Adding layers to life

Heather and Jessica edited with lightroom and enhanced with layers

Still on my quest to edit all my sisters wedding photographs, hopefully soon I shall be finished. Luckily she loves me and knows I can still lock her in a cupboard if she annoys me about it. To be fair, she hasn't moaned once about it and has loved the ones I have shown her so far. I just want them to be edited to the best of my abilities and for her to have some lovely photographic memories.
It is a steep steep learning curve, not only taking the photographs, but also the editing. I keep adding new things to my box of tricks, which of course adds on more work, but it is still fun! There is so much to learn and once you make the dreaded mistake of looking at other people photographs, you are doomed.

Heather on the way to the church, edited in lightroom and enhanced with layers

At the moment I am using Lightroom 3 to edit the photographs and then using Picnik.com to add some finsishing touches.
Lightroom Trick - Look into the world of presets! Magical stuff that creates all sorts of cool effects that you can then further tweak.
Picnik.com Trick - If you are premium user you can add 'Layers/textures'. You can also do this using other programs, but I can only do it using Picnik for now!

Wedding Car edited using Lightroom and enhanced with presets

Next time I update the blog about the wedding photography, hopefully I will have bloody finished, but probably not. Let me know what you think and if you have any favourite photograph editing tricks or tips be sure to let me know them.

Medieval Malarkey in Edinburgh

Greetings foul and rotting carbuncles of flea ridden fleshpots!

Tis I the Grail Master! Ruler of all things Grail and Quest like.....

Oops sorry, erm still in medieval taskmaster mode from ye olde times (the other weekend). Yonder weekend was my younger sister's hen weekend, a weekend of dressing up like chickens or a weekend of frivolity and mischief, before one gets married. As the sister (Heather) would have ideally liked a medieval wedding, but the husband to be said no (no fucking way), so a medieval hen weekend was the joyful compromise.That meant costumes and some stuff to do that was, kind of, sort of, Medieval (ish).

Where does one look to when one needs some comedic medievalish inspiration? Only one place of course! The mighty python - Monty Python , well Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Special Edition) to be exact.



After watching that and few other clips a million or so times, I had a plan! Twas time to send the sister on a quest for her own Holy Grail.......

I formulated some questions, then I came up with some rather special names for all the medieval ladies that were playing along, Heather was this delightful character...

Dearest Heather....
Thou artless Foul wretch
Forgive this crazy pig of Widnes. A gossiper of rioters and a feeler of wretchs.
Heather you are henceforth
Princess Isadora Frigginoff, Ruler of Farnworth and the small city of Fannyshockingham

My personal favourite was Lady Amanita Ceeurpeenis formerly Dampnow from Littlepiddle. As someone pointed out, yes I may have too much time on my hands in the wee hours of the morn..

This is a google map I created, of all the places we either visited, were part of the quest and/or wanted to visit. Alas couldn't fit all in. Also included some pubs and foodie places that sounded rather good, so will have to go back and sample them.

View Heather Holy Grail Quest in a larger map

Read more »

Still sleeping

Well by still sleeping I mean this blog, I would love to still be sleeping, but alas I am busy busy busy.

My sister Jemma is taking Amazing pictures of my new baby niece! Here is one of my favourites of Arwen with her older brother Ewan. Only a few weeks till I get to see her for the first time and spend time my two awesometriffic nephews.

My Awesome friend Karen got married on Saturday, so last Wednesday I travelled down south and spent the whole weekend involved in wedding fun, Saturday was a beautiful day and I took over 500 photographs, which I need to edit!
I owed Karen a very belated birthday present and the rule was that it had to be handmade, so I decided to do a doodle. I have been working on it for ages, practising drawing her, her partner and their animals, whenever I had a moment to spare. It was much harder than I thought it would, because I wanted it to be special.
Version one was okay, but just not very Karen or special enough, so I consulted my doodle mentor Miss TJ and got her opinion on what I needed to change. Her advice was invaluable and although I was fed up with making stupid mistakes with version one, I am so happy that I did it again!

Version One:

Version two:

I am still taking photos every day, just don't have the time to bloody upload the things!! It is my sisters medieval hen weekend, this weekend! So Edinburgh watch out! Hopefully I will have time before her wedding on May to catch up on the photographs and write about all the daft things I have planned for her this weekend.

/puts blog back in bed and turns back to twitter

People

Samuel Johnson famously said that if you are bored of London you are bored of life.

 The same applies to Manhattan. 

Never a dull moment -- which is rather nice if you are a quiet, boring person.

Everyone else is out and about doing things....

This mural is from last Friday's visit to East 9th Street.

