Violet's Birthday Wish List

by | May 22, 2011 | Life

So it’s my birthday next Saturday and I’ve been debating whether to do something or not. Normally I’m of the opinion that managing not to die for a whole year isn’t really an achievement worth celebrating but this year my birthday also marks 1 year since we moved into this apartment in Melbourne and I think I’ve achieved quite a bit since we got here so I’m thinking to maybe do something this year, who knows what though XD

To get myself in the spirit of things I decided to try to make a list of things I want. Most of them are completely unrealistic and I don’t really neeeed any of it… but that’s the fun part ^_^ So let’s go shopping with my millions of fictional dollars!

Disclaimer- All of the images are click through links to the original source so you can visit the stores, not owned by me and are used here to illustrate things I think are cool. If you own any images and would like them removed please email me and I will do so.

Wittner Shoes $189.95Not necessarily these shoes but this style of military-ish low heeled boot. I think something like this would be very comfy for walking but still look great with a pretty dress and military jacket.

Fancy Docklands Apartment $1.1million

A girl can dream right?? I love our apartment but I really just want to buy a place already so I’m paying off my own mortgage not someone else’s!

Meta Sailor Dress 22800yen

I love these wide boat collars no matter what the design, being nautical themed makes is doubly awesome though!

Patterned stockings in any design. $20ish each

I especially want some leopard print ones! Also I’m down to my last pair of white opaque stockings so I should probably find a place here that sells nice proper opaques ones of those too.

Leopard Print Cardigan £64.95

Again not necessarily this particular one but for some reason this is the one leopard print thing I’m yet to spot in stores here: reasonably priced plain leopard print cardi. This is probably to go with the leopard print stockings!

Mp3 player lantern from Strapya $15ish

I like long showers… I want to be able to play music during said showers. This is the cutest version of these I’ve seen so far.

Pink Strapya iPad Stylus $18ish

Ok technically I actually cashed in all of my birthday presents already to buy an ipad so this is all hypothetical but I totally want a nice cute stylus for it so I can draw more often. To go with it of course I would need a nice fancy drawing app so that’s another $15 and while I’m there there’s a bunch of other apps I would buy so let’s add in….

iTunes gift card!

To buy all of the apps I’ve had my eye on for blogging and just general fun like:

  • Blogsy (for writing posts on the go!)
  • Garageband (for making music for my videos and general fun)
  • iMovie (because I’m wondering if I could film fun videos out and about with this… probably not worth the trouble though hmm)
  • Mega Deco Calculator (because I need a gigantic bling calculator to match the one on my phone XD)
  • Photoshake (for writing mini tutorials)
  • Layer/iDraw/Freeform/Sketchpro (some kind of awesome drawing app for fun!)
  • Something for practicing kanji
  • Games to keep James busy!

Amazon/iBooks/Zinio gift card!

While we’re talking about it I’ve been reading on the ipad in bed a lot so it would be awesome to be able to indulge my habit and buy some books 😀 I’m thinking some good crime/mystery novels, Japanese magazines and craptastical romantic novels that I read for the giggles!

Any store gift cards XD

I think I’m one of the few people who actually likes gift cards. A lot of my friends/family are hesitant to give them because they aren’t personal but I figure that unless you’re going to spend a lot of time and effort coming up with something super awesome and very personal I would rather a gift card that I can buy something I really want with than generic bath salts XD

Tiny keychain camera from Strapya $12ish

This is just the cutest thing ever. I mean it’s kind of pointless because I always have my phone and my point and shoot and James camera etc but it’s so tiny and cute that I want to get it and deco it anyway!

Lenses for cell phone cameras $10ish each

Such a cute and pointless idea. They stick on over the top of phone camera lens to give cute effects!

Pretty phone stap $5

I probably wouldn’t buy one but I really should get off my butt and make one!

Custom name phone strap $10+

Again I should just make one of these XD Shiny and pretty! I just like having all of my stuff customised 😀

Macaron making kit $30ish

Heart shaped macarons? Bunny shaped macarons?? HELL YES I WANT! I was to do more baking and cute kitchen things are a must. I have no idea if this adorable kit works but it’s so cute I don’t even care haha.

