living artfully

love your pictures: the sky

When given the assignment to photograph "up," my immediate thought was not only did I want to capture the sky... I want to capture the skyline!

 

 

Whenever we're out around town, there is a bridge we love to take that gives us this skyline view of downtown Milwaukee. When I see downtown Milwaukee from this distance, I forget how much I want to live in a city like Chicago and instead think of Milwaukee's urban farmers markets, the favorite restaurants, the cafes and wine bars, and the little shops we love. Maybe Milwaukee isn't so bad ;) 

My friend Alissa made the most AMAZING mini-album highlighting her favorite things about Portland. I love how she used the abc concept to organize and record what she loves about her city. I am super inspired to get out and take more photos about what I love in Milwaukee. And I think maybe I'll make a mini album at some point, too. Thanks for the inspiration, Alissa!! 


 
When we were out photographing the skyline, looking for the best place to shoot from, we walked past this old factory building. And I just loved how the windows were reflecting the blue of the sky and the clouds. Not quite a shot of the sky, but I think it's a fun way to see the sky!

And of course, I have two hipstamatic sky photos for you, too! These are from our vacation in northern Wisconsin.



I can't believe the assignments are about to wrap up for love your pictures, love your pages.  I'm about halfway through the prompts, so I'm happy to still have assignments to play with for a little while still. And I'm loving the mix of photography assignments, then scrapping prompts.

How are you doing on the class prompts? Are you having fun, too?!

  

love your pictures: iced tea lemonade

Do you have a favorite summertime beverage? My favorites, hands down, are the shaken tea lemonades at Starbucks.

 

Half lemonade + half iced tea = the perfect summer drink!

Starbucks sells a few flavors and my go-to is the shaken passion tea lemonade. It's half lemonade and half Tazo Passion tea. The tartness of the lemonade blends with the sweetness of the hibiscus, mango and passion fruit in the tea. Yum!!

Rather than spend a small fortune on Starbucks drinks, I'm determined to make shaken tea lemonade at home this summer. I came across a recipeto replicate the Starbucks version. I'm imagining a pitcher of this next weekend :)

 

I had fun photographing my drink for an assignment on depth of field for love your pictures, love your pages. To try something new, I decided to blur the beautiful setting. When I'm taking pictures at the beach, I would normally keep the water in focus, but I really wanted the drink to be the focal point. I love how summery the images look after running the Pioneer Woman's seventies action.

Have you tried these drinks before? What do you think of mixing iced tea and lemonade??

love your pages: vacation layouts

I've been back from our northern Wisconsin vacation for a week now. And even though I have plenty of older topics to scrap, all I want to do is make pages about being up north! Do you ever feel that way after coming home from vacation? Maybe it's my attempt to make that vacation feeling last ;)

 

When we spend time at my best friend Lindsey's cabin, we always like to visit the retro soda shop in town - Soda Pops.  They sell over 150 kinds of sodas in glass bottles and many are "old fashioned," sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. I've given up soda as a daily beverage, but decided to indulge in a few during vacation and absolutely loved the Cheerwine soda.

 

I made the Soda Pops layout from a love your pictures love, love your pages sketch which broke the design into quadrants, with a line of pictures. I love how it turned out with the Partly Sunny kit from Studio Calico.

 

Another up north tradition is nightly bonfires.  The night is not complete unless we've sat around the fire, preferably with s'mores and a drink or two. I love the bottom photo of our husbands relaxing around the fire, lit only by the flames.

Having fires is such a huge part of our up north experience; so glad I finally recorded it. I wasn't really planning to scrap it in the first place, but after reading the love your pictures, love your pages prompt to scrap two photos - one near and one far - I immediately thought of these images. I pulled out the October Afternoon Thrift Shop collection and the page came together with a sketch from Shimelle.

I have so many more things I want to scrapbook about from our vacation; good thing there are plenty more prompts to catch up on for class!

wicked was wonderful

We were so lucky to have tickets to the Broadway tour of Wicked!

