Thrifty Thursday

One of my favorite thrift stores is Volunteers of America. I often find doll things there and most of my fabric is thrifted from there as well. One of the best things I've found there is a really nice chair and the best part about it was the price. ONLY $5.00!!!

 

Tut Test Tuesday - Photo Editing

After preparing stock for Shuto Con I am a bit burnt out from sewing so today's Tut test will be a photo editing Tutorial.

I often don't use a fancy camera, just my cell phone iPhone 4s. So most of my dolly pics aren't the best. This tutorial from Y-n-Y on deviantart was pretty simple to follow. I made different adjustments but use the same steps.

In the end the results were not that bad considering I started with a cell phone pic. I think my favorite part of the tutorial was using the dodge tool on the eyes. This really made them POP!

This tutorial is done using Photoshop.

1. Go to Image-->Adjustments-->Match Color and play with the luminance and color intensity.
   I put my luminance at 120 and my color intensity at 105
2. Brighten the eyes with the dodge tool on the highlights
3. Go to Image-->Adjustments-->Brightness/Contrast
   I put my Brightness at -7 because my pic had some really bright spots. And my contrast at 40
4. Go to Image-->Adjustments-->Selective Color
   Since my pic had a lot of black like the sample pic I set colors to "blacks", I then played around with the sliders as suggested and settled on Cyan +10, Magenta +2, Yellow -12, Black +15
5. Lastly I applied Sharpen and Reduce Noise filters

Here is the end result:

Thrifty Thursday

Today's post will be short and sweet since I am busy preparing for a local convention this weekend. I will have an Artist Alley table at Shuto Con in Lansing, MI.

Tonight I made a quick dress for my SD girl, Trinity. It is made from a thrifted child's dress. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. 

Tut Test Tuesday

Better late than Never? I have been working on building up stock for my Artist Alley table at Shutocon, April 4-6.

So for today's tut test I decided to embellish one of the dresses I made to sell. I used this tutorial from Antique Lilac to add beading to the collar of the dress.

I think it turned out quite nice. The tutorial was super easy to follow, had several pics illustrating the process and had nice results. I am pleased with how it turned out, even my husband commented on how much he liked it. :)

Antique Lilac has many useful tutorials on her site. I look forward to trying more of them in the future.

Thrifty Thursday

As a little girl, one of the things that my Dad loved to do in the spring and summer was to frequent garage and yard sales, auctions and swap meets. I loved to go with him. It was always an adventure and you never knew what treasures you might find along the way. This habit followed me into adulthood and is enjoyed by my children and husband as well. As a family we often go thrifting at the local thrift stores.

Being a mother and bjd collector on a tight budget I'm always on the look out for things that I can use for my dolls without spending a small fortune. I have several doll rooms for my bjds that are filled with thrifted finds. I'll be sharing more about my doll rooms in later posts, but today for thrifty Thursday, I'd like to share with you all my most recent find. After dinner out with my family, we went to one of the local Volunteers of America. I found this cute little CD holder that will make a great locker/closet for my MSD boys who will be sharing a room. At only $1.51 plus sales tax, it was a steal!

The boys weren't around, so here is Vivian doing her best Vanna White impression to show the scale of the locker.

I decided that on it's own it was a bit to short. Vivian is quite a bit shorter than the boys. So I grabbed one of my other thirfted items and placed it under the locker and voila, Just right!

I may try to find something a little taller to place under the locker but for now this solution will work. Hope you enjoyed this find.

Tut Test Tuesday

Sooooo.... I haven't done the best job of keeping my blog updated. *coughTerribleJobcough* But I'm hoping to remedy that. I've spent a bit of time coming up with some things I would like to share and I hope people will enjoy seeing. So first things first, this will be my first Tut Test Tuesday.

Since I'm just getting started working on this I'm going to use a little bit of my previously posted content but I think it has value. There are all kinds of tutorial for BJDs out there on the world wide web, but there are also TONS of tutorials for many things that could be altered or utilized for BJDs even if that wasn't the original purpose of the tutorial.

A while ago, I was addicted to the swaps on Den of Angels. Like seriously addicted, but it was a lot of fun. One of the swaps that I joined was a Dark Circus swap and I had the pleasure of getting PoeticSoul as my swap partner. PoeticSoul, if you aren't familiar with her has some very unique dolls and she styles then in amazing and fun ways.

Well, for this particular swap her doll victim, I mean lucky participant was her MNM Johnny Depp guy who is the Mad Hatter. So I made a vest, suit coat, staff and of course the HAT.

I did a quick google search and found a pretty simple tutorial that made it easy for me to make the perfect Mad Hatter Hat. It can be found here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Burtons-Mad-Hatter-Hat/

I used cereal box cardboard to make the hat.

After following the measuring and cutting directions from the tutorial, I covered it in a soft faux leather that had a nice texture to it.

The inside of the brim is covered with material from a thirfted man's tie

The decoration around the hat is also from the tie and I made a matching vest from the same material.

I then added a few tie tacks, that I found at my local thrift store, as hat pins. And a floral decoration from JoAnns to complete the look.

Overall, I found the tutorial easy to follow and even easier to convert to dolly scale/use.

Tell me what you think. If you have any tutorial suggestions for me to try I would love it if you'd share them here. Thanks for reading!