

Monday, July 11th, 2011

Because I’m too poor for real Louboutins and don’t really wear that much red anyways.

The trick is to find shoes with a) leather soles (as opposed to rubber or some other synthetic) and b) the right shape. The bottom needs to have a distinct edge, so you can paint just the sole.

Supplies:

Small amount of paint (I bought 2 colors but only used the blue for these shoes), cute but sort of boring pair of shoes (these Hollywould for Target, bought on clearance years ago but only worn once or twice), sandpaper, trim roller, small brush, acrylic sealant (meant for wood, found near the stain at the hardware store).

A note about the paint: You could probably use any paint you happened to have – this is from the hardware store, the kind you get mixed at the counter, but you could probably use craft store acrylics too. The important part is sealing it.

1. Wash off the bottoms really really well.
2. Sand the whole surface down so the paint sticks better.
3. Use a trim roller to get good, even coverage without any brush marks. The roller also lets you get right to all the edges without accidentally painting the side of your shoe too. Use a small brush to do the heel and along any of the spots you can’t reach with the roller.  I used 2 coats of paint and felt like that was enough coverage. Wait at least a few hours for it to be totally dry – I waited overnight.
4. With a wide brush, give the soles a coat of polycrylic sealant. The directions call for 3 coats, so I did all three, with a light sanding in between. Wait for them to dry completely. Sand it just a little more so it’s not too slippery – you don’t want to fall on your face.

5. Wear your cute new shoes.

Remember, you’re using paint, not magic dirt-repelling fairy dust. They’re still going to scuff and get less pretty if you wear them outside. The good news is you can sand off some of the crud pretty easily or repaint them for a special occasion.

My plan was to wear my adorable new shoes for BlogHer, but all the advice I’ve read recommends comfort over style. So if you see a girl limping around barefoot and CARRYING her patent leather heels with bright blue bottoms, come say “Hi”. And also “Wow, you sure are dumb.”

 

Thirty Hand Made Days

Have you heard about Pinterest?

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Warning: DON’T READ THIS POST IF YOU LOVE THE INTERNET. Because if you’re as addicted to blogging and tweeting as I am, the last thing you need is another online way to waste time.

But if you like: art, food, home decor, dessert, crafts, photography, fashion, happiness, make up, tutorials, jewelry, etsy, joy and being inspired on a daily basis, I highly recommend you get on the Pinterest bandwagon as fast as if your pants were on fire and the wagon was covered in hot firemen.

My friend Brigid actually sent me an invitation months ago, because genius that she is Brigid knew it was a brilliant next-big-thing idea and also the sort of something I would love. I should send her a fruit basket. Maybe I’ll go look for creative fruit basket ideas on Pinterest. Because there are probably FORTY BILLION of them. I procrastinated for a few weeks, thinking I’d check it out when I had time and surly it wasn’t some sort of life changing website.

IT IS A LIFE CHANGING WEBSITE.

Here’s the overview: When you sign up, you create pin boards (like digital bulletin boards) where you can stick ideas you find online. The easiest way to pin is to add a shorcut to your toolbar following the instructions here. Then all the stuff you like is in one convenient, organized, neat-looking place. It’s  like a visual representation of bookmark folders in your internet browser. Here’s a screenshot of my recipe board, where I’m keeping all the recipes I’ve meal-planned for this week. It’s so much more fun SEEING the food than just reading about the food that I am actually more inspired to cook:

The second stage of Pinterest is following other people and their boards, so you can find inspiration right there on your homepage. You can follow all of someone’s boards or just one or two, based on what you’re interested in seeing in your feed. When you click on something that’s been pinned it takes you back to the original website, where you can get the info you need to make/cook/buy/try/read about the thing that was pinned.

This is what mine looks like right now:

Food, tutorials, fashion, all in one place. And here’s another shot, if I scroll down my page a little:

Home decor, a playhouse, tutorials, crafts, more recipes, things to buy…really, there are PLENTY of things to look at on a minute by minute basis.

Have I convinced you to sign up yet? Or do you have an account you’ve been neglecting because you just didn’t really “get it” yet? Here’s some Do’s and Don’ts to help you understand how to get the most out of your boards:

Pinterest DO’s:

– DO follow lots of people. The more people you follow the more stuff shows up on your homepage.
– DO follow people you don’t know. I promise it’s not creepy or stalkerish, so if you find a board that you’re in love with always add them!
– DO repin when you love something.
– DO use the search option to find more of what you want. I searched “polka dots” every day for a week to find inspiration for Little Evan’s birthday.
– DO check in often. Your friends will go on pinning sprees and looking at several days worth of stuff at once means you might miss something.
– DO unsubscribe from a board before a person. Maybe you love your friend’s sense of style but you don’t like pictures of babies or celebrities or quilts. Keep following their fashion board but unfollow the board you don’t like.
– DO use Pinterest to keep track of stuff you find in magazines. I do this a lot with recipes – if there’s an online version it’s so much easier to pin it than hold onto ripped out pages.
– DO check out the “staff favorites” boards and the ones Pinterest suggests you might like. It’s about expanding places you find inspiration, not looking at stuff you’d see on your friend’s blog anyways.
– But DO pin stuff from your friend’s blogs when you love it. I’m not going to lie, being pinned feels nice.
DO be my friend on Pinterest!