 

Last night we saw the show as part of the four week run in Milwaukee. I haven't read the book and didn't know much of the story line in advance, leaving much of the evening to surprise. And I was absolutely blown away!

The costumes, the set changes, the music; it was nothing short of amazing. If it was possible, I'd see it again today. And again and again!

 

 

We saw the show with my beautiful sister-in-law and our cute husbands. Such a treat to get to spend a magical evening together!

I'm off to download the soundtrack and do a little scrapbooking today... maybe about last night! Have you seen Wicked before? What did you think??

 

love your pictures: three things

Three things that I love? Books, photography and cupcakes. Three things that I do not love photographing? The aformentioned, together.

 

The third assignment for love your pictures, love your pages had me completely stumped. When asked to photograph three things you love together, I knew instantly what I'd grab. Books, baking and cameras are things you see a lot of around here because they are true favorites.

But still-life arrangements? I don't get it. Is there some secret to putting together a group of items to photograph? I don't seem to know the trick.

 

If you're not crazy about your still-life, run the Pioneer Woman's sunshine action on it. You just might like it a little better! 

Oh, and for the record, the cupcake is just as delicious as it looks! We've recently discovered the super charming Milwaukee Cupcake Company. It's within walking distance of my husband's office, which equals surprise cupcakes for me every once in a while. I love how they embellish just one half of the cupcake! Yay for cute local cupcake shops :)

actions are awesome

When I recently posted a few photos and used actions, I received a number of comments that not all of you have used or understand actions. Well I just love them so much that I had to put together a post to encourage you to give them a try!

Once you've installed an action, they are hands-down one of the easiest techniques to use in Photoshop Elements. Actions are essentially a set of pre-programmed editing steps that you achieve through just one click. You run the action and it goes to work making multiple changes to your photo that result in one pretty awesome image.

There is a HUGE selection of actions online. You can find them free or paid and they perform a variety of techniques like enhancing color, converting to black and white or sepia, darkening the edges, sharpening the image, fixing skin tone, or even just resizing for the web.

So what are some of my most favorites? I have actions from three different websites and have come to love many of them. Two of the actions websites I love are free: Coffee Tea Photography and Pioneer Woman Actions. And the third action website offers paid actions: Mindy Bush Actions. There are many other actions websites out there to try, too!

 

The image above is from our vacation and the only adjustment that I've made is a levels correction. Running actions on this image can result in lots of fun changes! My go-to actions that I love and use often include...


Pioneer Woman - Define and Sharpen

 
Pioneer Woman - Seventies 


Pioneer Woman - Lovely and Ethereal

 
Coffeeshop - Little Perk (my go-to for improving all my images) 


Coffeeshop - Vintage Honey


Coffeeshop - Rounded Corners (how I round all blog images)  


Coffeeshop - Lomography


Mindy Bush - Chocolatte (not quite sepia, not quite black and white)  


Mindy Bush - Creamy Black and White

I love seeing how actions can completely transform and improve a picture. And I know I've said it before, but they really are so fun and easy to use! Once you install an action, it will become one of the photo effects available for you in Photoshop Elements. I find it easiest to access installed actions through the effects palette.

 

If they are not displayed by default in your effects palette, start by clicking on the palette. Then select the third icon in the palette menu, which is a small blue box with a hover label of "photo effects." Then in the drop-down menu next to the small icons, click the option for "show all." All your installed actions should then be visible for you to play with!

 

Once you've chosen the action, you will double-click on the action. Some actions may have a pop-up window that asks you to confirm to continue. Photoshop will run the action and your image will be transformed. Most actions are set up in a way that you still have some editing control through the layers palette. So if you want to influence how the action changes your image, you can go to the layers palette, select the layer you want to alter, and adjust the opacity. If you want a more in-depth understanding of how this works, scroll down through this post from the Pioneer Woman. If you're happy with the changes, your last step is to flatten the image. Of course save the image, and you're done!

