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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Clearing the Decks, Felted Bag, Photoshop Tip, and an Art Show

Pay attention to underlying supports so your foundations are strong and structures don't collapse... it is important to "clear the decks" once in a while so you get a new perspective, whether it's your house or yourself, and always try something new.

Experimenting with Felted Bag/Photoshop Tip This is a wonderful felted bag I bought last year at a museum shop, it has been sitting unused because I realized it had far too much drab olive green for me - all of the circles/ovals were encircled with raised green felt cord. So I pulled out my fibers, and began needlefelting - in the first pix you can see I have added red and turquoise around some of them, still not quite there... I do like purple, so in the second pix I have added purple which I like much better, it has more punch, and perhaps will do a little more color tuning to be satisfied and use this bag. Now, here's the tip - the second photo I actually painted the purple onto the pix with Photoshop to see if I'd like it. I'm realizing this would be a great tool to test out a color on something like this or even a painting or collage, without doing it to the real thing until I'm sure it's what I want. Any paint software would probably let you do this sort of thing.

Rose House Art Show
Last week I went to the art opening at the Rose House, part of the 3rd Thursdays Edmond's Art Walk. I visited with several friends including one of the featured artists Sharon Baker, who creates fabulous hand-hooked rugs, portraits, purses and whimsical boxes... The show is on til April 9, I do recommend stopping in. PS, the wildly creative green bag is no longer for sale, as I had to have it for a journal bag... I enjoyed seeing her stitching it a while back.
Clearing the Decks
Aside from arty things, finally work has begun and the contractor has demolished the decks along the back of our house so that new ones will replace them. A vast improvement as the old decks had a huge sagging beam and dry rot underneath, and the new one will be made of partly recycled materials (Trek) that will not require any painting and be very low maintenance... and the new ones will be reconfigured a bit differently giving us more room to enjoy overlooking the fruit trees and garden below. Here is a before picture and demolition almost done, ironically you can see our neighbors started the same project on the same day (2nd pix bottom).

8 comments:

Janette Kearns Wilson said...

What a great idea with the bags, by the way I really love it...I have photoshop on my computer but have just used "Paint" not quite so flexible..Do you use a Mac or PC?

HeartFire said...

Hi Janette,
I use a PC... For the photoshop, I only have the very basic elements, however, there are SO many combinations and things that can be done with it, it's really enough for me for a while. I selected a color, then used the brush tool over the area I wanted changed.

Gwen said...

Thanks for your comment on my blog, and for another photoshop tip!

Nice pics of the show at the Rose Cottage, too!

HeartFire said...

Gwen, Glad I could pass along something useful! I did like that purple in the test Photoshop, so last night I needlefelted purple along some of those edges like the test and it came out great!

Binky said...

I really want to go to one of Sharon's shows. Can you tell me about it next time she has one?

HeartFire said...

Binky,
That show that Sharon is in is on til April 9, you should stop in, it's really great...

Clare Wassermann said...

That's a super idea for photoshop. Must fiddle around with that one. Do you know of a good Photoshop for Dummies book?

HeartFire said...

Hi Clare,
I don't have a specific book I used - I did at one time go to our local library & get a couple on using filters which were ok. Also, you can google and find lots and lots of good tutorials on the web. But the way I learned the most since PS has so much on it, is really trial and error one tool at a time. I would use the same picture over & over to try different tools or filters just to learn what they could do...
Thanks for stopping in!