My Goals for April

• I keep hearing about these blogger chats that happen on twitter but I never seem to be at my computer when they happen! I look back through the tweets tagged with #lbloggers or whatever hashtag it may be, and it does seem like such a nice way to get to know new bloggers and maybe make some friends! Only thing that may be problematic is that I am quite a shy person so taking part in these chats at all will be a challenge for me, but it would be so great to get involved!

• I've realised that I don't really write that many photoshop-themed blog posts and that bothers me.. I LOVE photoshop and can spend a whole week just playing with it, but the problem is that I don't know what to write about when it comes to photoshop. Do you want tutorials? freebies? I just don't know! I'll have to start a chat on twitter about this or maybe google some ideas, haha.

• I have lots of projects on the go at the moment spanning from this blog to my degree work and any second that I don't spend working on any of it makes me feel guilty and just crappy in general, but at the same time if I work constantly I get all grouchy with a bad case of brain-hurt! I need to strike a perfect balance and an hour seems like just enough time to do something just for myself without feeling guilty. This could be reading a book, watching some youtube videos or playing my ukulele, the beauty of this is that I can do whatever I want.. god, that's a relief already! 

Do you have any goals for this month? I'd love to know :)

Happy Easter Colour Palette

Blowing eggs for Easter makes me feel like a big kid, its so nostalgic for me since my mum used to sit my little sister and I down just before Easter with an egg each for us to blow and then decorate. Nowadays I don't use masses of paint or stickers to decorate my eggs, I use Sharpies and paint markers instead since it makes the decorating process so much quicker since there is no drying time. I really liked my handiwork this year so I decided that I wanted to show you guys, but when I saw the photograph I didn't "see" the eggs, what caught my eye was the subtle colour palette. And then one thing lead to another, so my Easter egg display became a Easter colour palette instead, haha. I love when little things like this happen! It feels so organic to do something with a vague idea or plan, but then become inspired to create something completely different.

Hope you all have a fabulous Easter! 

Okay, Lets Do This!

I needed this little pick me up! There are so many things going on in my head about life, college, and work at the moment that have been scaring me into a stupor, but now its time to stop sitting back watching opportunities pass me by.

Okay, lets do this! I can do this!

The above print is from a lovely etsy shop called PaperPaper who's based in the UK! You can find the print here, or you can browse the shop here!

More Food Photography!

I've been playing around with some more compositions for food photography lately, my gosh its so fun!  The first photo is of a cozy chai latte smothered with marshmallows with a side of dunking biscuits and the second photo is somewhat of a template for me to use in future when photographing a main meal.

Next I want to either photograph a main meal of some kind or maybe some cute macaroons. 

"Oh Comely" Magazine

"Oh Comely" magazine is described as..

"a magazine that makes people smile, full of quiet moments and stories. Read it with a cup of tea or a toddy.It inspires people to be creative, talk to their neighbours and explore new things. There are adventures that capture the feeling of being free, stories from people with tales to tell, recipes to warm your heart, and crafty things to make. All these things, wrapped up in beautiful words, illustration and photography."

I came across my first "Oh Comely" magazine while in a train station visiting my boyfriend. He was running a tad late in meeting me, so I went to have a look in the little shop hidden in the corner of the station. While looking at the bottled drinks, the reflection of a certain magazine caught my eye! I had known about "Oh Comely" for a couple of months, but no matter what shop I went to, I could never find a copy! Yet here was the last copy of the thirteenth issue just looking back at me. I opened up its pages to find a pen race, beautiful photos of clothes hanging on trees and a menagerie of lovely stories to inspire. Instantly, I was in love! I bought a copy, took it to the boyfriend's house and had a good read.. Soon after, I bought a subscription! This is my favourite magazine now and its always a pleasure to read. If anyone wants to have a look at it you can check out their blog here and subscribe here!

[This is not a sponsored post, just me being excited at finding an awesome magazine, haha. Images belong to ohcomely.co.uk]

Manniphotography's Hair Retouching Tutorial

Here is Manniphotography's four part hair retouching tutorial. While retouching my purchased images I realised that I actually didn't know how to retouch hair, an element that can quite easily be the focus of a photograph. To remedy this I scoured through YouTube to try and find out the best techniques and tools for the job, and I have to say this series of tutorials was amazingly insightful and I know that I will always fall back to these if I get stumped by an image. I hope you guys enjoy the tutorials and if you like Manniphotography's work you can check out his website here and his YouTube channel here.