Pinterest DON’TS:

– DON’T just repin stuff from other people’s boards. Add new content to the Pinterest community when you find it online, whether it’s from blogs, shops, websites, or friends.
– DON’T pin stuff to multiple boards. Pick the category it fits best and pin it just once.
– DON’T forget to label your pins with helpful tags and explanations, especially when pinning recipes. “Yum!” isn’t as helpful as “strawberry shortcake cupcakes”. For stuff from shops, adding prices is nice.
– DON’T just pin stuff from your blog. You can pin your own some sparingly, but follow the social media 80/20 rule: Promote other people 80% of the time and yourself 20% of the time.
– DON’T think Pinterest is just for bloggers. You don’t need anything besides an email to sign up and you don’t need online friends.
– DON’T post EVERYTHING you pin to Facebook or Twitter. I accidentally put my pins in my Facebook feed and was super annoying for a few hours before I noticed.
– DON’T forget that just because a picture is on Pinterest doesn’t mean it’s not subject to copyright. You cannot just take and use them on your blog without checking with the owner.

Seeing all the things I want to cook/make/buy all at once makes my life so much easier and more organized. I can actually re-find stuff I saw on the internet and thought “oh, I should do that!” Now I CAN do that. I’m also slightly addicted to checking what’s been pinned from my own blog. It’s reaching an unhealthy no-there’s-nothing-for-dinner-can’t-you-see-I’m-busy-looking-at-recipes-on-pinterest-WHAT-DO-YOU-MEAN-THAT’S-SUPER-IRONIC??? levels of time consumption, but I don’t even care. I love it.

Are you going to sign up now? Are you addicted yet? Do you have any suggestions for ways to make the most of Pinterest?

The Creative Connection Essay

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

I owe a major apology to everyone I made fun of or rolled my eyes at when they started talking about BlogHer’10 AGAIN. Like, GOD, come ON, it’s just ONE WEEKEND out of your life, WHY do you need to KEEP talking about it ALL THE TIME? I now realize the error of my ways. Going places and doing things is fun, even if you do spend the entire week before waking up at 5 am in a panic that you will forget your camera or the hotel will have lost your reservation or that every single person you meet will give you the “pregnant or fat” once over and decide “no, just fat”. It’s exhausting and totally thought-consuming and I am smack dab in the middle of it.

Right now I am probably hauling my pregnant butt through an airport somewhere, pinching myself and trying to comprehend just what it was that fooled ANYONE into thinking I deserved to attend a conference as cool as The Creative Connection. I will be making sparkly things and listening to some of the most amazing women speak and sweating through my shirt with nervousness and generally having a totally amazing time. I may even get up the courage to hand out a business card or two, although it’s probably better if none of the super-talented, cool, artsy people ever find there way over HERE.

It would have been even better if I didn’t put the word “crap” on my business cards.

Or the words “bodily fluids”. But hey, hindsight is 20/20 right?

And just because my mom asked me to post it, here’s the 250 word essay that won me my scholarship:

How will attending the Creative Connection Event impact your creativity and/or creative business?

Creativity has always been something I thought was innate. Either you were a creative person or you weren’t – and I definitely wasn’t. I can’t draw to save my life, my poetry sounds like “There once was a man from Nantucket”, my paintings look like they were done by a first grader and as far as style goes…let’s just say I fall somewhere between a 5 -year-old and my grandmother.

But then I did create something, the most amazing something ever, the kind of something that changes your whole life from the second you see those two pink lines. After my son was born in April 2009 I realized creativity isn’t about talent, it’s about the love of making things, whether those things are stories or clothes or art or music or feelings. I stopped being afraid to create and took up knitting and photography and cooking and writing and loved every second of my triumphs and laughed over my mistakes. I learned when you create things you also create joy.

Attending the Creative Connections Conference would be an amazing opportunity to expand my creativity and learn new ways to be joyful. The chance to network with so many amazing and talented women would be a great opportunity for me as a blogger and as a person learning more about her creative side, as untalented as that side might be.