Gardening pleasures

I’ve never been one for keeping plants in the house. I love cut flowers but I seldom get them, since they don’t hold for very long. At the same time, I’ve never had much of a green thumb, so all of my plants have died at some point due to various reasons (forgetting to water them is at the top of the list).

However, I got from work two little fir trees in a pot around Christmas time, and that’s how it all started. After a while, my bf discovered a box of IKEA Family seed collection, and we planted them too. Although we’ve had the box for a year, the seeds immediately sprouted, so now we own seedlings of Helianthus annuus “Evening sun”, Helianthus annuus “Sunspot” (both are sunflower species) and Lathyrus odoratus “Little Sweetheart”. They look wonderfully fresh and lovely on our kitchen windowsill and I hope they keep on growing.

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Etsy Handmade Labs – stamp carving

Last month I’ve attendet the first Etsy Handmade Lab here in Munich (you can read about my very first Etsy Lab in Berlin here). The evening’s theme was stamp carving, so upon arrival every participant got a DIY kit containing two erasers  - our prime material. Carving tools and pens & paper were already waiting for us on the working tables.

I was particularly thrilled to meet here once again lovely peopole like Missus Kat, Tabea from tiripitiri or Johanna from nauli. Carving stamps is actually really fun and easy, so I will definately get some more erasers and try it again at home.

If you think it looks like we’re having a good time and want to try some handmade techniques yourself, the Etsy Labs are organized in Munich by munikum, a network of small labels and artists. You can sign up for future events here, and you can see some more pics from the stamp night.

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Happy Easter!

I know that for some of you, Easter has almost passed, while for others it’s still one week to go, so I will use this opportunity to wish you all a happy Easter! Hopefully you will have/had lovely spring waether (not the case here in Munich since it had even snowed on Easter morning), and lots of chocolate rabbits to stash and eat during the coming weeks.
We have a whole Easter bunny familiy to ourselves – although I don’t think I will ever bring myself to eat the big one ;-)

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Lazy Sunday

Since the weather continues to be glum and rainy, we mostly stay indoors these weekends. It’s a good chance to catch up with your reading, tidy up one’s clothes or organize and file away photos and things. However, I hope spring will be here soon; until then I’m leaving you with some photos of the wonderful irises my boyfriend bought for me. Have a nice Sunday!
spring time iris

spring time iris

springtime iris

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Quick Photoshop editing tutorial

I am often checking out forums for crafty people and DIY artists. On these forums, a section is very popular: the section about feedback to one’s own shop. And always, always, always, paeople stress out the importance of product photos in an online shop.

But because most of us aren’t professoal photographers, we often don’t know how to get the best from our photo shots. And sometimes we don’t even have a fancy camera or don’t know how to use all buttons and dials. And that’s whre photo editing comes in. So I’ve done a quick video tutorial to show you how I tune up most of my photos. I work in Photoshop CS 5, but most of these techniques are available in any photo editing software.

Here you have the before and after shots. If you watch the video on fullscreen and in HD, you’ll get a better picture of what I did and which tools I used.

Before shot

If you have any questions, do post them in the comments below and I’ll try to get right back at you. Please let me know if you find these video PS tutorials useful, maybe I’ll make some more!

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