Photo Retouching Portfolio

After doing a bit of research on what a photo retouching career entails and what it is generally like, I have come to the conclusion that I would love to get into that field of work. Like all creative careers, before you can get anywhere up that tricky job ladder, you need to show your potential clients/employers what you can do with the help of a portfolio. I bought three different photos from editablephotos.com for about 80p each, so I could work on large RAW files from professional model shoots and I'm now smitten with this website! I sometimes spend an entire afternoon just browsing through all of the amazing photos in their growing library and think about what I can add to each image to make it the best it can possibly be. These are my three before and after images of the photos I've been working on, any constructive criticism would be amazing!

Amy Dresser speaks at Luminance 2012

Amy Dresser is an American photo retoucher with a fine art and illustrative background. She has produced work for influential brands such as Warner Brothers, Pepsi, and Urban Decay; and is very well known in the photo-retouching community. Here is a video that I found on Vimeo of her talking about what its like for her to be a photo retoucher, and I found it to be incredibly insightful.

Amy Dresser speaks at Luminance 2012 from PhotoShelter.com on Vimeo.

The Beginnings of my "Companions" Projects

For this new project, we are visually exploring and representing relationships. These relationships can be between humans and animals, familial bonds, professional scenarios, social and romantic partnerships. Our challenge is to capture and represent the relationship between the subjects to make the message clear and visual.

Here are some images I have collected that will go on to inspire and support my new body of work:

*If you spot your image above and it is not credited accordingly then leave me a message so I can fix it for you. Many thanks!

Project "Making Strange" - Negative Sandwiching

Recently I have been entranced with the images produced through the process of negative sandwiching, which is where you overlap two or more negatives to create a whole new image. I would very much like to try this process with my own images so I have gone and shot a film of self-portraits and then I will go out and shoot a film of interesting backgrounds that would compliment. 

*The images above are not my own, you will find their sources if you click on the respective image. 

Project "Making Strange" - Lynn Hershman

I really like Lynn Hershman's "Phantom Limb" series (two first images). I believe it links into my research and my "Making Strange" project well, also it is a good example of how other photographers choose to explore identities. Although the images I have seen do not contain masks, there still is the fact that their faces are obscured. In this way, their identities are unknown but we are given an impression of their personalities by the choice of objects featured.

 I am particularly fond of Hershman's creation of "Roberta Breitmore" and I look forward into researching how Hershman has depicted a whole new character/alter-ego.

"Roberta Breitmore" was a fictional character created by Hershman as a private performance piece. Breitmore was so well developed as a character that she had her own mannerisms, handwriting, psychiatrist, credit cards and even an apartment. (The last image is a construction chart of Roberta Breitmore as she was being created by Hershamn.)

Project "Making Strange" Inspiration

These are the main images feeding my imagination at the moment.

If you know or have similar photos, or know a photographer who's work is like this then don't be afraid to jot it down in the comments for me!

*all images here are credited to their sources, to find out who the photographer is or where the image is from then just click the image and its URL should open for you.

Fab Font: Autumn

This is my absolute favourite font of the moment, I stumbled upon it while looking for some autumnal fonts for this season and to be honest I can see myself using this font all year round, not just in autumn! I really like the almost handwritten quality it has, it makes me think of hand embroidered words filled with care and love.

The font is all in uppercase and features a beautifully delicate ampersand, which I can't wait to put into my work. I'm currently using this font for photographer names and quotes in my sketchbook because it really raises the aesthetics of the pages without being too in your face.

If you like this font too then you can download it for free from this link here.

Where d'ya go?..

Well so much for blogging three times a week, hahaha! I'm just letting you all know I've been very busy, I haven't even had time to read my favourite blogs this week!

 I've been drafting some designs for me to print on tote bags to sell and I also started my first week of my photography degree. We haven't really touched upon anything photography-wise just yet as we're dealing with admin stuff like id cards and IT/Library inductions, but the other students seem really nice, as do the tutors. I'm really looking forward to knuckling down into some professional-standard photography now!

Anywho, here is a sneak peek of one of the designs that I've drafted. Any constructive criticism would be lovely.

Plastic Animal Necklace Tutorial

Just a quick tutorial to show you my new favourite accessories, plastic animal necklaces! There super-easy and super-quick to make and they look adorable! 

Here is what you need:

1. A plastic creature.

2. A pin.

3. Two jump rings.

4. Flat nosed pliers.

5. Round nosed pliers.

6. A nail polish colour of your choice.

My favourites would have to be the Humpback Whale and Shark from the first photo, but I love my little stingray too! I'll never be able to decide which one to wear, haha! Which is your favourite?