Whacky haircuts can be had in the west 30's.

Food -  and lots of it  - available everywhere. Here on 2nd Avenue and 10th Street.

This is part of the wedding party alluded to yesterday. Seen on Saturday January 3rd.

An auspicious day -- our 33rd wedding anniversary.

Note the wonderful color of the dresses.

Purple the 'it' color this season.

A little putto, or angel, looks down on us all from above a door in the 30's.

At least I hope he does.......

Boob tape and lots of it.

Well the wedding day has been and gone, it was a lovely day, the end. What? You want more information? I suppose I could write a wee bit more.

Preparations for the wedding started over eighteen months ago when the wedding was first announced. My sister and I were asked by Emma to be her bridesmaids, I tried to get out of it but couldn't come up with a decent enough excuse. Not that I didn't love being asked, I just don't like that sort of thing (read this for more info me me me and me again).
Anyways I have just had to get on with it and for the most part I have had a lot of fun, remember the Llamas and Blow Up Rob. Just thinking about it makes me laugh, read these posts for a jolly good laugh and a bit more insight into my idea of fun.
Hen Night, Introducing Blow Up Rob , llama llama LLAMA!.

Things began to get fun/hectic/mad last week with the make up trial, remember the question Clown or Hooker? From then on I realised I wasn't quite as prepared as I thought! I needed magic pants, boob tape and shoes. I have a tendency to plan things but leave the purchasing them to the very last minute.
I stated in the post that's two below this one that I had defuzzed myself, I think it confused some of you or evoked strong 'wrong' imagery. It isn't a sexual act, although erm, I simply meant removing my winter coat. In simpler terms I shaved my legs and other bits, as apparently hairy legs are not a good look for bridesmaids. As well as defuzzing, plucking, tweezing, there was also the face masks to be applied and hair to be dyed. Evidence of the face masks and hair dyeing process can be seen below, I was trying to smile honest, but my face was stuck in a gruesome clay mask pose.

After trying on the dress I decided that boob tape and lots of it was needed for the dress. Wearing a halter neck style dress is a pain in the arse when you cant wear a bra. The boob tape was a necessary evil, its a good thing I don't have a hairy chest. Otherwise the removal of the boob tape, would of been like a shitty wax job. As the dress was rather snug fitting, magic pants were also needed for a lovely stream line effect.
I left it till the day before the wedding to pick up my shoes, I thought it would be a simple case of going to the shop and purchasing them. Whoops maybe not that simple, as they didn't have my size. Shit! what to do? Curse my uneven sized feet. One foot is half a size bigger than the other, this doesn't make them look freakishly out of proportion but it makes shoe buying difficult. Anyhoo I found some pretty nice ones, as seen in photo below, they were very reasonable too.

Now for the actual wedding day, firstly the weather was beautiful which is always a great sign. The sister and I arrived early in the morning to get our hair done at the salon near to Emma's dads house. They were great at the salon and even without a trial did a great job on all of us. Then it was back to Emma's dads were the make up artist was waiting for us, also the videographer. Yep from that moment on our every move was captured on video, well not every move but quite a bit! As the finishing touches were done to the sister and I, Emma's mum got Emma into the dress. She looked abosolutely fantastic, I knew she was going to look nice, but all together she really looked beautiful. Something was amiss, surely the bridesmaid are meant to dressed before the bride! Much madness ensued as magic pants were pulled on and boob tape was applied.
The rest of the day was lovely, I 'forgot' about being filmed and gritted my teeth through the photographs.

Click on the collage to bigify if you dare!
There you got some bloody pictures, maybe not the ones you wanted but at least it some. The one in the middle is me at the end of the day, so the make up is worn off and I am tired. I may post more if any half decent ones crop up from other peoples cameras.

The Hen Night!

Check out the rest of the photo's here:
Emma's Hen Night!

In case you don't know what I mean by Hen Night, I mean a Bachelorette Party, the last big night out before the bride gets married. I am not sure whether these are the same all around the world but over here you need a few simple ingredients.
What are these ingredients? Most importantly you need a Blow Up Rob, shit I mean a Bride to be. Then you need Blow Up Rob, nope I meant Bridesmaids and friends, then you need Blow Up Rob.
The destination was Liverpool, which is in the North of England and a popular choice for hen nights. Liverpool is popular as it has lots of pubs,clubs and is generally a fun place to go out with a bunch of girls dressed up. The theme was Moulin Rouge, just in case you cant tell from the photographs above. I was more than a little reluctant to dress up and you wont get to see what I looked like, as I was taking the photographs. Everyone looked pretty good and it was quite fun dressing up, even if I normally hate stuff like that.
Blow Up Rob got the most attention by a mile, was stolen twice but was returned after some police intervention and help from some lovely men. It probably looks like everyone was really drunk but in fact nobody was, you don't need to be when your out with us lot.
As punishment for being out all weekend I feel like death overloaded with sinus crap, so this post isn't as funny or long as it could of been. I may come back to it, I may not. The wedding is in less than three weeks now and there is a lot going on with that and college.

