Using the Diffuse Glow Function

I love taking ordinary objects, such as this couch below, and adding a little sumpin’ sumpin’ to make
you want to hang it on your wall.
I liked the composition of the photo and decided to play around with it a little using ‘diffuse glow’.

This was shot in Reynosa, Mexico in a little neighborhood nestled in between a landfill and a sewage facility.
First things first, I made a layer of the photo. You can read how to do that here.

After making a layer, I chose the ‘burn tool’, (the little hand on the left column of the page), to tone down the bright spots in the foreground of the picture.

The dirt, parts of the bike and the bright section on the right side of the couch have been burned in with a hardness of 37% using a 200 diameter burn circle.

Now, this is when I got crazy. I hate using the ‘diffuse’ function typically. It tends to make people look way too angelic. But, what the hey…I decided today was the day.
Under the ‘filter’ tab, go down to ‘distort’ and choose ‘diffuse glow’, and then click on it.

I chose a ‘graininess’ of 2, a ‘glow amount’ of 5, and a ‘clear amount’ of 13. I tried several different settings until I came to like these settings.

Rebekah likey. It made the couch really pop. But, remembering my photo teacher from the 9th grade, the brightest spot on the photo was leading my eye off of the photo and into the right bottom corner. Teacher no likey. Bad Rebekah.
So, what did I do?

I cropped that sucker is what I did. The grey bar along the bottom is what I am going to crop out by using the ‘crop tool’.

This is what the photo looks like cropped. And don’t worry, if you ever crop something and hate it, just use the undo function (on a mac hold the apple button and the ‘z’ button down at the same time.)
I still wasn’t happy with how bright the bottom of the photo was. So, back to the burn tool.

I burned in the bottom of the photo, and some of the highlighted sections of the bike.

And here’s the final photo. I think it turned out pretty swanky. Have you used the diffuse glow and liked it? Send me some examples, and I’ll post them!

I happen to love flowers…and Mirror Art

And although this Arts and Crap isn’t about flowers, I must talk about them first. Because they are just so darn purty. Then, we’ll get onto mirrors.

If you look deep into the photo, you will see a sneak peak of what we are going to talk about today. But don’t get stuck in the past for too long. Move on, people. Move on.

Although my fingers don’t care for the rough, thorny branches. My husband helped me band-aid one more finger before leaving the house on ‘an errand’.

A few minutes later, he came home with these.
Soft peach gladiolus. (Here’s another sneak peak at what we are going to make!)

And although I like the hard work of cutting branches from a deliberately mean bush and slicing open my hands, I am fond of the store bought kind too.

Even if they don’t put up much of a fight.
“Sissies!”-Mr. Thorny Flower.

Moving on…

Now that we have that discussion out of the way, see the background behind these flowers? That is what I wanted to talk to you about.

This is the finished product we will be doing together today. The entire piece is about 4 feet wide by 2 1/2 feet tall.

You will need broken or old mirror (pretend that I included the mirror in this picture), a hammer, heavy duty butcher paper or a heavy duty paper bag, gloves, a scrap piece of plywood, liquid nails and a caulk gun.We chose to paint our plywood glossy white. But you can do whatever you want. I know you will anyways…

Place the mirror in the paper bag or wrap it in the heavy duty butcher paper. Gently tap the mirror with the hammer a few times.

Open your bag to see what you’ve won. OOOH! You’ve won a broken mirror. How delightful!

Carefully retrieve the pieces of mirror and arrange them on your plywood in whatever pattern you desire.

You’ll want several sizes of the mirror chunks-so don’t get overly particular about uniformity.

After you have arranged the mirror pieces to your liking, start liquid nailing those suckers down. Make sure you have a system so that you don’t forget a piece. I recommend putting a small square of blue painter’s tape on each piece and removing it when the piece has been glued down. I did not do this, as you can see. Big mistake.

Let dry for 24 hours. Before hanging it, test that you did glue all of the pieces down by gently raising the board up and tilting it.
If a piece falls out, don’t worry. Just re-attach with more liquid nails.

We used drywall screws and screwed our piece of plywood straight to the wall. Then I touched up the screw heads with more glossy white paint. You can also attach the mirror to the wall by using two eye hooks and picture hanging wire.

Then stand back and enjoy your work of art. You are bound to get some ooh’s and aah’s from this little project.

Tony Horton and P90x

“I love him, but I hate him.”

P90x has never, ever, ever, ever heard of me. Never. Not once. Get the picture? However, if they knew the amount of free marketing I was giving them by telling all my friends about it, they might think twice about ‘ol Rebekah. They may even throw me a yoga mat or a ‘recovery drink’.
I love these workouts, and I’ll tell you why.

The workouts are well,…they’re just really hard.
And I love to workout. Always have. Makes me feel less guilty when I buy a box of Mike & Ike’s and eat them all in a single sitting as I watch ‘The Biggest Loser’.

And I would rather be doing this over P90x most mornings. But I force myself to wake up (actually Cowboy won’t let me sleep in once the alarm has gone off). I put in another grueling P90X DVD and listen to Tony telling me to do things I don’t want to do.

But I need to give you a bit of a disclaimer: Tony says some weird stuff sometimes. Things like this:
“That’s the gruntin’!”
“Nice muscles, dude.”
“The Makes snakin’ contact, elbow, thigh!” (no idea what he was trying to say here.)
“Oh, no! Tops are coming off!”
“Yummy, yummy, yummy!”
And the cronies in the videos with him add to the weirdness.

His favorite cronie, Dreya Webber, is that kid in class you want to punch. She actually gives Tony advice on how to make a move better. But Tony doesn’t mind and just flirts with her relentlessly, although I am pretty sure she’s a dude.
The flirting is kind’ve weird.
Yet, somehow you end up liking Dreya, too. But, that doesn’t stop the urge to still punch her.

Once you get into it, you really start to look forward to the next time Tony screams: “I know it burns! It’s supposed to burn!”

Ah. P90x. I love it, but I hate it.
My sick obsession.

Now, I know it isn’t ‘hip’ to be into cats.

Only old, crazy ladies are into cats. Right? However, this dog obsessed generation hasn’t met ‘Cowboy the Cat’. Or witnessed some of his weird ways. I am convinced that if they had, they would love him just as much as I do. So, let me count his weird ways for you and you can judge for yourself.

Number One: This is Cowboy the Cat ‘relaxing’. I think the comfy couch would have been a better choice, but to each cat his own, I suppose.

Number Two: This is Cowboy the Cat’s position in order to lick his armpits. Very, very weird.
Number Three: We are so sad when we have to shave Cowboy the Cat, but we must. Simply put, he has too much fur ‘fer his own good.

Number Four: This is what Cowboy the Cat looks like after a nice, close shave. And we giggle. And our friends giggle. But The Cat now has so much less fur to maintain everyday. I believe it’s a real win-win for everyone involved.

 Number Five: I think this photo speaks for itself.

Number Six: As Cowboy the Cat watches a PBS special on hummingbirds, his furry little body sits unmoving for thirty minutes. And he is wearing a cape. I guess the cape is really my fault, if we’re getting technical. The list goes on, but we’ll stop for now.

My weird cat. I love him and his weird ways.