Bear Bouquet $60

I’m allergic to flowers so this is a pretty good substitute!

Puppy! $700+

The second we move into a house/apartment that allows it I’m going to get a dog. At the moment I’m tossing up between a Westie and a Spitz. I also love Pomeranians and the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel I had as a kid was the perfect temperament so I will have to wait and see what kind of place we live in and how much space there is before I decide. I can just imagine that the quality of my posts will deteriorate then as I spend all my time posting photos of my dog XD

Pleated Tartan Skirt Innocent World 13440yen

So many pretty items at Innocent World but I especially love this skirt!

Innocent World Handbag 12390yen

I think this might be my dream bag. I love structured bags like this because they make everything so much easier to find inside. Eventually I’ll have to give my current bag back to my Mother so I might save for this! It’s white so it goes with my wardrobe, it’s subtly cute without being over powering and it’s not huge. I find when I carry big bags I tend to just try and fill them with more junk XD

Better lighting for videos $50ish

James is working out a better lighting set up for my videos so once we find what works in the space it would be nice to be able to buy it! I’m hoping I can have it all permanently set up on my dressing table that way I can just sit down and record videos when I get inspiration rather than have to take over the whole bathroom and spend a lot of time doing set up ad having James accidentally cameo-ing in the videos in the mirror behind me XD

Enough time to properly take Japanese lessons again

This doesn’t so much have a dollar figure but it would be nice to have enough time to study language again. Included in this would be new books to further said study.

World tour trip! $10k?

It would be so awesome to be able to travel around the world for a couple of months visiting new places and having meets ups with all of you along the way! James want to go back to America for all of the food from his childhood so maybe we could do Singapore>Malaysia>Russia>UK>USA>Japan>New Zealand or something like that XD Can you imagine the Snapshots posts I could get out of that?!

Acrylic nails $50ish

Realistically I think this is what I will do on that day XD I’ve been wanting to do my nails again for a while but I don’t have the time to sit and do my own atm and I could use some pampering time so maybe I’ll go get some plain acrylics and decorate them myself later.

Haha that’s a pretty long list now right? XD It feels weird to be this self indulgent because I generally spend birthday money on sensible things like bills or things we need around the house >_<

What do you guys do for your birthdays? Pampering day? Huge party? I’m not really one for parties but maybe a dinner out would be nice! Now back to work for me hahaha!

While I'm away…

by | May 18, 2011 | Life

James and I are off to Brisbane for a business trip for the rest of this week! Instead of scheduling posts I thought it would be more fun for you guys to kind of come on the trip with me ^_^

Below I’ve embedded my mobile blog so I’ll be uploading lots of photos as we go, just check back to this post to see what we get up to along the way! You’ll see the last 5 photos I’ve posted, they update automatically so keep checking back to see what we’re doing… it’s like snapshots as it happens hahaha 😀

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See you all when I get home!

<3 Violet

 

How To Make A Photography Light Tent – Guest Post by James

by | May 17, 2011 | Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

A lot of you guys write to me with photography questions and while I love looking at pretty photos and I do *kind of* dabble in it I am really not knowledgeable about the subject in the slightest. In fact, pretty much any knowledge about photography I have is based on things James tells me or if I’ve learned it myself it’s through trial and error. That said I want to be as helpful as I can so I usually inlist his help in answering photography questions. A lot of people ask about taking product photos for review posts and the like, I like nice clean white backgrounds so all of mine are taken inside a light box. We recently bought our own but up until a few weeks ago we were using James’ DIY method. He wrote a post about it around a year ago so I though I would get him to guest post about it here because it might be helpful for you guys ^_^ If you find this one useful or if you have questions just leave them in the comments section and I might be able to convince him to do a regular guest spot here! I’ve added a couple of little comments into the post in this colour too 🙂

Ever wonder how those eBay sellers get such nice, even lighting on their products? While some may use expensive lighting set-ups like soft-boxes and ring flashes, you don’t have to go down that road. Especially if you are selling smaller items, you can use something called a Light Tent.