You may have noticed that I skipped over how to install actions ;)  This is because the steps depend on which version of Photoshop or Elements you have and vary based on which website you've downloaded the action from. But the good news is that once you visit an action website, they will typically provide you with quality step-by-step instructions on how to install. For quick reference, you can visit these links:

• How to install Coffeshop Actions
• How to install Pioneer Woman Actions

I definitely encourage you to try installing a few actions. The installation process may seem overwhelming or confusing at first, but the instructions help immensely and there are often FAQs to help you if you get lost. And the ease of editing your images makes it soo worth any trouble!

If you're not an action user, I'd love to hear if you decide to give them a try! And for all you action fans out there, what are your favorite websites for actions??

love your pictures: flower walk

Only a scrapbooker would insist on taking a walk in 90 degree temperatures with 65% humidity... just to photograph flowers! I'm not sure if my husband thought I was nuts, or dedicated, or maybe both?! But he so sweetly agreed on Sunday to tag along while I took flower photos for the second assignment for love your pictures, love your pages.

Our flower walk took us to two different parks along Lake Michigan. We are blessed to be so close to the lake and beaches.  There was flower inspiration everywhere!

 

 
Love Shimelle's idea to shoot up at the flowers! 

 

 

  

I love the vibrant and true-to-life colors in the photos above, but I think I love vintage flowers equally as much. The photo below was taken with my dSLR, but I ran Pioneer Woman's seventies action in Photoshop Elements.

 

And these photos below are from our vacation of the same bed of flowers. The photo to the left was taken with our Diana Mini; and the photo on the right was taken with the hipstamatic app. I'm not sure which I prefer??



Okay, I really can't resist Pioneer Women's seventies action! Just one more shot ;)



I hope these flowers help brighten your day! I'm off to our book club meeting tonight. I'll be back soon with thoughts on our most recent read!

love your pictures: vintage camera

Today was such a happy day! No plans, just a day for taking pictures and scrapping! After transferring over 1,000 images from our vacation and doing a little purging and editing, I was able to dig into Shimelle's new class, love your pictures, love your pages.

Vintage cameras effects and lomography have been a huge obsession of mine lately. So when I read the first assignment, which is to photograph an item that you love and represents you, I immediately grabbed a camera from my vintage collection. She's my oldest camera, a Seneca Folding Scout, and I was thrilled to find her at an antique store on our recent vacation.

 

 

The images above are "straight out of camera" / SOOC, except for the rounded corners. After photographing the camera around the house in front of various windows, I was surprised to learn that I actually get pretty nice diffused light in my scraproom. Testing all the rooms was definitely a helpful exercise in finding good light!

One of my favorite ways to play with photos is to use actions. What I love about using actions is that it's a quick and fun way to change the look of your photo and basically takes out the guess work. And when you can find them for free... even better! I took some time today to download the Pioneer Woman's free sets of Actions for Photoshop Elements. Love them!!


Pioneer Woman's seventies action


Pioneer Woman's heartland and edge burn actions 

I love how these actions give two very different aged looks to the photos! And I'm looking forward to playing with other actions on more colorful pictures, too!

Scrapbookers are often lovers of photography and cameras. So I'm curious to know... do you collect old cameras, too? If so, which is your favorite??

new scrapbooking releases

I've been slowly catching up on all the blog posts I've missed reading. And the two things I've enjoyed reading most are your posts about Shimelle's new class: love your pictures, love your pages. And, all the fun sneak peeks of the new scrapbooking collections being released at Summer CHA!

There are a few items I'm super excited about. I'm definitely adding these items to my wish list...

Restoration from Crate Paper

 


Indie Girl from Sassafras



 

   
Jet Setter stamps from Studio Calico
 

Color Mists from Studio Calico

 
 
Adhesive Fabric Sheets from Love My Tapes

 

 
What do you think of all the sneak peeks out there of the new releases? Has anything caught your eye?

 
  

i am

After ten days unplugged in northern Wisconsin, I am...

• home!
• but kinda wishing I was still here

 

• full of creative energy
• excited to jump into love your pictures, love your pages
• not ready to go back to work on Monday
• very thankful for vacations with friends and family 

I hope to be back soon to share a few more photos of our up north adventure :)