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October 1, 2015

A collection of vintage inspired hand drawn fonts

We’ve written about artist/designer Edurado Recife before, because it would be a shame not to, such a talent! Most of his fonts came about to use in his own work which is ephemera/collage based with just enough edge to make it not feel granny. We just found out Eduardo’s foundry Misprinted Type is having a huge sale, 50% off of every font family, a rare, rare occurrence that we felt needed to be mentioned a.s.a.p.! Some of our faves are the King Bloser, a gorgeous script font with a ton of flourishes to work with. Another great, more traditional script (it seriously blows my marbles that it can pen like this) is his Mercy script. His Handmade font is perfect for so many vintage inspired projects that need a little edge, I’m thinking circus themed everything. Let me stop blathering, you should go visit to see what he has to offer, I doubt you will be disappointed!

Author / Miss Tristan B

Miss Tristan B. is the co-creator of the world’s best + easiest product photography editing tool-Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.

September 29, 2015

GEL LINER THAT’S EASY ON THE EYES + WALLET

A few weeks ago, my husband and I ran away to Victoria B.C. for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary. Well, we didn’t actually run- we flew over on a seaplane! The seaplanes are a part of the scenery around here, but I’d never traveled on one – so when I learned that each passenger is only allowed to bring along 25 lbs of luggage (including your handbag etc), I knew I’d have to leave the big camera behind, and scrutinize all of the other items I would usually toss into my bag for a weekend trip.

Lightweight white trousers instead of jeans, a white blazer to go with everything, and slip-on tennis shoes were light and versatile choices. All of the clothing that made the cut was black, white, or navy (surprised? ha!), and easily interchangeable. I needed my cosmetic bag to be just as lean, so I decided to hit the drugstore to swap out my usual Smashbox eyeshadow palette (I like to use the black shadow for liner) for a small pot of gel liner. What I didn’t know, is that I would end up with a winner of a product that goes on like butter and lasts for the entire day! It’s a gel liner that comes with a small brush, making it perfect for my travel bag. I used the liner to create both a fine line for day, and a thicker line for evening – a very worthy travel companion, that now has a permanent place in my cosmetics bag!

My luggage was light as a feather so they let us on the plane and whisked us off to our dreamy weekend in Canada. If you have ever considered a seaplane adventure, do it! The view was stunning, I think I had a cheesy grin plastered on my face for the entire flight!

RESOURCES

L’Oreal Paris Lacquer Liner in Blackest Black

Smashbox Eyeshadow Palette

Nars angled eyeliner brush (for even easier application)

Kenmore Air (in case you want a seaplane adventure of your own!)

photo by michelle p.

Author / Miss Michelle P.

Miss Michelle P. is a photographer, and the co-creator of Foto Rx Premium Photoshop Actions. She lives in the Pacific Northwest. Her muse is light.

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September 27, 2015

52 Lists Project by Moorea Seal Giveaway

Sometimes I do indeed feel like I live under a rock, I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know about the very special moon last night, the moon that only happens once every 33 years, that moon. If I did know about it maybe I would have done something special like create a list, or make some resolutions or wishes or something. I did nothing. On occasions such as this instead of flogging myself, I decide to just try a little harder starting —right now. It seems to work, nobody (that I know of) has gotten farther in life by berating themselves. One way to move onward and upward is to do a little self introspection, but unless you are inclined to journal or go to therapy, which I am hopeless at both (which is why I probably should be doing both), is to break out Moorea Seal’s 52 Lists Project book. Moorea, a dedicated list maker started the 52 Lists Project on her blog and it soon became a huge hit, which became her book (who doesn’t love a good list?) Her book is part journal (via the lists), part inspiration and a whole lot of eye candy via the beautiful photographs and illustrations. I think today is as good a day as any to give away one of Moorea’s beautiful books and what better way to do so than to pose a question from her book? This was a hard question for me to answer and feel free to add more than one item, because if you asked me about my childhood dream job it would probably be quite huge (and amusing). In order to enter to win add your answer in the comments:

List your childhood and current dream job

We will choose a winner on Monday, October 5, 2015! Good luck!

