vol.25

Keisha and Stephens engagement pictures part 2!

I think I am seriously going to have to group these into 4 parts! :) But, as promised here are more... :)

Loved the high voltage sign!! :)

Does Stephen remind you of anyone? Curious to know! I heard a lady say he looks like _____ can you guess who?

Anyhow this concludes part two! If you missed the first set, you can see those here! :)

Tomorrow marks the start of spring break for Trin. I've been really glad that she loves school... but it definitely made me feel good to hear that she is looking forward to staying home for awhile! I think we'll have to build some forts out of sheets, tackle a few crafty projects, and at some point I want to take her out and get some good pictures of her. It has been waay too long since I've done that. :)

50% off in the eye candy digital shop+ new overlay set release!

I'm going to make this quick, but I just wanted to drop in and let you know that the 50% off sale is now live in the eye candy digital shop (sorry but the sale does not include my etsy shop) and the new frame overlay set has been released! :) The sale ends March 31st at 12 PM PST

The frames are a fun set to have! :) Anyhow, I'm signing off for a bit... it took a little longer then I expected to finish all the graphics for the sale and get these frames up and ready! But, I hope you all love them as much as I do! :)

New Overlay Set- Sneek Peek!

Photograph taken by simply rosie :)

I'm in the final stages of releasing another new overlay set! :) This set however, has been in the works for FAR TOO LONG... and I am so excited to finally offer it to you guys!

-Hopefully it will be available in just a few hours! (I'll update when it is listed!)  The set is NOW available!

I will also be starting a 50% off sale on EVERYTHING in the Eye Candy digital shop! The sale is scheduled to run until the 31st of March. :)

p.s. ZoZo Bug baby and I are collaborating on a really fun photo contest starting monday! Watch her facebook page for more details. :)

Stay tuned for more details!! How is your saturday? Hopefully mine will end up being a super productive one! ;)

My girls and their cousin- Photo shoot!

Here are yet some more pictures from our trip to Oklahoma that I havent gotten around to posting. The weather was so beautiful while we were there! We grabbed a blanket and some books and headed out into my sister-in-laws yard. They have some really ideal places for pictures right around they're house!

Journey was in the most sober mood for these pictures! I think the 2 hour time difference + jet lag + the lack of regular naps was just catching up with her. :)

These pictures were so much fun to edit. :) I bought a laptop before our trip to Ok so that I could keep up on my editing. It was so nice to come home and not have any pictures that *HAD* to be edited. :) It was pretty easy to sit around and visit while editing, so it worked out really well. :) I can't imagine not having my laptop now! It is so nice to have a portable office! :)

In other news... it is FRIDAY! :) Yay! I already have orders ready to go out, and I am anxious to spend the day developing some new products for the Eye Candy Shop! I've had a couple fun projects in the works for a few weeks, and I'm really hoping to wrap them up soon. :)

Do you have plans for the weekend? It is finally starting to feel like spring, and I've been inspired to go through and clean/declutter the house! :) Always feels nice to do that.

Keisha and Stephens engagement Pictures

 

Hi!! I thought it was HIGH time I started sharing some of the thousands of pictures I took while in Oklahoma visiting family last month... I'm going to start with my gorgeous sister in law and her fiancee. We did so many different locations in two seperate days, that I think I will go ahead and break them up into several posts so I don't completely overload you! :)

 These photos were taken in Tulsa, OK in FEBRUARY... they were having some CRAZY warm weather the week we were there. It was SO nice! We stopped at three different locations in Tulsa and were able to get a variety of shots in a short amount of time. She had a dress appointment at Davids Bridal later that afternoon so we were in a rush (She did find THE dress at that appointment btw!)

I think that this location in Tulsa was my FAVORITE... the color of that building and the spiral staircase were amazing colors, that were fun to play with processing wise. :)


 

Fun times! :) Stay posted! I'll share more soon. :)

p.s.  How IS everyone!? My blog seems so quiet lately! Where did you all go? enjoying spring break? Ours isnt until the first week in April. :)


 

the cupcake hat

This was the first photo shoot I did with my new camera! :) The 360 degree swivel screen came in handy. :)

I think she is getting the hang of the picture taking thing! :) She was really willing to do what was asked of her! :) Not bad for a 2 year old! I reallt tried to talk everything up real big with her... I mean she was going to get her pictures taken in her new favorite hat!! ;) I have big plans for our next photo shoot! :) She was so cooperative today I can only hope the next time will go just as smooth right? ;)

Finally! A decor related post...

