I've spent the weekend working on a scrapbook of my New York adventure. More accurately, I've been procrastinating by scouring Pinterest for travel book inspiration!
I made these tiny gnomes for some mini terrariums I made a few years ago, and I thought they’d be perfect in my teacup garden.
Yes, it’s posed in front of my microwave. What can I say? Our house isn’t exactly flooded with natural light.
I love Mexican celebrations. When I was in high school, I don’t think I appreciated Spanish class nearly as much as I should have. Something about the vibrant colors of pinatas, papel picado, and calaveras really makes me happy.
With Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) just around the corner, it’s time to finally break out the Sugar Skulls!
I’ve thought about making real calaveras de azucar in the past, but back then my Spanish wasn’t so great and all of the English instructions made it seem SO COMPLICATED. You have to have the correct kind of mold, the correct kind of merengue powder (regular stuff just won’t do, I was told), and buttloads of time and then enough talent to decorate them so they don’t look dumb. After all that work, and they’re not even edible?? Yeah… no thanks.
But then I found a mold from Martha at JoAnn’s, and I knew my destiny! (I actually don’t recommend this mold, since it’s very flimsy and would crinkle at the slightest touch… I don’t know how it’s intended for candy making or anything)
Want to make your own?? OF COURSE YOU DO!
Here’s what you need to know:
- Sugar Skulls, while made from food, are *not* intended to be edible. They’re gross, actually (kind of like gingerbread houses, in my opinion; pretty, but not worth eating)
- They’re made from (you guessed it) sugar, and merengue. Soooo while you could use merengue powder, I decided to use egg whites since I didn’t want to make a special purchase unless I had to.
Ingredients:
2 large egg whites
2 lbs. powdered sugar
Teensy bit of water
Start with the egg whites and about a cup of powdered sugar in a large mixing bowl. Use an electric mixer if possible and mix the heck out of it. Add another cup or so of sugar.
Keep slowly adding sugar and mixing thoroughly until you can’t use the mixer anymore. Serioiusly, mine was creaking and begging for mercy and started to burn up a little… yeah.
When you reach that point, get your hands messy! Start kneading with your hands, and add sugar until it’s a nice, thick, dense mixture. I used all but about one cup of the bag of powdered sugar. You know it’s good when it packs well and isn’t too wet or dry (think of perfect fort-building snow, or sandcastle-sand). To really make sure it was all incorporated well, I sprinkled a handful of tapwater in it and kept kneading.
At this point, start packing the mixture in the molds. Really pack it well; the mold wil be deceptively heavy! I let it mound over the top, like so…
and then scraped the excess away with my fingers.
If your mixture is good, you should be able to pop it right over and they’ll fall out. I had to bop some of the skullies on the nose to get them all out.
At this point, they’re soft but solid. Some turned out kinda wonky cause the mold took a lot of abuse. Put them on a cookie sheet and let them dry.
Mine are currently in the oven to keep them away from the dog (she was especially interested in this project)- I might turn it on “warm” to speed up the drying process… we’ll see. EDIT: Putting them in a warm oven was a BAD idea! They got all mushy! Now I have to wait and see if they harden up again… le sigh.
Stay tuned for the decorating!
I started a peyote stitch cuff this morning out of some dark, iridescent seed beads. I love how easy peyote stitch is (if you’re intimidated by it, don’t be!) and the drape of the fabric. The only downside is that it can get a little tedious, which is why I love two- and three-drop peyote.. they go much faster than one-drop. This is a two-drop peyote (link to a YouTube tutorial – note: I didn’t watch through the whole video, so if it sucks… please don’t blame me).
It’s rather gloomy out today, and my pictures weren’t perfectly true to color… so I did a little bit of creative editing with SwankoLab (created by my bff’s older brother!) and Picture Show for iPhone.
I reallllyyyy love these beads. They were cheapies from JoAnn’s – I think they were like, $1.99 for the package. So pretty! Like mermaid scales!
I’m going to talk about product photography; partially because I promised a friend I would whip up a quick and dirty guide, and partly because this is something I feel very strongly about.  This guide will show you  how to do it with the bare minimum amount of money, equipment, and skills. Anyone can do this.
Why are good photos so important?
Let me put it plainly: If your pictures are ugly, I *will not* buy it. Period. Now, I may or may not be the “average” consumer, but I can guarantee you that nearly *everyone* will be influenced by your presentation of your product. Anyone who has ever said that looks don’t matter is a flat-out liar (at least when it comes to sales). When your customer can’t touch, feel, and hold your product, they rely on your visual representation of it. Please don’t underestimate the importance of a great photo!!!
For handmade sellers, it is incredibly important that you know the basics of taking an accurate, appealing photograph of your work.
First, because you will most likely not be able to afford a professional photographer; secondly, because an aesthetically pleasing photo is KEY to convincing someone that they *want* it; and thirdly, because an inaccurate portrayal of your product *will* hurt your business. In other words, if your photo is gorgeous but it doesn’t look a thing like the product they’re going to receive, it’s likely that customer won’t shop with you again. Come on; we’re artisans, not infomercials!
**Disclaimer: I am not a photography expert. I don’t believe that my photos are the be-all-and-end-all of photography. I actually don’t know a thing about “regular” photography (you know, people and places and stuff). However, I’ve busted my ass researching this stuff, and I want to share it so that you don’t have to spend as much time looking for this information. This is *not* the only way, or the “best” way to take photos- this is merely how I do it, and I am very happy with (most) pictures I take.***
This might be the most important part. Find a nice, sunny corner of your house to take photos in. (For me, this is a literal corner)
If you don’t have a sunny spot, there are ways around it, but trust me: you will be LIGHT YEARS ahead if you just take pictures in natural sunlight.