I shall be going over the finer details and traditions of a proper Hen Night over at BritishSpeak in a future post.

Play with me!

I haven't got time or the inclination to write a long post tonight, so here is a sneak preview of one of this weekends hen night photographs starring Heather aka my little sister and Blow Up Rob.

In the photograph Heather is playing/abusing poor Blow Up Rob when we got back to Emma's house, he had already suffered a lot and was somewhat deflated.

Blow Up Rob was first mentioned in this post here
Introducing Blow Up Rob

Treasure Box Wednesday: From British Isles to Thrift Store Aisles

While many of us hard-core thrifters view thrift shopping as an adventure, some of our treasures take an equally exciting journey to reach us. Why, a single day of thrifting might reveal sake cups from Japan, hand-painted tole from France, steins from Germany, beautiful silks from India and elaborate carvings from Bali. My own father found a diggerydo from Australia once (and when space is limited, at over five foot tall, believe me-- it's a bit of a diggery-don't.)

As an Anglophile, I'm continually surprised at the sorts of things that turn up in thrift stores that originally came from the British Isles. So I thought I'd group a few of them together today in this Treasure Box Wednesday.

Like this Isle of Wite souvenir linen towel....

I found this at the Salvation Army Superstore out by Century III Mall. What was once someone's souvenir purchase becomes a fun collectible for someone new!

A while back, I uncovered this mug commemorating Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding, too...


At $0.99 at the Goodwill in Monroeville, it seemed too unique round these here parts to not put away for safekeeping. Perhaps in the U.K. they're available by the pound, but not here in the middle of Western Pennsylvania!

I was equally shocked to find this (sadly, empty) biscuit tin from the famous Harrod's department store in London. It's a nice size and would be great for storage of small items, like pens or thread spools.


And yesterday, I found another little reminder of England. While not made in that country, I was still rather tickled to discover this Department 56 Dickens Village Historic Landmark's light-up version of Big Ben...


Christmas may be half-a-year off, but this is going to look terrific in my William Morris styled living room at the holidays! And at just under $7, I know I got a pretty good deal.

Outside of the British theme, I thought I'd show you another Salvation Army Superstore find-- this Victorian transferware vase. There's some nice hand-painting to it, though a bit of damage to the top of the vase. Still, in a cabinet, it will be very pretty.


I found this vintage apron with handkerchief pockets at Goodwill for $1...


And last, I discovered matching vintage sheets-- though at two separate Salvation Armies. You just never know what's going to be where!


Well, before I say, "Cheerio" today (yes, yes, I know no one actually says "cheerio" unless breakfast cereal is involved,) I'll leave you with the following links:

• If you missed last Treasure Box Wednesday's little spring garden tour, you might wish to click here.

• And if you didn't catch Sunday's post on the conclusion to the Round Robin and my swap partner's thoughtful package to me, click here.

Cheers!
-Jenn

Treasure Box Wednesday: From British Isles to Thrift Store Aisles

While many of us hard-core thrifters view thrift shopping as an adventure, some of our treasures take an equally exciting journey to reach us. Why, a single day of thrifting might reveal sake cups from Japan, hand-painted tole from France, steins from Germany, beautiful silks from India and elaborate carvings from Bali. My own father found a diggerydo from Australia once (and when space is limited, at over five foot tall, believe me-- it's a bit of a diggery-don't.)

As an Anglophile, I'm continually surprised at the sorts of things that turn up in thrift stores that originally came from the British Isles. So I thought I'd group a few of them together today in this Treasure Box Wednesday.

Like this Isle of Wite souvenir linen towel....

I found this at the Salvation Army Superstore out by Century III Mall. What was once someone's souvenir purchase becomes a fun collectible for someone new!

A while back, I uncovered this mug commemorating Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding, too...


At $0.99 at the Goodwill in Monroeville, it seemed too unique round these here parts to not put away for safekeeping. Perhaps in the U.K. they're available by the pound, but not here in the middle of Western Pennsylvania!

I was equally shocked to find this (sadly, empty) biscuit tin from the famous Harrod's department store in London. It's a nice size and would be great for storage of small items, like pens or thread spools.


