Cyanotype Tutorial

Maybe you've seen my Cyanotypes and thought - I wonder how Jenny creates those?

Well I've written a tutorial on how to get started with the cyanotype process for Carina's Craftblog. Carina is a total inspiration to me and I've taken so many ideas from her blog that I was so excited to help her out.

I hope you have look and get inspired to have a go!

New year challenges!

Yesterday was the first day of Kim Klassen's year long class called Beyond Layers. In Kim's words it's 52 weeks of encouragement, motivation and inspiration……. centered around, but so much more than photoshop……

I've taken three other eClasses by Kim on Photoshop and have learnt so much from her in such a short space of time. I'd been using Photoshop for well over 10 years but was only using a small percentage of it's functions, now I'm able to not only use it quickly and efficiently but I can create my own brushes and textures to use on my images, and feel more confident explaining to the students at school how to use Photoshop.

I also decided to take on the 365 project - thats a photo a day for a year. I'm hoping it will improve my photography and open my eyes to new inspiration from my surroundings. You can track my progress here on flickr, I'll also be posting my photos in the Shutter Sisters flickr group.

Here are my first two photos - they are taken at school and are before and after a clay lesson.

Day 1 - cutting self-hardening clay into pieces ready for a clay lesson at school.

 Day 2 - carried on the clay theme - these are what the clay pieces turned into!

I'm really looking forward to the year ahead and what tips, tricks and surprises it will bring.

Inspiration from Mrs Eliot Books

Another delivery! This time from Mrs Eliot Books - I bought a pack of 6 postcards. I've been following her blog for a while now and when I saw the post announcing these postcards for sale in the shop I had to buy them. I adore these geometric patterns with overlapping colours and they came in a lovely package tied with string. Not sure what to do with them yet - I'm sure I'll think of something - in the meantime I'll just keep looking at them for inspiration.

Playing with Kaleidoscopes

It's funny - sometimes you just have to think something and it happens! 

Before Christmas I thought it would be fun to buy or make a kaleidoscope to take some photos with as inspiration for my artwork - then my Sister bought me one for a Christmas present - and then a few days later when I was sorting through some boxes I found two more that I already had!! 

I had lots of fun taking these photos - you can see more on my flickr account.