Supermodel vs. Zombie

This is my first project from my Photoshop course this semester. We took a photo of ourself and then totally glammed it up (aka supermodel) then we made ourselves totally gross (zombie!).
Here are my pictures....

Model

Original

Zombie

 

Obviously for the super model one I didn't have to do much. Just kidding! I took away all my blemishes, freckles and moles. I took out my nose stud. I fixed my teeth and whitened them. I lightened my eye color and darkened my eye shadow and lips. I changed my hair color, gave my skin a glow and fixed the background.

For the Zombie I used a watermelon rind to give my skin texture via layers and blendmodes. I altered my cheekbones and jaw line. Added a maggot infested open wound to my chest, changed my eyes to green and darkened the image overall.

Pink and Black

I used to not be a big fan of pink. It took me yeeears to finally bring some pink pieces into my wardrobe. I'm over that now, I am comfortable in pink now, and I love the combo of pink and black. So, I picked up this cute little vintage skirt at Junkee's a while back, and have finally decided to wear it. I really love the texture of the floral pattern. I kept everything else black so my skirt was the standout piece.
We've started work on our second project in my Illustrator course. We are to pick a state (Montana, yay!), choose two state parks and design a logo for each and a poster for one. The poster is supposed to mimick 1920's-1930's travel posters. Sounds super fun and right up my alley right? The instructor didn't like my logos. Lame. Now it's back to the drawing board. I've seen it happen, but it's never happened to me. But I guess it's a lesson learned as to how it will be out there in industry, there will be clients who don't like what you present to them and you will have to think longer and harder about your design concepts. So that's what I'm going to go do now....

 

Shirt- thrifted

Skirt-   Junkee's

Tights- Icing

Shoes- Candies

A Little Day Trip

I've talked to a few people who've made the trip to Apple Hill. It's about a couple hours away, up highway 50 through Lake Tahoe near Placerville, CA. I've always wanted to go, so we decided to make the trip this year. It is a pretty drive up, and the only part of the drive that was aggravating was the 45 minute delay due to road construction in South Lake Tahoe, on a Saturday. Who does that? Oh, let's take the busiest tourist day and close our road down to one lane. Okay?
 Our first stop was the pumpkin patch! The pumpkin patch at Apple Hill was so much better than our local one, so much more variety. It was a very decent price, and lady was really knowledgeable and told me which of my picks are good for baking sweet pumpkin treats.

Celeste adores her little baby pumpkin. The dogs already tried to eat it.

This pumpkin above is called "one too many". When the lady pointed at it and said one too many, Celeste says, "Aww, man. I really wanted that one." I thought it was so adorable!

View of the patch.


After the pumpkin patch we stopped at one of the orchards. We were hoping it was a pick your own orchard, but it wasn't. We were hungry, so we ate lunch at their burger stand and shopped their farmers market for some produce. I brought home a giant jug of their apple juice. It so unbelievably good. I should have got more. We also picked up honey, apple sauce, apples, plums, and grapes. The grapes are so sweet. I haven't had grapes that good in years. And Celeste tried her first ever caramel apple.

After the orchards we decided to visit a winery and we had our first ever wine tasting. It felt a little weird at first, but it was pretty fun. They had a little kids table set up so Celeste colored pictures with other children while parents sampled the wines. They were running a special on their Sangiovese, buy one get a second for a $1, so I picked up a couple bottles.

All in all it was a really fun getaway day, and a great kick off to the Fall season. Which is after all, my favorite!

It's about Time!

I am probably the slowest blogger ever! I just realized it is almost October and I have forgotten to post the rest of Celeste's birthday party pictures. In typical Kristine fashion, I forgot to take pictures most of the party, and only have one very blurry picture of the cake! Oh well, it was very fun, and it was Celeste's first slumber party, so she had a blast.

Our guess how many game, and we also played  a guess the snack food (Celeste's idea) where we blind folded the girls and fed them goldfish crackers, oreos and twinkies. No, these are not our typical snacks, but I wanted to make sure they were foods little kids could easily recognize by taste!