 

These go by many names; light box, light tent…light cube. Well I guess that’s it. You can buy folding ones on eBay like this for around $39.95, but  let’s say you don’t have the money or you have a job the next day and don’t have to the time to wait for delivery. While it might not look super professional, you can make your own using things around the house. (This version also is good if you live in an apartment because you can throw it away after you’re done and make a new one next time! ~V)All you need is:

  1. 5 pieces of paper that are all the same length, I’m working with A4 printer paper (Don’t steal your girlfriend’s fancy expensive art paper without asking, she will be mad if you do, trust me! ~V)
  2. A roll of tape. Clear is best, but what every you can find should work as long as it’s not colored
  3. Scissors. If you don’t have these, then don’t freak out, it just makes things a little neater.
  4. Possibly a chopstick or ruler or something to prop your light tent up
  5. Light source. External flash would be best, but before I had one I used everything from desk lamps to floodlights

Ok, to start with you are going to need to turn one of your pieces of paper into a square. There are two ways to do this. The first way is to get out your ruler and measure yourself a square. The second I feel is faster, but kind of hard to explain, so bear with me. Take two pieces of paper. Lay one sideways on top ofthe other one to make an L shape. Anything that is over the edge of the bottom piece has got to go, so cut it off. Voila! You should be left with one A4 piece and one square. If you still aren’t following I’m going to try to make a very simple picture diagram.

If it’s not working for you, give up and get a ruler. If you don’t have scissors to cut it, just fold the piece again and again and again and then it should tear down that crease fairly accurately. Now take three of your pieces of paper and put them side by side so that they are tall, not long. Then take the square piece you just made and place it above the middle Piece of paper. Last step, take your last A4 piece of paper and put it above the square piece. Confused yet? Here’s a picture of what it should look like.

Kind of like an upside down T right? Good. Now we are going to tape all of this together. So you can easily see where I think you should tape, I’ll photoshop in some dark grey bars. You can tape yours where ever your heart desires! Did any of you do these at school in geometry class? Basically what we are trying to do is turn this shape into a cube, so as well as putting the tape marks in, I’ll label what the pieces are going to be when it’s done.

Ok, once those are taped, you fold up the sides and back, then tape them together. Fold the roof down and then tape that to the sides. You’re done! You should have a rectangular cube without a front. The taping can be a bit tricky, so instead of taping the roof piece to the back piece, you could tape all the A4 pieces side by side, and then fold them over so it makes kind of a square wheel. See below.

Whatever you decide to do, the result will come out the same and that is looking something like this. (Basically you made a box with one of the square sides missing ~V)

Obviously, this isn’t all taped up correctly, but I roughly taped it up and then forgot to the take a picture of the final result. When you lay it down it is going to sag because it’s just paper and as any architect will tell you, paper doesn’t make good building material. To combat this you can find something that is roughly the same height as the box it’s self. As you can see, I used chopsticks. Now it can hold it’s self up and smells delicious!

So how do you set up your lights? Any way you want. Experimenting is the key to finding your signature look, But if you just want some even lighting, here is the way I have set up my lights.

As you can see I have my main light source propped up a bit to shoot down at an angle, then my reflector (which again is just a car sun shade) on the other side to bounce some light back in. Thanks to all the white the light will bounce around inside the light tent, eliminating pretty much all of the shadows. (If you don’t have fancy lighting don’t worry, just stick a desk lamp over it or one from each side so it’s nice and even ~V)

Let’s look at some examples!

One of my favorite belt buckles.

A little something for Easter.

And some product shots I did for Violet.

 

As you can see, these things can be terribly useful and come together in a couple of minutes.

Some tips for shooting in a Light Tent

1. Shoot in manual mode, this will avoid the tricky metering problems and allow you to expose the way you want to consistently.

2. Drop your flash’s power down to 1/2 or 1/4 power.

3. Keep your aperture at around f/5.6 or higher. When you are this close to the subject and zoomed in for close up’s it’s easy to think the whole product is going to be in focus, but when you switch to the computer you find your shallow depth of  field has let you down. Learn from my mistakes people.

4. If you are going to be cutting these out of the white background, over exposing your shots will make the background whiter and easier to cut out.

Now get busy!

Thanks for all of that information James! Hope that answered some questions and please let me know if you have any more. I would love to see if any of you give it a try!

James writes a general photography blog over at www.JimmyAmerica.com so go visit him and say hi!

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