kimi kreations

A Rant for today... OK, my life has become totally overwhelmed and engrossed with wedding details. I have spent loads of time finding wedding photographers and wedding info on blogs, then adding them to my Google reader. I then wait happily for them to post something daily. For hints of things I am forgetting to do, things I don't even know I am forgetting. Truthfully, they have been loads of help!! The internet really is a wonderful place. I read about wedding stuff (Weddings are all about stuff) and drool over some fantastic images. BUT... why the heck do so many of the high end photographers continually take engagement session images of couples with mad faces. Isn't this supposed to be the most wonderful time of their life? Scowling engagement images, what the heck am I missing here? Is this what they want to share with the family? Look back on and remember? I would love for someone to enlighten me. Maybe I am just stuck in Kristen and Dustin land. They cannot be together an...

We had such Easter fun yesterday. Everyone came together for a big egg dye and hunt. Kristie and Grace came over, dyed a couple of eggs and then hid the entire bunch for us to find. We had a great time. Kristen fond the golden egg and won $5. Dustin found the most, he also cracked all but one of his eggs in the dying process. We had to laugh... It was such fun, I can't wait to play again next year. Here is my favorite egg. It is done using food coloring, a damp paper towel and crumpled aluminum foil. Here is a group shot of some of our dyed eggs. Can you find the golden egg? =) I love this, It symbolizes our family. Dustin's, New York Yankee's egg, Holly's swirly artistic egg, Kristen's, zig zaggy egg, Mike has the Faberge look alike. Boy, did we laugh at that one. The second green one on the left front is the one Grace designed and the blue rabbit is Kristie's creation. Most of the ones that look like the one above are mine but Dustin got into my effect towar...

Jerry at Shadowhouse Creations (AKA, Ghostbones) has been posting the most wonderful weed images using his free textures. He has also posted an in-depth tut on how he made his "Thistle" image. Certainly a must read!! Well, it is that time of year again. The yearly dandelion hunt. I drove around a few days ago and there were none to be found close to home. Kristen was kind enough to bring me home two she found today at school. We tried taking shots while she was blowing. Between her blowing too hard and my shutter speed not being fast enough... most were bombs. But here is one before we started. I was using my 200mm zoomed all the way out to get the most blur out of my background and the smallest aperture number the lens had to offer for the smallest depth of field. And I searched for the perfect green background so the white would have contrast. I also focused on the weed and held down my focus lock button so the focus wouldn't change while I shot on continuous. Always g...

I know... you are thinking I must have been abducted by aliens. I promise to start doing a better job of keeping up my blog. Please forgive me? I wanted to share the kids Save the Date card I designed. It has hit everyone in the family and Kristen said it was fine for me to share. =) I started with a blank document in a 5x7 format. Combined some of my textures from Jerry and created the background. Browsed the web for inspiration and came up with this. The Polaroid frame is the one that is for sale in my frame set at "The Shop" . The tape is mine also. I came up with most of the design on my own. I knew we had a dark brown card so when we went out to take engagement photos, I processed the image to go with the theme of the card. I fell in love with the picture the minute I saw it. It is the oozing love image. So here you go... FRONT BACK I know that sending out Save the Dates is a rather new concept. Some of the older folks really don't have a clue as to what they are. (...

Yes, it is that time of year again. Time really does go by too fast. So to celebrate I have posted a birthday freebie at "The Shop" . And because I have to have an image to go with every post, Down here in Louisiana, I give you spring... On my walk yesterday. My neighbors Japanese Magnolia blooming. I ran the Orton Effect and added a tan colored texture, changing the blend mode to soft light. pretty huh? =) Happy Weekend! ~kimi~

Jerry at Shadowhouse Creations posted a very cool image today. It was made possible by Wordle. I made one for Kristen and Dustin. I thought we could somehow use it on their thank you cards. All you do is type all of the words you want to use, I typed them in Word. Then you copy and paste into the word area on Wordle and hit go. You can use the randomize button and keep getting different patterns. Scrappers should love this! Click on the image to get a bigger view. It is such fun. Go and try it out! Wordle can be found here Happy Thursday. ~kimi~

Let's talk about using a photo filter. You will find this feature in Elements and in Photoshop under your black and white adjustment layer icon in your layers palette. The first thing the human eye goes for in an image is the brightest spot. Normally we want this to be a face or an eye to make our images really stand out. In one of the photos I posted a while back, it had the kids holding a sign that said "Marry Me". I used a small aperture so the kids would be blurry and focused on the sign. This worked ok. But every time I looked at it, my eyes still went to their faces before the sign. So I went in and played with a couple of photo filters. I added sepia, orange and yellow, adjusting the opacity until I liked the effect. Because photo filters fall under an adjustment layer. All I had to do was mask the color off of the sign so it stayed white. I am much happier with the image. Take a look at the new version and go back a few post to look at the original. Do you see it?...