6ichthusfish

She's home...

My girlie's back home after a lovely week staying with her cousins.  One of the days they saw white tigers. 

 
She's been missed.

Photoshoot with my boy in the park...

I'm feeling a bit sad that the online course by Shimelle Laine visit her blog here is coming towards the end.  Empowered is not too strong a word to use for how I'm now feeling about my DSLR camera.  I have enjoyed every single day and have positively loved  getting a daily e-mail and PDF download.  Well, a coupla days ago Smurf was the (fairly) willing subject of my first real (planned) photoshoot at a local park.  He showered, gelled his hair, put on the clothes I asked him to wear (jeans shorts & dark blue newish T-shirt).  I loaded his bike in the back of the car and we drove to a local park.  Yes I was nervous.  Yes part of me was thinking "there's dust in the lounge".  Yes I was even a bit scared.  BUT we went.  Here are some pics.  Not perfect but I'm OK with that.

I took the photo below by 'tracking' with Smurf as he rode, then pressing the shutter as he was almost directly in front of me.  I think it's a bit overexposed but Shimelle is a great teacher of loving pics with imperfections & it's OK. 

Smurf was all into climbing and posing in trees, so the photo below has captured that...

After all the sweaty exertion I took a portrait shot while he got his breath back...

[taking his portrait was his least fave part of the shoot]  I sensed that some treatish refreshments were in order... 

Then we bought a fishing net and set off to find the pond.  I swapped to my compact camera here (on the landscape setting) because it looked like it was threatening to rain...

After catching & releasing several sticklebacks, we finished the shoot in the playarea and I took photos of him on the swings...

I am still right at the start of my photography journey, but am lovin it! 

Cute flower headband...

Remember the crochet flower pattern 'Maybelle' well I got a comment and a link here to FLICKR with pics of a lovely headband that geetargeek made using my pattern.  I'm lovin' it!!

Holiday 2010... many photos... few words....

I took many more than a few photos of our holiday on the South coast.  We stayed in a caravan on Hayling Island.  We got up at 4am on Saturday the 3rd to drive down before the heat of the day & miss the traffic.  We arrived about 8am in time for a cooked breakfast in SAINSBURY's.  We were way too early to check into our caravan so spent the day on Hayling Island beach.  Here are the highlights of our family holiday...

The beach was a big draw because it was meltingly hot & some folks swam...

 
...there was lots of cricket played...

I took this photo of the camera avoiding big son looking all beachy...

There were picnics eaten on the beach...

... and high energy fun at the Pier...Roman & Smurf battling in huge plastic balls...

We had ice-cream sundaes (one of our holiday traditions is that there is always an ice-cream a day when you're on holiday)......

 

We went on the hovercraft to The Isle of Wight...

...and had an open-top-bus tour of the island (a bit blowy but lovely)...

We visited a Roman Villa on the Island...

...and learned all about Roman mosaics...

We spent some time on several buses, finding our way back to 'Ryde' to catch the hovercraft, but we couldn't resist the beautiful sandy beach at Sandown...

 

 

We played poker for pennies in the evening (a laugh!)...

One of our days out was to The New Forest Wildlife Park where we saw otters...

... & a free ranging deer tried to eat Smurf's laces...

Also at the Wildlife Park there was a butterfly house we enjoyed...

One night we enjoyed take-away curry in the caravan...

And another evening saw 'Warrior 1860' at Portsmouth docks (returning again another day when the docks were open for a better look at the ships)...

Ice-cream tasted good at Portsmouth docks (by this stage of the holiday we were experts on the local brands!)...

We had a big day out at Longleat, but because it was so hot most of the animals (lions, tigers, wolves) were all flaked out in the shade, not twitching & looking stuffed).  However the giraffes were beautiful...

 

T-g was chosen to go to the front during the parrot show and a parrot kissed her cheek!

...and getting up close & personal with some animals was fab, especially the spider...

Our last full day included a long swim in the pool (there were many swims over the week) then a carvery lunch...

and another visit to the beach, this time right by the hovercraft which sprayed a cooling mist over everyone every half an hour!

We packed up to leave on saturday and enjoyed a last treat of a chinese meal...

...and a proper visit to see the big ships.  Below is Nelson's 'Victory'...

We certainly had a packed week.  Quality family time.  The best :)

Love Your Pictures, Love Your Pages...

'Love Your Pictures, Love Your Pages' is an online photography & scrapbooking class with Shimelle Laine.  I've had a big scary DSLR camera for a while but wasn't getting to grips with it, so when I saw Shimelle offering a photography class with scrapbooking emphasis and teaching too I had to sign up. I am loving this class and already thinking differently about the photos I'm taking and am feeling more confident with my big camera.  I took some photos of carrots (like you do) when practicing depth of field.  No carrots were injured in the taking of these photos (but they did end up served with roast chicken last Tuesday)...

...then there were jars...

then there was coffee (while Chef has his guitar lesson a couple of us sometimes drink coffee and connect)...
   

So, I'm getting friendlier with my big camera and am taking it places instead of relying on my compact camera (which I do love).    If you're wondering what the little plastic cup with the green straw is... well it's a freebie sample which was dee-lish.  Good times.

Making glass beads is addictive...!

Yesterday I had the best day with my sis-in-law making glass beads...

 

The day was a birthday treat that she organised for me with a designer called Caroline Craven check out her website here.  We made several beads including some with large holes to fit a pandora style bracelet.  Caroline finishes and polishes the beads and makes them up into a piece of jewellery of your choice (I'm having mine made into a bracelet) then posts them to us.  Here we are with a couple of our beads we made, still on the mandril...

Also, while we were taking turns with the blow torch we could make a piece of jewellery to take home, choosing from the huge array of beautiful beads that Caroline has in her studio.  I made a handbag charm and S. made a beaded bookmark.

The workshop was half a day, then we went for afternoon tea...

Yep, it was as yummy as it looked.  Such a lovely day.  Looking forward to the arrival of my bracelet & seeing the necklace that has the beads on that S. made too. 

Happy days.

Delighted to have won!

A few weeks ago I took part in a sketch challenge on the Sarah's Cards blog with this layout about my brother's Wedding...

Well, I am so (cheesy grin) pleased to have won the Sketch challenge.   Woohoo!

I totally love the monthly subscription kit from the Sarah's Cards online shop . 

Read the original post I wrote  here.

I can't wait to see the sketch for August (which I will be doing a layout for) & will then be posted on their blog with the other August designs.

In case any scrappers want the free PDF download to make 2" word art embellies, just check out the left sidebar for my freebies  :)

Had a holiday...back now...

Last week we were here...doing this...it was fab....

[More deets when I've recovered.]

Text paths & Photoshop fun...

I took a photo of T-g when she was in her band uniform at the last competition.  I wanted to put text paths on the photo (downloaded free from Creating Keepsakes online Oct 09).  The photo didn't have enough space to the left of T-g. Here's the original straight from the camera...

I elongated the photo (see if you can see the joins) and then added the text paths.  Fun to do.  Now I'm going to use the photo on a scrapbook page, using the June kit from sarah's cards webshop because the colours are perfect.

 

I'm mostly self-taught in photoshop (I have PSE5) and have watched a few online tutorials.  Frustrating at first then totally addictive fun!
   

Loving the Summer weather...

T-g, on her way out to do her paper-round looking so Summery!

New flip-flops for Chef & Smurf...

Of course you want to actually see the sun shining.... Smurf kindly cleaned the kitchen windows...

 

Yep.. Summer is fab...it was 28 degrees the other day. 

Seriously.