P.S. I’ve read many books about writing things you want down and somehow they miraculously come into fruition, who knows? By writing your dream job down it just may happen…

Author / Miss Tristan B

September 24, 2015

Quality art supplies make all the difference

Many years ago I had art school interns, one of them whom suggested that I’d probably love watercolor, because it was a forgiving medium. So one day I decided I would try it, I was at the drugstore and bought one of those multi-pans of watercolor that came with a brush and pulled out some copy paper from my printer. Do I need to even mention how my results were far from any expectation I had? Probably not, it was a disaster, a waste of time and money. Nowadays we have access to so many more resources on line but I thought I would do a quickie review of some supplies that might make your foray into trying a new art medium/skill a little more successful for the first time. It’s really not quantity, but quality and luckily quality art supplies are available in a range of affordable prices so you can try something new out without a huge investment.

Drawing/sketching

This is the most basic of mediums, all you really need is some pencils, paper and an eraser. The problem lies in a lot of people trying to sketch and draw with their trusty No. 02 pencil, using the eraser on the end of it and whatever paper is available. This seems to be no problem for someone that already has some aptitude for drawing but for the newbie it could be both the beginning and end to a successful drawing career. I would suggest buying an inexpensive pack of pencils with different lead hardness. An eraser that won’t tear your paper or leave behind a residue or dye (like the pink eraser does) and a good sketching pad. These simple tools are a meager investment and can make a world of difference! If you follow any good drawing how-to book (here’s a fave) it should go over shading, having a soft pencil at your disposable makes it effortless to do so.

Modern Calligraphy

I can’t even tell you how many bad supplies and wrong nib types for what I wanted to accomplish. When I started exploring no one was sharing their supplies. It makes such a world of difference results wise and may even be the difference between quitting and pursuing further (we hope always that you do the latter).

//RESOURCES//

Drawing pencils

Drawing pencil set in case

Erasers

Metal pencil sharpener

Sketch pad

Travel sketch notebook

Modern Calligraphy Supplies

Modern Calligraphy Set (beginner)

Modern Calligraphy Set (intermediate)

Watercolor set with brush

Watercolor set in pans

Watercolor tube set (great gift set!)

Watercolor postcards (such small real estate, you can have so much fun tackling such a small project!)

kit shown Belle Calligraphy Kit

Author / Miss Tristan B

September 22, 2015

12 awesome (and easy) resources to learn to sing or play guitar!

Another frequent skill wish that we saw was the wish to learn to sing (or be a better singer) and learn how to play guitar (I will soon be teaching myself ukulele). Michelle and I both wondered if singing was innate or if there was a way to develop it, I am pretty hopeless but our research proved it is not an impossibility! Basically if you are not diagnosed tone deaf (often a self misdiagnosis) or are not deaf (but research says that’s changing as well) you can learn to sing! Will you be an award winning, break champagne glass with your high note singer? Probably not, but one never knows until they try!

//RESOURCES//

This fellow has a slew of short easy to follow videos covering everything from vocal exercises to the psychology of singing.

The BBC has a huge series on ‘How to Sing’.

Here’s a series on ‘singing for beginners’ from a celebrity singing coach, some super information in these videos!

Vocalizing is supposedly a great exercise, you can listen to demo’s here.

Berklee school of music is a super well known and respected institute and they offer online vocal courses.

On-line singing class not for you? What about an in-home or studio lesson. TakeLessons might be able to pair you up with someone in your area for a fairly reasonable fee (they also can help you find a teacher to teach you instruments from piano, guitar, drums to ukulele.)

Learn some elite singing techniques that the pros use.

Learn to play guitar in 60 days by playing a video game? That’s a two’fer right there.

Justin Guitar houses over 850 free guitar lessons!

There’s no better person to take a guitar lesson from then someone that has become wildly successful in their craft, right? Learn from professional (and famous) guitarists (over 400,000 people already have!).

Artistworks has free beginner acoustic guitar lessons, I hear a Kinfolk-esque bonfire sing-a-long in your future.

Michelle said her friend learned how to play guitar with the guitar tab method,we linked to the video on how to read guitar tabs and a huge guitar tab resource.

photo by maybelle imasa-stukuls

Author / Miss Tristan B