DIY: Photo Valentines

I pinned this idea months ago! And when I took the kids' Christmas photos last year I made them take a few that we could use for Valentines this year. I think they turned out pretty darn cute! And I'm hoping they are fairly unique in their class. Also, I got them as 6 cent 3x5's from Ritz so all of them together cost me $3.80 with tax. Well, plus the suckers, but I'm pretty sure I would have spent that or more on store-bought Valentines.

 

I just used an Exacto knife to cut along the top and bottom of their hands to make the hole for the sucker. Easy peasy!

The photos of the photos aren't that great because I had to take them at night. My older daughter has to bring hers in tomorrow morning, so I had to quick grab them while I could. But you can get the idea. :-)

Handmade Holidays 2011: Easy Photo Puzzles

Pink and Green Mama has a great blog with many, many ideas for things to do with your children. One of them is an upcycled wooden shape puzzle. Now, I didn't really upcycle my puzzles because I didn't have the puzzles to begin with. But I LOVED the idea of putting photos in the puzzles so I went ahead and bought the shape puzzles. I made one for my son and one for my niece. They both have grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins who live far away so it's a fun way for the little ones to see far away relatives on a daily basis!

The Melissa and Doug puzzle as I bought it:
I covered each of the shape pieces with scrapbook paper and mod podged it. For my son's, I found a pack of 8 pieces of paper at Target for $1.00 in their scrapbook supply aisle.
I traced the shapes on the photos and cut them out, fit them into the space, and then mod podged them to seal it.
And here is a more girly version for my niece:
A super easy and fun gift for a little one for Christmas or their birthday!

2011: Art Project 10--Photography

I have a part-time family photography business that I do just to give me a creative outlet and something that is mine away from the kids and the house. I decided one of our projects this summer should be learning about photography.

I showed the girls the following images by Ansel Adams:

Rose and Driftwood, 1932
Saguaros, Saguaro National Monument, 1933-1942

Church, Taos Pueblo, 1942

Oak Tree Sunrise, 1966

And the very famous image below:

by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 8/14/1945

And these Henri Cartier-Bresson images:

I didn't get into anything technical with photography. I just mentioned it had a lot to do with lighting. And that it was really important to pay attention to what is in your camera frame. Don't just walk up and take a photo of anything. Really see how it looks in your camera and make it look visually interesting. We also talked about how photography is catching a moment in time (just like in Henri Cartier-Bresson's photos).

We went to visit the MN Landscape Arboretum and just walked around. It has been a long time since I've been there just to enjoy the area. I'm usually there focused on taking photographs of someone. It was nice to just walk around with no purpose in mind. Here are a few of the photos I took of the girls taking photos:


And here are some of Ella's photos:

The photo above and below are favorites for me. I like that she didn't center the flowers,
but they are off to one side of the photograph.

And Lily's....it's interesting because a good deal of photography is all technical. The girls were just using little point and shoot cameras. But Lily's wasn't focusing properly. The flowers were out of focus while the background was in focus. Kind of bummed about that. Not sure if it was operator error or if maybe the camera was dropped in the past and the focus mechanism isn't working well anymore. At any rate, here are Lily's:

This last one is my favorite of Lily's!