Party bags filled with goodies like candy dots, lemon heads, lemon suckers, pink rock candy and pencils and erasers. (pink and yellow of course!)

For food we had a "make your own sub sandwich" bar, but I forgot to take a picture! I also made zucchini muffins, lemon iced sugar cookies, raspberry lemon tartlets and my grandmas awesome lemon berry jello mold (not pictured).

The only shot of the cake. It was pink batter inside...

Present time!

This is the fabulous fluffy bed we made for the girls...

but this is how we found them! Apparently they thought they saw a spider.

Purple Sweater Dress

While I wait to hear back from my instructor on my second critique, I thought I'd take a moment to share an outfit post from first critique. For awhile now I have been trying to dress up the jeans, and when I can avoid them all together. But I most definitely make it a point on critique days. I believe how you represent yourself carries over into how you represent your artwork. Even if this is just college, it is a good practice for the real deal.
So I have this lovely sweater dress I picked up while thrifting with my BFF in Seattle this summer. Honestly, I just liked it. I had no idea about the whole "Missoni" thing until the Target hoopla. It just happens to be ultra convenient that this is hip right now. More than one girl at work was like *gasp* is that a Missoni? And I can grin and say, "nope, six bucks and thrifted". I have been waiting for it to be cooler so I could wear it, and luckily last week it was. This week we're in the 90's. Lovely Fall!

Happy Labor Day!

Since I've been a lazy poster all summer long, or at least it seems to me, I think it's abut time I play a little catch up on some of the things I've done. So today I wanted to share some photos I took on a hike I did earlier this summer.
We initially set out on the trail with our destination being Dardanelles Lake, but when we reached the trails fork, there was another group of hikers, and we got a bit lost in conversation. You see, my dog Penny, and their dog, were both German Shephard and Chow Chow mixes. They could have been sisters (maybe they were?), and they just had to have a picture of the two together. Ever try to get two dogs who've never met each other to stand close and hold still for a picture? Yeah...
After all that hoopla we went to head toward Dardanelles, but first asked the other group which way they recommended. They said they had been both ways (far more motivated than us, that would equal about 9 miles I think), but the direction we were about to head, through the meadows, had a lot of bugs. So we went the other way, which we thought, they made it sound like both paths ultimately had the same destination. They did not. The trail we took brought us to Scott's Lake.
So this is our Scott's Lake Hike:

It was the beginning of July in Tahoe, and there was still a number of snow patches along the trail, although we were perfectly content in our tanks and shorts. Penny did really well, a lot better than she does on walks. She actually kept a good steady pace and stayed on the trail. She was good when we passed other dogs too. She is not that good when we pass other dogs on neighborhood walks! This was her first hike, and we didn't have our new dog, Lycan, yet.
When we reached the lake we rested and let Penny off her leash. She splashed around in the water a bit and ran around smelling stuff. I thought I heard a waterfall, so we walked towards it and found it. It was a very pretty fall, cascading over rocks along the side of the mountain and down into Scott's Lake. We were able to walk up pretty far next to it, and even across it in some spots. This scared me half to death since I almost fell in the Mill Creek Falls in Montana a couple years ago.
But I didn't fall in, and we made it back safe and sound. It was approximately a 7 mile trip, round trip. That's about all I can handle so far. I am so tuckered out, I couldn't imagine hiking another 100 feet!
Happy Labor Day!
-XO

We have a Winner....

Announcing the winner of our first ever giveaway.....

Yay! It's McKim!

McKim, please send me an email accepting your prize. Everyone else, thank you so much for playing along. I really appreciate everyone's participation. This was my first giveaway, and I was so incredibly nervous about it. Thank you to everyone again!
And don't forget,  if you'd like to purchase My Memories Suite v2, use this coupon code. Simply enter

STMMMS7861

at check out to receive $10 off the My Memories Suite V2 software and $10 off additional products. Please feel free to share the code with friends and family!

Have a fabulous rest of your Labor day weekend!
-XO