A Very Vintage Wedding

This morning has been entirely spent scanning an antique marriage certificate I found on an estate sale and replacing the photos with images I took a few months ago of my dear friend Kristin and her boyfriend, Chris. I'm not sure how she'll react to her face on a marriage certificate, but she and Chris have such cute mugs I couldn't resist. I listed this service on my etsy site just now, with the promise of a tiny photo tutorial for those who wish to have their own mugs on a personalized antique certificate.

Click the see more link below to learn...
HOW TO MAKE OPTIMUM IMAGES FOR YOUR CERTIFICATE:

Hand coloring black and white images in photoshop

When I found these images on flickr from the Glenbow Museum, I was aching to put some of them through photoshop and just mess around. If you don't have photoshop, there are some good (and free!) online alternatives, like gimp.com and picnick.com (goofier, but some fun options; my step-daughter is in love with it, because it's very user-friendly). Anyways, to get this watercolor effect on black and white images simply load the photo you want to color, and select the paintbrush tool (has a picture of a paintbrush on it and located in the toolbox at left). Select the color you'd like to use in the "swatches" bar (upper right). Then make sure you turn the opacity down (top bar) to something like 17-25%... more for more saturation, but be careful; if it's up too high you'll just get lines of color that look like they sit on top of the photo, rather than watercolored in.

Upcycling Magic

For complete tutorials on how to upcycle your own vintage suitcases, click the link below!

Cyanotype knits how-to

Learn to print your artwork on your knitwork or fabric with Christina McFall of Meadowlarking.  This intro to the cyanotype (a photographic) process allows you to print with handmade negatives from an inkjet printer. Follow this link to read more on Craft.
Oh, and here's the link to buy your cyanotype kit.

Messing with Pixlr-o-matic

Before:


After:


I teach photography at a local college, and was getting ready to do a class on "retro-fitting" images, when I found that pixlr had already done the work for me... Set up as a free web-based photoshop, pixlr makes it crazy easy to do most of the things you can do in photoshop on the web without spending a hefty $1600 for the creative suite package. Kudos, pixlr!

Quick Crafty and Kitschy how to

If you're like me, you LOOOOOOVE velvet paintings with a passion that can only be described as obsessive. I want them all: the good, the bad, the Elvises, the poodles, the faux Rennaissance girls on fainting couches, the men with big mustaches, the pretty sunsets and palm trees. Yes, my love for velvet jammed into wooden frames is equal opportunity. But, eh, there's only so much wall space, so compromises must be made. Get out the scissors and the sewing machine and recycle those paintings into pillas. The kitsch gods will shine down on you.