I was just thinking the other day ( yes, I actually DO that on occasion! :P ) that it has been FOREVER since I have posted any pictures of our house. Really, we havent done anything new in quite some time... but I still havent shared an update on the craigslist find I was gushing about 4-5 months ago! :) I'll start out with a panoramic view of the kitchen from both sides of the kitchen... because I can do that now with my NEW camera!! Ooops... see I havent shared the exciting news that I was finally able to buy the new sony a55 I've been drooling over) Anyhow it does panoramas... So, I really wanted to try it out:

See this area here to the left? That is my computer and "work station!" Craaazy small area huh? :)

  If you have been around my blog for awhile, you will probably immediately notice the main differences from the last pictures I posted of the kitchen, One being the Colossal size white cabinets, and the new stainless refrigerater. :) The big white cabinet is our craigslist find! It really is one extra cabinet then what we should have in the kitchen. We really need more room between the refirgerator and the cabinet...

I mean it works, but it isnt "ideal" :) Having the extra space has been SOO nice though! We moved the microwave off the counter and into the cabinet... which really cleared off the counters. What was so neat is that we had somewhat planned to buy a pax wardrobe to use in th kitchen as pantry. We had priced it out and figured it was going to cost around 800.00 to get the set-up we wanted. Including drawers for the inside, shelves, and other accessories. We had sliding doors planned, figuring that it would be more ideal to not have doors that opened into a crowded space...

Please ignore the piece of trim hanging over the top! :) It is actually crown molding that we eventually plan to attach to "finish" it off more. Because it is 3 pieces, we are considering taking out one of the smaller pieces so it isnt soo colossal... Until we decide though, the crown molding will have to wait. :)

ANYHOW, I seen this pax wardrobe on Craigslist for 300.00 and I told Jaydon we HAD to get it! So glad we did... just barely before another interested buyer. :) I'm storing my packaging and shipping supplies inside and also using it as a pantry of sorts... and because I'm sure you are dying to know what the inside looks like ( I know I would be!! ) I took a picture!

I think it is definitely earning its keep! ;) Elsewhere in the kitchen...

p.s. In about a month I'll be sending out a new single polARToid with all orders!! :) The very bottom right polARToid is what I'm sending out now, but I'm almost out! I'm also switching up my packaging extras! :) New designs for the thank you card etc. etc. :)

How was your monday? I took pictures of Journey (will share tomorrow!) and had to drop my main computer off at my Tech guys shop. Its been freezing on me 2-3 times a day! :( He is guessing the hard drive may be failing.. I should know tomorrow how bad it is! Crossing my fingers it isnt going to be too terribly expensive.

Well, I had best get this published! I'll go ahead and leave you with a peek from todays "photo shoot" :)

RELEASED- Butterfly Kisses Overlay set

Hello!! Good morning. :) I *just* realized this morning that I still hadn't blogged the release of the new Butterfly Kisses Overlay Set. :) See, it is soo much more convenient to post a quick little sentence along with a link on facebook, and I did just that the other day right after I clicked "publish" and made the set available. So, if you want "the minute it happens news," be sure and "like" me! :)

...Not that I am trying to neglect my wonderful blog readers, I definitely don't want to do that! :) So, now that we have that out of the way... let me show you the new set!

and some super sweet examples using the above shapes. :)

This image by Rosie is one of my favorites using the butterfly wings. I took the paint bucket and "filled" in a part of the wings with a green color pulled from her shirt. After doing that I took a grunge brush (actually the same grunge brush that I have offered with the ahoy overlay set) and distressed the wings a bit. I like that the wings look like they could have been sprayed onto the car. Come to think of it... I may have changed the blending mode of the actual shape to "overlay." 

For the above photo (also taken by rosie) I used the paint bucket again, and used both white and pulled the tan color from her dress. I added a "stroke" ( a thin tan colored line) to the wings via the blending mode in photoshop. :) Just to add a little something different.

  and last... isnt this image from bluelily (shown below) the sweetest?

 

Designing Digital Eye Candy's new web store with shopify!

Hello Chicas! How are you doing? I hope well. :) I've been asked questions about my new web store, so I thought I would come back with a thorough post on the subject. Hopefully it can help you out!

