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DIY Gingerbread House

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Christmas time is right around the corner and I thought it was about time to start working on a gingerbread house for  when Scott and I have children ourself one day. At least that’s the excuse I use to act like a ten year old : ). I have some good memories from when I was a child and helped my parents build one. It’s such a fun tradition! So I worked on our little house over the weekend and I’m pretty happy with the way it came out and decided to share with you guys (If you’re still here?)…

First thing you need to do is of course make the dough. Make sure you do that first, as it has to stay in the fridge over night.

This is the recipe i used:

Photo creds (tbsp=spiseskje, tsp=teskje, baking soda=natron, ginger=ingefær, powdered sugar=melis)

Next step is finding the house you want to make!

This was my inspiration. I found it at SofiaBystrom a while ago, and I love the simple, old and romantic look (And it’s YELLOW!!)!

So I drew the house and measured how big all the walls and the roof had to be and then made the pieces with cardboard. I had to build it in paper first, to see if it was measured right (I obviously don’t trust my architecture skills).

Well, it worked! (from renatebas on instagram)

Next day I put the paper pieces on the dough that was rolled out. Make sure you roll the dough very thin. It’s good to put the dough in between two wax papers, cause it tends to stick a lot. After you’ve cut out the pieces, you can put the same paper right in the stove, to prevent the pieces to change shape or size.

Keep in the stove for about ten minutes on 175c’. Let cool and then glue together with the icing.

Here’s my little christmas house:

Only your imagination can keep you from using whatever you want to decorate it!

Another little tip, is to buy one of those tiny little battery run christmas lights (can get them in Norway at Europris for 29kr) and put inside the house, to make extra cozy.

If I inspired even just one person, that one person made my day! Good luck!

Photoshop Curve Effect

2

Our cat Izzy just became a grandmother to these gorgeous kittens! Just thought I would share how I edited the grayish-less-contrast look (Not sure what to call it, hope you understand!). I used curves in Photoshop (There are lots of free programs you can use curves in too) and changed the RGB via the adjustments tab like I did in the last picture below. Please let me know if this was helpful or not : ) And don’t forget to check out Shutter! Have a great day!

Shutter – A WordPress Plugin for Photographers

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So far I’ve photographed one wedding. It was great and it all went really well up until I was viewing the photos for the newlyweds to pick out the ones they wanted. How in the world were they gonna be able to look through all of the photos to find the exact ones they wanted to buy?
My husband gave me the answer: SHUTTER! This plugin is genius! Here you can very easily make photo galleries for your blog or website. Right now that’s all you can do. Within a week the first add-on will be available which gives you the ability to make private albums (you would need a password to enter). Here the client can check the pictures they like and when they hit submit, the list of pictures will be sent to you. How easy is that? Try out the free plugin for your WordPress website/blog here:

Summer Punch Recipe

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2 cups sugar
8 cups water
2 cups lemon juice
1 cup cranberry juice
+ vodka

Add strawberries, lime, lemon and lots of ice!

Voilà!

Instagram albums and other products

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Just got an idea the other day to make an album out of just Instagram pictures, and guess what? Someone else of course had the same idea way long ago and have some awesome products you can make out of your own pictures. It’s way to easy these days to snap a shot and just leave it on your laptop or phone and never see it again. You can’t let that happen! Check out Printstagram for these awesome products:You can get mini albums, prints, posters, stickers and even get your Instagrams on a shirt. What I wanna do is to get mini prints and make an album looking something like this: biografitti.com

Would you like an Instagram album? Do you use Instagram?

Pink Photoshop Action

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I usually don’t use photoshop acions I find online, cause I feel like I can’t call the photos my own anymore. But for special effects, it can be fun sometimes. I have to learn how to do this one myself :) You can download this action HERE. What do you think?

How to sharpen a picture in Photoshop

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There are a lot of different ways to sharpen photos in photoshop, but this is how I do it: Open your photo and edit it the way you want it. Then hit “merge visible layers”. Go to background layer and hit “Duplicate layer” so you get a copy of the background. Then Open filter – Other – High Pass, like in the above picture. 

I usually do this with the picture in full size and then use around 2-3.5 pixels. After you’ve done this you click “ok” and turn the layer into overlay (where you can see it says Normal now).

Before:

After:

If you click on the photo you can see a bigger version. So what do you guys think? Did you learn anything? How do you sharpen a picture yourself? Was this easy or hard to understand?

Before/After Photoshop

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I love working in Photoshop and learn new stuff every day from other photo blogs, my mother and You Tube. I always photograph in raw format so I usually edit white balance there. In Ps5 I edit levels, I use curves to change the colors and in dark photos i might add vignette. Sometimes I use filters like a “soft layer” pink or an “exclusion” layer dark blue. I always finish with sharpening and for that I use “high pass”. 

Instagram effects in Photoshop

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After Scott gave me an idea to find photoshop actions that give Instagram effects, I found some that I really liked. This is the original photo I tried them on. It’s so easy you just have to try yourself! First you download actions here. Open a picture in Photoshop. Go to Window, select Actions (f9), load actions and hit play on the one you would like to have. This one comes with twelve actions, and they look like this. “Walden” is my favorite, the second one on the right side. 

How to photograph the eyes

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I learned a trick from the photographers at Studio LL the other day. They were taking a picture of me were the big windows gave a lot of light on my face. I didn’t think to much about it, but I guess they noticed I was squinting or that my pupils were very tiny. They told me to close my eyes and not open them until they counted to three.

It made the pupils look bigger and it also made me smile more natural I think, given the situation. Next time i photograph Imilie, I will ask her to do the same.