Photos from Chicago and Font Friday

The weekend before last I took a lovely long weekend vacation to Chicago. I hadn't been to Chicago in over 10 years and it was so great to experience the city again. I can't wait to go back and see more of it. For today's Font Friday I seriously considered featuring the font Chicago (get it here for free) but instead decided to go with Sullivan from Lost Type Co-Op. Sullivan is a bold, masculine font available in three styles – Regular, Bevel and Fill. I'm actually trying to use it on a packaging project right now. I love the cross hatch shading on the Regular style. You can even combine the Bevel and Fill for a two-tone effect. The tall, classic style of Sullivan fits so well with the cityscapes of Chicago. It's the perfect fit for today's Font Friday.

If you follow me on Instagram you already know that I love urban photos so Chicago was complete eye candy for me and my iphone. After the jump you'll find more of my photos from the trip. I hope that it inspires you visit Chicago or just any city at your disposal.

Printic App Review (Sponsored Post)

Back in the year 2000, when I got my first SLR (that's right, not a DSLR, a classic SLR) I could not conceive how far digital photography was going to come. In those days, film was predominant and the only way to see your photos was to have them printed. These days, you can see your photos instantaneously but rarely are they printed. I miss those days of printed photos. Don't you? Well, here's an easy way that could help us all travel back to those analog days.

Merry Day-After Christmas

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday. I had a great holiday with my family hanging out, eating, playing, watching movies and relaxing. Here are a few Instagram pics from the weekend.

Our first ever Christmas goose. 

It was a very smoky affair. Have you ever made a goose? Was it dripping and smoking the whole time?

Abby Dog, sleeping one ear perked

We were all pretty tuckered by the end of the day on Christmas, doggies included.

A little Christmas knitting 

I made a very small baby blanket and a baby hat for my niece over the weekend.

It was nice to have a long weekend of relaxation and family time. Now it's back to work for a few days before the New Year. How was your Christmas? How did you spend the weekend?

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Happy Birthday to Me!

This last week has been so busy. Between birthday celebrations for others and celebrating my own birthday it's been non-stop. One of the birthday gifts I'm most excited about is my new 50mm camera lens. Nerdy. I know. So, I wanted to show off one of my first photos using the new lens that I took at a friend's birthday. It does take some getting used to not being able to zoom but you just have to back up or move closer. Not that hard. I'm really looking forward to playing around with this lens some more and I will definitely share with you.

Weekend Photos - Palm Springs

This weekend I escaped to Palm Springs for a little getaway. I got some good relaxation time and a bit of touristing. The temperature was about 90 degrees. If that was different than the average in LA, it would definitely have felt like a vacation. The weekend is never long enough but it was really nice to get out of town for a bit.


The photo group at the top is a combination of instagram photos and Canon Rebel/Photoshop. The one above is a photo that I adjusted using the app TaDaa. It's free to download and a lot like instagram but with more control over blurring and some additional filters. There are probably more differences that I haven't discovered yet. You can see all my TaDaa photos here.

Friday Faves – September 14

This week's Friday Font is Veneer from My Fonts. Veneer is an awesome, grungy cool all-caps font. Veneer comes in three "weights", italic and dingbats. The weights are really just different levels of grungy distrress. And (bonus!) the dingbats are available for free. Can't get enough font inspiration? Follow #FontFriday on twitter.

This week I wanted to show you how I would use this font. So, I did a little designing. Inspired by this song, I designed the graphic above using veneer and its dingbats. I layered the letters and dingbats over paper (available for free from Fudge Graphics) using different transparencies. Pretty cute right? If you need more design inspiration, check out my design board on Pinterest.

Or, if you want to combine Veneer with some photos, you could layer it over your favorite Instagram shots. I took these photos during a trip to Madison, Wisconsin last weekend. The two above are from the University area and the ones below are from the lakes and arboretum that the town is built around.

You might be wondering how I get such intense colors in my Instagram photos. First, I take a photo using the iphone camera, then I edit it in the app Aviary to increase saturation and sharpness. Finally I load it in Instagram and filter it. It takes longer but I really like the intensity of the photos.

For these collages, I used the PicStitch app to make the photo grids. Then I added the text and dingbats in PhotoShop. If you want to stay up to date on my Instagram photos, follow me at @bethwould or on flickr. Have a great weekend everybody!!! Happy creating/crafting/making!

Photos from Cincinnati

Today I just want to share some photos from a recent trip I made to Cincinnati. It was a really beautiful city. Being from the Western U.S. where everything is relatively new, what struck me most was how old the buildings are there. Check out my set on Flickr to see more.

 

Thursday Thriftday – June 21

I found this amazing dress at a Palm Springs Goodwill back in April when I was in town for Coachella. It's an amazing dress and would have been the perfect bohemian for the festival. (Although I was there on the cold days and wore jeans, boots, coats and a hat and I was still cold.) Below are some pics from the festival. I love concerts but festivals aren't really my thing. I think I'd much rather see the bands in non-festival settings. But it was fun to go check out the action.

I'm on Instagram!

I joined Instagram this weekend. Although I'm still learning, it is as much fun as I expected it to be. I'm posting the photos to my flickr account (which seems to be the easiest way to follow along). I really enjoy the immediacy of being able to pull out my phone, take a snapshot and send it out to the world. Most of the time, I'd rather communicate with pictures than words anyway. Also putting the effects on my photos is pretty fun. It can make an ordinary picture a little extra special. Are you on instagram? What do you think?

Weekend Photos – Feb 5

 

Oregon Weekend

Faux Vintage Photos Tutorial

Lately I've noticed that desaturated photographs with a vintage camera feel are popular. I decided to try to recreate the look with an ordinary digital photograph. The photo above started out like this:The transformation is pretty easy to achieve using Adobe Photoshop. The following tutorial uses adjustment layers to make the transformations easily un-doable. If you are new to PhotoShop, I highly recommend learning to use adjustment layers and masks. Masks will allow you to concentrate adjustments to certain areas of a photo.

How to Create a Faux Vintage Photo

Step 1
Open a photo in Adobe PhotoShop. Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer by clicking the adjustment layer icon in the Layers palette. Fill in the values shown below and click OK.

Step 2
Create a Color Balance adjustment layer by clicking the adjustment layer icon in the Layers palette. Adjust the color, increasing reds and yellows for each Tone Balance option. Sample adjustments are shown below.



Step 3
Duplicate your photo layer by clicking and dragging the layer to the New Layer button at the bottom of the layers palette. Go to the Filter menu and select Distort>Lens Correction. Drag the Vignette Amount slider all the way to -100. This will darken the corners of the photo. Click OK. Make the copied layer 80% opacity in the layers palette.
Step 4
With the copied layer selected, from the Filter menu select Noise>Add Noise. Click OK. Save your photo as a .psd file. If necessary, adjust the color by double clicking the adjustment layers and changing the values.

To make another faux vintage photo, open a second photo in PhotoShop. Select your altered photo. In the layers palette shift-click both adjustments layers and drag them to the second photo. Continue with Steps 3 and 4 to complete. Adjust color adjustment layers as necessary to achieve your desired result.