And yesterday, I found another little reminder of England. While not made in that country, I was still rather tickled to discover this Department 56 Dickens Village Historic Landmark's light-up version of Big Ben...


Christmas may be half-a-year off, but this is going to look terrific in my William Morris styled living room at the holidays! And at just under $7, I know I got a pretty good deal.

Outside of the British theme, I thought I'd show you another Salvation Army Superstore find-- this Victorian transferware vase. There's some nice hand-painting to it, though a bit of damage to the top of the vase. Still, in a cabinet, it will be very pretty.


I found this vintage apron with handkerchief pockets at Goodwill for $1...


And last, I discovered matching vintage sheets-- though at two separate Salvation Armies. You just never know what's going to be where!


Well, before I say, "Cheerio" today (yes, yes, I know no one actually says "cheerio" unless breakfast cereal is involved,) I'll leave you with the following links:

• If you missed last Treasure Box Wednesday's little spring garden tour, you might wish to click here.

• And if you didn't catch Sunday's post on the conclusion to the Round Robin and my swap partner's thoughtful package to me, click here.

Cheers!
-Jenn

Llama llama LLAMA!

More Llama photographs on Flickr

I know I confused you with my doodle posted on Saturday, I thought I was rather clear with it. How could you not tell that Heather and I, were taking Emma Llama trekking. Okay there was no alligator/crocodile or wedding dress and the sun had no grumpy face, in fact I didn't even see the sun. Other than that, I think its pretty spot on depiction of Saturdays activity.

What's up with the Llama's anyway? Well Heather and I wanted to do something special for Emma as she is getting married, hence this being a Hen Weekend (Bachelorette). Emma just wanted a nice quiet weekend in the cottage, doing face masks and sitting in front of the fire.
Of course that meant Heather and I had to look for something fun to do as a surprise, the problem was Emma doesn't like anything! Extreme sports were out as I wasn't taking the blame for Emma drowning or crashing a quad bike.
So on searching for things to do in surrounding area of the cottage, I stumbled upon this website Lakeland Llama Treks. On one hand Emma doesn't like walking, the outside, fresh air, on the other hand it's me and I can't resist planning something! So after consulting Heather, in which I agreed to accept the blame if Emma hated it. We decided to go ahead and book it.
During the build up to this weekend I asked a lot of people what they would think about a llama trek and the response wasn't good! Mostly 'wtf are you doing that for' and 'She is going to kill you'. So Heather and I decided to keep quiet about the llama surprise right up until the very last moment.
The fateful day arrived on Saturday, Emma was given a post code to put into her sat nav and we arrived at the car park by the lake. It had been very quiet in the car on the way with Emma looking very worried indeed and not happy at all about wearing wellies.
Once we managed to get her out the car and towards a trailer, she exclaimed 'Horses!', I said 'Nope!', then she said 'Camels!', I replied 'erm no, camels? weirdo!. Then she went with 'Llamas?' that definitely shocked us. The good thing was she was actually smiling, even though it disappeared a little bit once she found out we weren't riding them.
The weather may of been crap, Emma may hate outside and walking, but we had a great time! Llamas are gorgeous! They do not spit at you and they are cute and lovely and fluffy. The guides pair you up with a llama and then it was a lovely walk around the lake, with a stop for a very nice picnic. The llamas love the lake so we took them down to the lake shore for a splash and they love to wee in the water.
It was over far too soon and I would definitely recommend it to anyone, but most importantly Emma loved it. Check out the video below for a quick snippet of the fun we had and the link to my flickr photographs underneath the collage.
I will be doing another post on what else we got up to this weekend, as there is a lot more photographs to see.

Check out Lakeland Llama Treks!

To keep you amused

The photographs and relevant posts are taking longer than I thought, so here is an interesting shot of my sister Heather abusing Emma(bride to be).

A clue to what I am up to this weekend

Remember I am not actually here, the magic of auto post brings this information!

Uh Oh!

 

I am off today on another adventure which involves something that gets blown up, actually two things that blow up (which will remain a secret for now) AND strange beasts, talking animals and booze!

Just a normal weekend for Claire you wonder? Don't be daft, its a Hen weekend for bride to be Emma, the namesake of Blow Up Emma mentioned here in this post Non rude blow up doll.

I am back on Monday but will be in college that night so photo's and stuff will have to wait till later that night/Tuesday.

I have set up twitter on my phone so keep your eyes glued to my twitter box posted up top!

I will be giving the Blogger in draft scheduled posting a whirl on Saturday to post a clue to what I am up to.WTF is Blogger if draft scheduled posting I hear you wondering, its just auto posts something for you, its very very easy to use! honest.

*Click here for info on Scheduled posts*