Monthly Goals - September

I've been on an organising binge lately, I bought myself a filofax last week and I'm planning on organising my living space tomorrow, So I was thinking to myself "How could I organise my general life easily?" This is what I came up with! I decided that every month, I would set a side some time to think up some goals to better myself each month, and then I would share my goals with you guys as a way to make sure I do them ( I'm more likely to do something, if I tell someone that I'm going to do it).

So here is September's Goals:

1. Make Some Friends at my Degree - I'll be starting my photography degree on the 17th of September, and I've been really stressing and worrying about whether I will make some friends. I'm not exactly a social butterfly, in fact I'm just downright awkward! But with this as one of my goals, I can make myself go looking for people that I can befriend and start conversations with them.

2. Blog At Least Three Times a Week - My blogging schedule is pretty much non-existant and I hate how that reflects here at Pixelbaby, so I want to start blogging at least three times a week to get into a routine and experiment with what days work best for me and to kickstart my creative process.

3. Research Courses to Widen my Skills - Even before starting my degree, I am already worrying about the world of employment that waits for me when I finish studying. To try to combat my anxiousness I thought that I could look for short but valuable courses for me to take part in, that will help gain me skills in areas such as coding and design. My ultimate plan is to be a self-employed photographer/blogger/business, so in my mind the more skills that I have, the closer I will be to achieving my dream!

So that's my goals for this month, what do you think about them, is it a good start? and what are your goals for this month?

Feeling Tender - Playlist

Pixelbaby has been so quiet lately, and I'll tell you why.. I've been very busy compiling lots of bits and pieces together to make a monster of a post that will feature some beautiful fonts, my photography and some adorable little knick-knacks that I've bought recently. It will have an Autumn theme to welcome in the new season and there may be a couple of freebies for you guys to grab!

Anyway, here is my latest playlist! It has been keeping me focused and my ears happy while I work away pinning this ginormous post together, I hope you guys like it :)

Friday Fonts: Minecrafter 2.0

I'm cutting it close tonight, this may turn into a "Saturday Fonts" if I take too long to write this, haha! The reason it has taking me ALL day to do this post is because I've spent my entire day playing my favourite game, Minecraft! I've recently discovered a new mod for the game called Tekkit, which allows you to get involved in all kinds of technological/magical/industrial tomfoolery, so I've wasted god-knows how many hours getting used to the mod and making all kinds fun, haha.

Anyway, to keep in theme with my day I thought it would be most apt to feature a Minecraft-esque font for today, so here is Minecrafter 2.0.  It looks a lot like the real minecraft font and even features the trademark "creeper face" in the A if you use uppercase, there is no other noticeable difference between  uppercase and lowercase.

I hope you found today's font as charming as I do, I can already imagine myself using it on Minecraft-themed gift tags for my boyfriend's christmas presents! If you like it, then you can download it from here: [link]

*EDIT

Darnit! Two minutes after midnight makes this a Saturday Fonts.. hahaha!

Inspiration : Yoran Morvant

1. [Link] FOR SALE

2. [Link] FOR SALE

3. [Link] FOR SALE

4. [Link] SOLD OUT

Yoran Morvant is an artist who places beautifully intricate drawings onto stone, each piece is inspired by the natural shape of the stone and I have absolutely fallen in love with them. I love all the wonderful shapes and lines, and how they interact with the stone! I just wanted to share these wonderful little pieces with you all and I hope they inspire you like they have with me (I'm off to the beach tomorrow to do some beach-combing for a new project!).

Friday Fonts: Clarks Summit

I absolutely adore this week's Friday Font! I only found it earlier this week, but it is now one of my favourites and I have already used it multiple times. While on the subject of this week, I'll use this opportunity to quickly apologise for the absence of posts. I spent the week with my boyfriend who I had not seen in nearly three weeks so we had a lot to catch up on, but I'm back now and ready to sate all your font/photoshop/general inspiration needs! So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you all to my new friend..

 I am definitely on a handwritten font kick at the moment, I can't get enough of them! They just look so effortlessly stylish and charming and Clarks Summit is no exception. It's so perfect in its imperfections, I love the gentle downward inclinations that the hand would make as it traveled across a page, along with its condensed style.

Here is what all the letters look like. There is no visible difference between uppercase and lowercase, which may be a friendship-breaker for some people, but I actually love it this way as it suits its purpose. It is not a font to write an essay in, but one to use sparingly to add a bit of charm to your projects, which makes it all the more special! If you would like to get your hands on this gem, then follow this link here.