-- I do want to let you know that after writing this post I decided to see if shopify offered any sort of a referral program. After all I was planning to give a glowing review that I felt confident I could stand behind. Turns out they do! So, if you head on over to shopify with any of my shopify links here, and you pay to open up a shop as a result, then I will receive something for you doing so! :) Just wanted to mention that, so you didnt think I was trying to pull one over on you with you knowing-- ;)

When I first started looking for a website service, I knew I wanted something that allowed me to easily customize a template. It had to look professional, and the site as a whole had to have a fairly good report in regards to how often the site was down. I had alot tougher of a time trying to find a website service that was e-junkie compatible. I had been using e-junkie to host my digital files since I started a year ago... and I was super happy with them. 

I stumbled across shopify, (actually, elsie had just opened up her new red velvet shop, and I noticed she was using shopify) and was immediately impressed with the professional, clean, easy to understand navigation and site design.

I signed up for a free trial and fell even more in love. BUT... did they allow the sell of digital downloads? Turned out they had created they're own app (titled fetch) that would host and serve up the files once purchased. I was hesitant to move from ejunkie... but I loved shopify so much that I actually moved all my products to fetch. I was super impressed with how easy it was to list a product... the ability to copy a listing really saved me time.

..and the design process was SO easy peasy... They have several templates they offer for free. I opted to purchase a template/theme title activ8 pictured below. I paid 120.00 for it, but I feel it was money well spent. :)

You might notice some similarities. :) From there I just kind of winged it... Personalizing what was there proved to be super simple. I was so excited when I found out that I could make the navigation bar transparent by typing in TRANSPARENT where a color code would normally be. This gave me creative freedom to add in my little paper pieces. :) But when I tell you it is simple... it really is. I'll show you, it looks like the site is composed of quite a few different layers, but REALLY... it is just one big background image that I created in photoshop. :)

The logo and the the rest of the site are completely different elements edited completely on they're own. :) To find out the right dimensions I downloaded the background image that was included with the activ8 theme/template and used it as a pattern/template for design in CS5. This way I knew where to position everything. From there it was alot of trial and error... moving something a millisecond of an inch resaving, uploading, testing, repeat... etc etc. :) But I am so happy with how it all came together! It was tricky trying to keep the different products unified in design and uncluttered looking. I thought that putting them inside a polaroid or photo that was cohesive would help all the items blend.

I hope I pulled that off okay! :)

I definitely feel like I moved up into the big leagues! :) Although with that came a price tag. I'm going to have to watch my profit carefully... shopify was a bit more expensive then I wanted to pay. I am on the $59 a month plan. I'm able to offer discount codes this way, and instead of a 2% transaction fee they only take 1%. :) I'm also having to pay 25.00 a month to fetch for hosting and sending my files. BUT, I'll probably be dropping my typepad account down from pro. in the coming months. I no longer have a need for the ability to publish more then one blog! :) So, that will actually save me some money.

I'll be sticking with etsy for all my art print sales. You just really can't beat etsy as a whole for a storefront. I've been really happy with etsy, and I'll never leave! But I really needed something more suited for my digital items. I kind of feel the need to keep it all separate. :)

So... that is my story! :) I hope it helps you. If you have a question I didnt address, ask in the comments section and I'll do my best to answer them! :)

a quote for your week chap 60 + New baby announcement templates!

Wow!! Can you believe this is the 60th quote I've posted!? Crazzzy. Seems not too long ago when I decided to start posting a quote on mondays. I have definitely missed a few... I have to admit though, I've stuck with it longer then I thought I would! ;)

Anyhow... I listed some new baby announcement card templates in the spiffy new shop yesterday. Adding products is SO much easier then what it was using a blog.

Here are the 4 templates. I pulled inspiration from my valentine's card this year!

I loved the designs so much that I really wanted to try andget a little more use out of them! I have some more baby announcement designs in the works... so expect a bit more variety in the coming months. :)

Thank you so much for the sweet e-mails comments regarding my new shop! :) I'm still so ecstatic, I feel like I've given birth to a new baby again... okay... maybe that is a bit extreme and a little exaggerated.. but you get the idea!? :) I've had a few people ask about the design process and who I was using to host the site etc. So, I'm going to try and get a blog post up in the next couple of days that will hopefully answer your questions. :)

Happy Monday! What is next for Digital Eye Candy? I have so many ideas floating around in my head! A totally new concept idea for the overlays... as well as some blog your session templates! :) So, stay tuned!