Free Premiere: Hungry for Change

I have only watched the first 15 minutes of this film, but they hit on some pretty key points about food, and nutrition in our society. I'm hoping to watch the rest of it with my family tonight or tomorrow!! We have had such a busy week, that there has been no time to sit and watch a movie.

Lots of good fun, but I do want to watch Hungry for Change before it's offline. There are only two days left, so I encourage you to watch the film with friends, and family.

Here is the link: Hungry for Change

A Little Photo Editing

So I've taken the leap, and decided to start editing some of my photos with Photoshop. I usually can't figure out how it works, and have no idea how to use most of the tools, but I'm slowly making progress. Here are a couple of pictures I edited, on my own, without Rob's help. I felt pretty proud of myself.

Okay, so I did have some help. I used the free actions from Paint the Moon Photography for both photos.

Here is the first photo of my little Jude. I love his big beautiful eyes. 

For this photo I used Vanilla Pop from Paint the Moon, and I also figured out how to use the healing brush to erase the boogies and clear up the red on Jude's cheeks. His nostrils look a little strange, and I couldn't figure out how to fix that, but all in good time:)

Before. I cropped this one in iPhoto, because I still haven't figured out how to crop in Photoshop.

After. I used Urban Delight to edit this one. It's not a great example of editing, but it's all I've got:)

I was looking through all the actions at Paint the Moon, and hope to one day afford them all. She really does amazing work, and I am completely baffled by the little amount of sleep that she can function on, with a baby and 6 year old, whom she home schools! Anyways, she takes beautiful photos and if you haven't heard of her, I suggest checking her out. She has some freebies, tips and tricks as well as very helpful tutorials, and I absolutely adore her work.

Have a wonderful day!

Sunshine, Birds Chirping..Let's get outside

Finally the sun came out this weekend. The birds were chirping, the sky was blue, and I didn't need to wear my parka to keep me warm!

We decided to explore the outdoors and visited Roche Cove as well as Sandcut beach this weekend.

They were both beautiful.

At Roche Cove we climbed up a rocky hill off the trail and found some mossy rocks to eat our snacks.

The climb up.

Mossy rocks for a comfy place to eat.

The closest I come to being in a picture. You can see my reflection in his beautiful eyes:)

The view.

Fungi.

Tree sap.

Jas checking out the sap.

We stopped at the Red Barn for groceries and another snack. My kids are serious about food!

The traffic on the way home because of construction. They love to rip Sooke Rd apart, so that there are continuously delays in and out of Sooke. It was only a 20 minute wait at least, and not an hour!

Jas was overheated from all that waiting.

 The next day we headed out to Sandcut Beach. I had heard about it from a friend, and had been wanting to check it out for a while.

Jas under the waterfall.

Making boats out of grapefruit rind and seaweed to float in the stream.

We climbed to the top of the waterfall, and this little face was too cute not to share!

Jude's set up.

A rope swing Rob bravely decided to try out. We didn't think it would hold him, but thankfully it did.

This is the path going down to the beach. I snapped this photo as we left, so I felt it was a great way to end this post.

We had a great weekend, and I hope you did as well.

Featured Artist: Boretto Art

I love discovering new shops, and am excited to share a new discovery with you today. I "met" Lesley of BorettoArt on Etsy through a team chat, and fell in love with the paintings in her shop immediately. The art is created by her and her fiancé, who live in Australia, and I am inspired by the fact that they do this for a living. 

I love this line from their shop section because I agree with this statement about their art: Be aware our paintings are jungle were you can easily get lost and dream...

Models

Tea Time

It is no secret that I love colour, and the colours in each of their pieces is so brilliant. As I scrolled through their shop to pick out pieces to share with you, I struggled to pick out which one so to share, because I loved them all . These are just a couple of selections, I encourage you to visit their shop to discover your own faves:)

Another thing I love is that they have lower priced pieces to make it affordable for everyone to purchase their work. 

Here is a little interview so you can learn more about the artists. 

Who's behind Borettoart?

An artist in love with color and a dreamer in love with art

Together we are a couple who lives of their passion.

Let's start with the usual, how did you get into art? Could you say that you were born as an artist?

S: I guess so . I grow up in a family of artists, surrounded by paintings, sculptures and drawings...

But never really took it seriously until I moved to Australia. It is actually only in Australia that realized that I could actually live from my passion.

L: People always have reffered to me as "an artist" but it is only after meeting my fiance' that I really quit my 9-5 h job and dedicated totally to my passion.

Tell us about your work process. Where do you get your ideas from? Is it hard?

S: Most of the time I get ideas while I am driving... Don't know why but that is the way it is.

L: Mostly in my dreams.

Have you ever had a creative block? If yes what do you do in that case?