The next thing you need is a place to set your item. This is actually just a TV table – I think it was $12 at WalMart?
Next, you need a “backdrop” of some sort. I use white printer paper. You can use pretty much anything, really: fabric, paper, reclaimed barn wood (lol). I find that white presents the colors most accurately.  Also, when I’m photographing makeup and there is colored powder spilled on the surface, I can just trade out for a new piece of paper.
Finally: a tripod. If not a tripod, then you need somewhere to set your camera – you aren’t going to want your hands on it when you’re taking macro shots. I’ve heard that setting it on a beanbag or a bag of rice is an awesome substitute for a tripod.
As far as I know, newer digital cameras *should* have most of these settings. My camera is a Canon PowerShot S2 1S; it isn’t a DSLR, and I can do quite a bit with it. Matt has a cheap-ish Kodak point-and-shoot and he can do most of this.
Get comfy with your camera manual, first. Â Chances are, yours has a different way to change the settings than mine does.
If possible, set your camera’s dial to M for Manual.
If your camera has a white balance setting, you’re a lucky duck! This is a very useful tool to make sure your colors are accurate. You know how something looks different under a regular light bulb than under a fluorescent light, than in candlelight than in sunlight? Yeah, your camera knows this and it can fix it for you.
(Please excuse the fact that I was taking pictures of my camera with my iPhone... they’re not the best)
My camera has an “auto” setting (AWB), several different settings for different light sources (Sunshine, cloudy, halogen, fluorescent, flash…) and a custom setting. Custom is my favorite and by far the most accurate. To custom set the white balance, point your camera at something truly white (like paper, for instance) so that it fills the entire screen. Click the button your camera tells you to (in this case, it’s the SET button). Based on what color “white” is registering as on your camera, it will adjust all other colors to be true. It’s awesome!
The next thing you need to do before you take a single picture is change the size of the photo to the largest one possible.
Pro tip: you can always decrease the size and quality of a photo, but you cannot increase it. You have many more pixels to screw around with with in a bigger photo. The largest size I can take with my camera is 2592×1944 pixels.
Now it’s time to start thinking about aperture and shutter speed. Aperture, or f-stop, is basically the size of the hole light passes through when you click the shutter button.
What this means to you: A lower number (for instance, f2.8) is a larger opening, while a higher number (like f8) is a smaller opening. The larger opening lets in more light, but has a shallower depth of field. The smaller opening lets in less light but has a greater depth of field. Depth of field is simply the size of the area that is in focus. More on this in a moment.
The next part is shutter speed. Shutter speed is measured in seconds or fractions of seconds. The faster the shutter speed, the less light reaches the “film”, but the sharper your image. The slower the shutter speed, the more light is let in, but any movement will result in a blur.
On my camera, the aperture and shutter speed are shown on the bottom (1/40 F3.2). In manual mode, I adjust them using the arrow buttons.
Okay, what does this mean practically? Your settings are going to depend on the effect you want.
If you use the latest version of iPhoto, you can see the camera settings used on each photo. Awesome!
The photo above was taken with an aperture/f-stop of 2.7, resulting in a shallow depth field. See how only the clasp and a few beads are in focus? The rest are all blurry. Pro Tip: a lower f-stop means more light is let in. To prevent the picture from being overexposed, the shutter speed is at 1/40, or 1/40th of a second.
Changing the aperture but not adjusting the shutter speed may result in a photo that is too light or too dark. The same is true of adjusting shutter speed but not aperture.
On the next photo, I wanted to increase the depth of field (so that the whole necklace was in focus) so I increased the aperture to f8. However, this lets in far less light so the photo is toooooo dark.  To compensate for the smaller aperture, we can decrease the shutter speed.  Remember, The longer the shutter is open, the more light gets in.
Just right!
Here’s the same photo with a SS of 1/5. Notice how almost the entire necklace, including the back, is in focus.
Both photos look nice, so it just depends on what you’re going for.  The key here is experimentation, and just remember that when you adjust one, you’ll usually have to adjust the other to get the lighting right.
The macro setting is awesome! It allows you to take super close up photos. This is great if you want to show the texture and detail of an item, or if you want to feature a specific point.
If your camera doesn’t have a macro feature, you can just skip this part 
Check your manual to find out how to take macros with your camera. Â On my camera, you just press the button that looks like a flower and you’re home free
Here’s the key to great macro photos: Â be very still. Â If you don’t have a remote shutter trigger, use your camera’s timer and take your hands off. Â I have mine set to 2 seconds, so it’s pretty quick.
Pro Tip: Aperture plays a big role here; your depth of field is more obvious when things are very close up. Â Also, every speck of dust will be visible as well… remember that!
Okay, so this wraps it up for actually *shooting* the photo. Â Stay tuned for Part 2, where we discuss editing and preparing the images for the web!
My mom is visiting today, and she was talking about how her dog is suddenly allergic to lots of things and he can’t have any treats with dye or chemicals in them. I’ve had the ingredients to make homemade dog treats for the Rors for awhile, so I decided today would be the perfect day to try them out.
I fudged around with a few recipes that I found online; the original one I found called for powdered milk, and since I have no other need for powdered milk and you can only buy it in a big box, I omitted it.
Here is my newfangled recipe.
2 jars of beef (or chicken) baby food
1 c. milk
6 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. garlic powder
Mix wet ingredients (including baby food) til they are combined, but not until the egg is frothy. In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and mix. Plop dough onto a floured countertop, and roll out to about 1/2″ thick. Cut with a bone-shaped cookie cutter, and bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350? for 20-30 minutes.
Clearly, Rory thinks they turned out just fine.
I baked them for about 28 minutes and they were pretty soft yet, like cookies. I imagine if you wanted them to be crunchy like dog biscuits, you’d have to bake them longer.
