BOKEH TUTORIAL

Bokeh, sweet bokeh. You may know them as light blobs, but the Japanese were kind enough to proffer up ‘bokeh’ and us American photo enthusiasts have accepted it into our vernacular, now if only they would come up with an alternative for the word ‘blog’ that will catch on…

If you have been hanging around Flickr or blogland for any length of time you may have spotted these aberrations and have perhaps wanted in on this secret society of light.   Lucky for you and me Darcy has created a magnificent (and quite easy) tutorial which will have you shooting bokeh like nobody’s business in no time flat.  Have fun!

SOLID FROG

I do not have the gift of finding new blogs. I am hopelessly lost and left out in the discovery of this bright, new world.  My friend Jules always finds the best new this or that,  I can’t even begin to know where to search, so when I find something that I think is fan-flippin’-tastic I immediately want to be able to show that I too can find something fabulous.  The other day I thought it was Emmasdesign blogg, only to find to my horror that the lovely Sarah of Truly Smitten wrote about the same ‘blogg’ the day before.  A weird coincidence, I pinky swear I didn’t check out her blog and think to myself  ‘hey self, wouldn’t it be a grand idea to write about the same blog as Sarah and use the same photo’ a day after she wrote her post? 

Today I am feeling confident you may not have been introduced yet to the lovely blogg Solid Frog, (another Scandinavian beauty) by artist Mia Linnman.  Her ‘blogg’ led me down the rabbit hole to Skona Hem, which made me feel like maybe just maybe I too can deliver a new discovery or two.  Sarah, if you wrote about this yesterday, uh oh.

BELLS

This is my ‘dogter’ Bella aka Bells, Baby, Turkey (because of her turkey legs) or Lucha (for the Mexican masked wrestlers).  Bella is quite the character, in this photo I think she looks like a baby gorilla wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask.  Unlike my G.G., Bella adores having her photograph taken, when she hears the click of the camera she comes running up to the lens and poses.  I love to watch her bat ears perk up and I go especially coo coo when she tilts her head to the side–just clobber me with cuteness.

Happy Monday!

ODE TO GENINNE Z.

I have written about artist Gennine Zlatkis many times prior on my former Blahg, she of the bird fancy and extraordinary hand carved stamp abilities.  I have long admired her interior aesthetic and her creativity seems to know no bounds. Today I saw her work available at Urban Outfitter’s which made me want to drop by her blog to see what she has been up to.  To start she and her family have a beautiful new home which her husband made (plus most of the furniture) it has such achingly gorgeous light that I felt paroxysms of envy every time I viewed more, which I could not stop myself because of said achingly gorgeousness.  It seems the whole family is blessed with creativity in spades.  Did I mention that Gennine lives in what seems like the most perfectly quaint Colonial town in Mexico?  Which makes me feel like an armchair adventuress with each click of my mouse.  Then I discovered that she is hosting a workshop in said quaint town, which I can only dream of attending but perhaps you have been saving your pretty pennies for just such an opportunity?

I do hope this weekend finds you flexing your own creative muscle, there seems to be a plethora of craft projects to do this holiday season and I have already started on a glittered woodland menagerie that I was hoping to unveil this week, but I had a bit of a craft disaster.  Let me just leave you on this note if you are going to glitter plastic figurine’s use ultrafine glitter and not chunky German glass glitter unless of course you want your glittered animals to look like they have a severe case of the disco mumps.

PAPERPHINE

Paperphine has been sitting in my Etsy favorites for way too long.  I re-discovered the Vienna based shop again yesterday and am happy to share them with you today.  Paperphine is the only shop I know of that sells ‘paper yarn’ a product so rare that you would have better luck finding a four leaf clover than another purveyor of paper yarn—I am duly intrigued.  Let it be noted that they sell some of the finest paper yarns around, which I wholeheartedly believe since I have never seen a live specimen of paper yarn in my life so I can not compare, but if their styling is any indication of their quality than I think you can trust that they will deliver.