L: umh umh, and I don't like them...to put an end to them I go for a swim. listen to music, have a walk on the beach, cook home made pasta (I am italian) and then again...go for a swim, listen to music, have a walk on the beach, cook,...

S: Ask the genie inside the lamp to help me out.

What everyday thing can you not live without?
L: coffe & hugs (I am tryng to quit smoking...

S: coffe & cigarettes (not the movie, the real thing)

If you were not an arist, what would you be?

L: Super Hero or a cartoon caracter

S: Singer, I still practice everyday under the shower.

Tell me more about your art?

L: Our paintings are a jungle were you can easily get lost and dream, wordless poems of love, an invitation to escape reality and travel with your imagination.

I spend ours looking for the perfect image for my original collages, it has to inspire me, I have to imagine a story, It has to be full of emotions.

S: I paint with a palette knife this technique allows me to give a beautiful texture to my paintings. We believe that art should be accessible to everybody, and we try our best to keep our price affordable. We are both passionate about what we do, but what makes us really happy it is our customers feed back, the smile on their faces when they buy a painting or a "thank you so much" email.

Because at the end of the day, what is art if not sharing?

Your recent project?

We believe art should be accesible to everybody and that is whay we have just launched a new line of products: 7x 10" fineart prints for only 30$

Summer Dream

Where can we find your products?

S: In our home - studio if it is not too messy

L: on out Etsy shop, on our website and of course on facebook.

Florescent Hoodies

My two littles just finished up their skating lessons with the Sooke Skating Club. For the end of year performance they had an 80's theme, which meant lots of bright colours. We were asked to dress the boys in a bright top with black pants and leg warmers.

What is brighter then florescent? I decided to make the boys florescent hoodies, because I have a huge stash of florescent sweat pant material given to me by my mother in law. It has been sitting in my fabric closet for a couple of years, and I have been itching to use it. 

I was helping Jai with geometry and was inspired to try some geometry out in my sewing project. The first pattern didn't work out so well. It was too wide and long for Jas, and slightly too small for Jai.

Here is the back.

So I decided to take the hoodie apart and use the raglan tee pattern from the Sewing for Boys book (I love this book by the way), and it worked out perfectly. I just added a hoody.

Here is the back.

And then I made one for Jude. Here they are on show day. Jude is focused on the puddles, and resisting the temptation to splash in them with his holey shoes.

And he notices me with the camera.

Blurry shots of the boys. People kept standing right in front of them, or walking past, so I couldn't get a good shot, but just so you have an idea of their cuteness:)

Tie Dying fun!

With the continuing rain, the arrival or our tie dye kit was met with much excitement....on my end. The kids were somewhat excited, but they were not quite sure about what tie dying involved. I had never tie dyed, but was excited for a project. I ordered the kit from Dharma Trading, and it comes with everything you need to tie dye up to 20 shirts. They have a smaller kit and larger kits, and I kind of wish we had gone with the larger kit. We had so much fun!

Here are the tied up shirts. The kit came with folding techniques that are similar to these, and tried out each of the techniques. We didn't have many white shirts, and so I made a pit stop at the thrift store and found several white shirts. I also decided to tie dye some white sweat pant fabric I've had kicking around for a while. I think it will make some fun kids clothing.

Let the tie dying fun begin. Notice the newspaper covering the table. Very necessary!

The final colourful shirts. We transferred these into a garbage bag, and let the dyes cure for 24 hours. The next evening I rinsed them out and washed them in hot water. We were so excited to see the final results. 

 Here are 3 out of the 5 of us in our shirts. Jas and I were wearing ours, but we both had hoodies on because we were cold:

I think we needed to use a bit more dye on the shirts, the white on the shirts looks dingy, but we know for next time.

This was such a fun activity to do with the kids, and I can definitely see myself becoming addicted to tie dying!!

If you haven't tried tie dying, I highly recommend it!

Rainy day project

We had A LOT of rain last week, and not just a little sprinkle, but torrential down pour for 4-5 days straight. The kind of rain you don't want to go outside in, because not only will you instantly be soaking wet, but also freezing cold.

So I was desperate to find a way to focus my high energy boys inside the house.

I remembered that I loved making stained glass windows when I was a child, so we pulled out our neglected crayons, peeled them, grated, sprinkled the gratings onto wax paper and melted them in the oven. We also made frames for the windows. Here are the steps and results:

The longest part of the process.

Peelers and graters.

Jas coloured in his book and then sprinkled crayon gratings on the pages, to melt as well.

Sprinkling the gratings onto wax paper.

 

Completed sprinklings on the wax paper.

We googled stained glass windows for ideas, and they like the circle frames. Here they are in the window.