Chloe and Kitschy Tape

Today I found these adorable digital tape frames by Kitschy Digitals and I just had to try them on some recent photos I did on a shoot and post them to the blog. I officially heart them! You can find them here. I think they are a perfect little display for my photos on this blog, don't you? I can also use them for scrapbooking too. That's a whole lot of awesome for $4!!!

Happy 24!!!

This past Friday this little photog turned 24! That's right this little cupcake is a whole year older.

I had a wonderful birthday, hands down the best yet (a big thanks to those who made it so special!). It surely didn't hurt that I have the best man in my life now to share this one with!

The day before I transformed, well not physically but on paper, I asked my mom to come do a shoot with me. So here are some shoots from our collaborative birthday shoot:
































































































































I'll share a couple of snapshots from my birthday later once I get them off of the boyfriend's camera! Happy my birthday! (what I said to everyone all day... yes I'm a brat hehe)

.Etsy Loves.

I love Etsy and have been wanting to create my own shop for a while now selling prints of my work but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Soon hopefully. I have also been wanting to put a book out with my "Shadow Tales" series and have the book all formatted and ready to go but I think I want to wait and do a couple more images for the book before putting it up for sale. We'll see.

Though I do not have a shop yet I do love to shop around and look at all the cute stuff in others' shops. Unfortunately, I not only have no money but am in a considerable amount of debt so I cannot buy any of these things yet but a girl can dream... and of course by dream I mean drool all over my keyboard like a chubby kid chasing an ice cream truck.

Here are a couple things I have been drooling over:























I'm in love with this drawing by Kelly Smith. This is number one on myEtsy-to-buy-when-and-if-I-ever-have-money-again-list =)


































This beautiful watercolor painting is by Jen Singh. Ugh... bestill my Peter Pan loving heart.
































How cute is this little pirate girl!? The painting is by Emily Martin,who has a zillion adorable prints in her shop that I love!





















Recycledwares
I'm in love with vintage suitcases but own zero. I would love to have one like the one above, they are just pretty pricey to ship always so I haven't bought one yet. I want to do a whole series with suitcases but that would take lots of suitcases. I think it's the symbolism of a suitcase that draws me to them in art.





















AntiNu

I LOVE this one! It's in my favorite color and everything!


There are soo many more little loves on etsy but for now this is all I will share! Toodles!

I know, I know...

I have been terrible about posting lately. Lo siento. Or sorry for our non-spanish speaking friends.

Good news for the blog/ bad news for me, my boss had to let me go for a while because of financial issues and a slow in business. Huge bummer but I understand so no big deal. I am trying my best to be a half-full kind of gal lately. This particular glass is half-full of free-time for me to work on my own work/portfolio. Hazzah!

I have been attempting to schedule several shoots for my kids portfolio. It has been a bit chaotic because I got SO many responses and it's a bit hard to get back to everyone and keep track of who's who. I'm trying though.

I did my first shoot for my kids portfolio the other day with one of the most ridiculously beautiful little girls and as if that wasn't a treat enough for a photographer they were super fun and sweet! Jackpot I know!















They also had some of their adorable family friends come over to be photographed. Lucky me to get to shoot so many cute kids in one day!








Oh and what do you think of the new logo?

I'm still working on it. I was going to hire someone but with no incoming money my lack of graphic design skills will have to make do for now.

I'm also hoping to get a new blog design that allows me to put larger pictures up. I will so miss this one though. I think it's adorable. =)

things i .love. wednesdays

I forgot to mention before that the idea for things I love Wednesdays came from the favorite things blog: http://favoritethingsproject.blogspot.com/. It's a blog where two photographers, who live far away from each other, take a polaroid each week of one of their favorite things and then one send theirs to the other and they are put into a diptych. The combination of the images is pretty fascinating.

Also, a lot of blogs I read do special blogs about things they love and I thought it would be nice to give the blog a personal touch and an insight into the strange brain of little ole' me.

Anyways, onto some things I love.

I .love. this painting by Kurt Halsey (www.kurthalsey.com)!

I bought it at Urban Outfitters in Sacramento when I was living completely alone for the first time. I didn't even have money to eat at the time but I found the $35 or whatever to buy because I felt so drawn to it. Sounds silly I know but I felt like it was a little painting of me. I had bangs and super blond hair at the time and was battling loneliness in my little 600 square foot abode. It strangely made me feel better. Less alone. I knew I had to have it for my apartment so I could have something to make me a little happier. And it always did and still does.

I also .love. .... balloons!!!



I think this is an obvious one but I love them so much that I have decided to revisit my balloon series, only this time sans jumping/floating. It was impossible to get the balloons to behave when they are tied to all your limbs and you're jumping frantically in an attempt to best the self-timer.

Anyways, there is something about balloons that just brings me pure happiness so why not incorporate that into some images? It should be fun if nothing else. =)



Oh and sorry about not doing my "inspired by" post yesterday. I took some photos for it but they turned out awful. So bad I didn't even want to post them.. and that's bad. I will definitely try and do a two-fer next week to make up for it though.

inspired by tuesdays.

I've decided to add another regular blog post, in addition to things i LOVE wednesdays. I will now be posting an image every Tuesday and discussing my inspiration for the image. I get asked all the time where I get my inspiration for my images. This is a very hard question to answer as it is incredibly random and can come from anywhere: other photographer's work, movies, music, life, dreams, books, etc. So this is my way of answering the question by sharing an image and its inspiration once a week.

Like I said before I keep an inspiration journal where I clip out images, etc. into all the time as well as writing down or sketching ideas. This has been the most efficient way to not forget ideas and to never be lacking inspiration. In fact I think I'm overloaded with inspiration which surprisingly overwhelms me and makes not pick up the camera because I can't choose where to start.

I think the key to finding inspiration is to just keep looking at other art all the time. I subscribe to something like 50 blogs and look at hundreds of images everyday (online, in magazines, and in books). Maybe this is overload but I just love looking at what others are doing and using that to figure out what kind of work I want to do.

Enough typing. Time for pictures.

Here's my image for week one of inspired by tuesdays (though this image is more along the lines of an emulation):

... and the inspiration for the image is Henry Fuseli's "The Nightmare"This is my all-time favorite painting. Yes, all-time (at this moment that is). I saw it for the first time in my art history class only a year ago and was so captivated by the image. It really hit me on a very personal note. I don't really care to elaborate on that but needless to say it is an image that has stayed with me in a very personal way. I have been wanting to emulate it ever since I saw it and finally got around to it last night.

...And just for fun a second image that I shot last night:



This was inspired by a dream that I had. I have pretty intense and WEIRD dreams. For instance, about a month ago I had a dream that I was part of a crime fighting super hero team and instead of a flying or using a batmobile we traveled via sewer luge. That's right, we basically had a giant tunnel waterslide underground as our transportation. Awesome, I know. I have NO IDEA where that came from.

things i .LOVE. wednesdays

1. My mom's cat Paisley and the new 85 mm 1.8 lens she got us to share! (used to take this picture while I was testing it out really quickly). I can't wait to use it again.



2. Our Wednesday walks (the dogs and I that is).



Notice the tangled leashes. Those two are quite the handful sometimes but I love them. =)

3. My new job. So far I am really loving it. My mom is awesome and the job is great. I get to hang out with really cute kids most of the day, which anyone who knows me would tell you how much I LOVE kids. So ya, so far it's pretty great.

4. The book (Vanity Fair Portraits-which I've wanted since it came out) my boyfriend got me just to say congrats on finishing my first week at my new job. I know... aww!!! He's ridiculously amazing!! =) Ugh... love that man!