Author Archives: zefiart

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About zefiart

Blogger, DIY-er, poodle lover, graphic designer, dog groomer, recycler, artist, wonder woman in my spare time.

oil painting the cheat way – photoshop filter

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I’ve always been good at using Photoshop to manipulate images – notice my new banner? I created that using a photo I took of the old typewriter on the porch, type and 2 vintage poodle images.

I’ve always been able to play with pictures to create all kinds of things, from simple alterations like removing or adding a person, taking liberties with colours, or creating something entirely fictional. I enjoy doing it and, if I was to be completely honest, I also enjoyed the knowledge that not everyone can do that kind of stuff.

Then I found picmonkey and it was so easy to adjust colours and add effects, I kind of forgot about Photoshop for a while. All I did was resize, crop and add the occasional effect to images for a long time.

That is, till recently when I got Adobe CS6 on my laptop. Now I’ve started doing stuff with PS again and remembering why I loved it. Like the Christmas and New Year’s cards. Those were quick and easy, removing type and creating backgrounds where I needed them… but doing something like the banner, that’s way more fun.

I used to do a lot of that type of thing for websites, but I don’t design websites for people any more. Here’s one I designed for my poodle website years ago, using 4 separate images: a photograph of a drawing I’d done of my first standard poodle (Pagan), some pastels, a background and a photo I took of Pagan at a show.

But I digress. I was posting to share an amazing effect I found in Photoshop that I’d never known before. Its called Oil Paint and its under Filters.

Here are some pics I played with – the mist in the hills opposite our place on a hot rainy day. Before:

After:

I really love the way it interprets the trees. I want to paint like that!
Here’s another one, a portrait of Montana, before:

After:

Ok, pretty good but definitely not its strong point.

It really comes into its own when you do something like this – the trellis in the yard with rusty chains, the birdhouse I made and an old lantern. Before:

After:

I love this one especially. Amazing isn’t it? Like professional illustrations.
This one’s great too – the old kid’s bike near the trellis. Before:

And after:

I don’t know whether to be thrilled or depressed about this discovery. I LOVE the effect. I love the pop arty colours and the swirliness of it. I love the curly leaves and way everything looks spot on perfect.

But I’m depressed too. Cause why would anyone need to paint any more when you can do this type of thing to your photos with a filter?

Sigh.

z

felt phone pouches

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Well, looks like my ribs aren’t smashed after all. They feel so much better today, they must have just been bruised.
Mind you, the painkillers the doc gave me helped some…
Still, its so good to be able to breath normally again!
I finally got around to taking pics of some phone pouches I’d made. Most of these were made before Christmas as gifts and the last one I made this week for myself.
This one was for a friend named Matthew (hence the M) its my first attempt at making something ‘masculine’… I used a felted grey jumper and some suede fabric to make this one. I used some of the elastic bottom of the jumper for the side of the pouch.

I made this one for my friend Patrice. She’s a cat person. As in, she owns a cat. Well, so does Matthew, but I couldn’t really give a guy a pouch with a cat on it… just didn’t seem right…

The pics aren’t great… I apologise. Somewhere in the mess of the casita is my lightbox. I’ll get it out again one day.
Patrice’s pouch is made from felt squares, tan inside and dark blue outside. I use hair elastics for the ties on most of these.

The one on the left below is made of a piece of felt square on the outside and a bit of felt I wet felted on the inside. Its much thicker than the blue one as my wet felted bits are thicker than bought squares.

FYI The little critter on the outside is meant to be a monster, not a cat. Just so you know.

I rolled the inner lining over at the top and made a simple close with buttons on both sides. I decided to keep that one for myself cause I love the little critter, but my mobile was too long for it. I had to do some surgery and re-make it.

What I did was undo the fold over top, add another piece of the wet felted stuff, back it with some leftover tan, and add the buttons and elastic to the front. I think its much cuter this way.

Then this week I got bored sitting around doing nothing so I made another pouch just ’cause I could.
And cause I never put away all the felting stuff.
I’ve always loved the etch-a-sketch ipad covers and stuff I’ve seen on Pinterest so I made my own.
I used the same felted grey sweater I used for Matthew’s pouch for the body, I even used some of the elasticated knit from the sleeves to make a kind of neck opening.
They may not be the most practical cause you actually have to take the phone out to use it, but they’re fun and they offer a certain amount of protection from rough handling. They also keep the phone safe from scratches when inside a handbag. 
The only thing that concerns me a little is that my poodles have shown a taste for felt and I’m worried that one day one of them might grab the phone in its pouch and think “Yummm, this is nice. Soft on the outside, crunchy on the inside.”
z

the big questions

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Seeing as the this whole busted rib episode has slowed me down, I’ve had a lot of time to think.

Most of the time I try to drown out that voice in the back of my head that asks the hard questions. Like:

Is this all there is to life?
Am I on the right path?
Is this job what I want to do forever?
Should I aggressively try to build up my own grooming business and work for myself?
Should I try to be a serious blogger?
What alternatives are available to me?
Why was I born?
Where is the chocolate?

Most of the time I succeed in silencing the voice.

Its easy enough to do.

I put on a dvd. I read a book. I make things.

Just looking at my To Do list is enough to befuddle my brain into numbness.

But the questions remain. Lurking. Waiting for that moment I let my guard down and don’t have a power tool or clippers in my hand to fend them off.

Really. What do I want to be when I grow up? I’m still asking myself that question. My body is slowly falling apart but my brain is still that of a lost 13 year old.

I’ve said this before and I stand by it: the more choices you have in life, the harder it is to make a decision.

I’m so lucky. I’m creative and there are so many things I love/like/want/enjoy doing. Its hard to pick just one and concentrate on it.

It irks me to see people with little talent and creativity make a success of their lives, but its cause they pick something and work at it. I take my creativity for granted… I can do almost anything I put my mind to, so I do something, master it, then move on.

Story of my life. Jack of all trades, master of none.

I do a little bit of everything and in the end, I get nowhere.

I can figure out how to do things and I can actually follow through with them. I even finish things occasionally 99% of the time. But how can I pick something and concentrate on that and become successful at that – in a way that translates into an income?

Ah.

Now there’s a hard question.

z

busy bees

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When I say ‘busy bees’, I mean real bees, not me. I’m lying around the house trying not to move and work up a sweat in the heat. 
And not to put strain on my aching ribs which have put a limit on the amount of oxygen I can pull into my lungs at any given time…
Do you have bumble bees where you are? We do. I’d never seen these bees till I came to live in Tasmania. They’re big and round and drone kind of like the Boeing 747 of the bee world.

Have I mentioned I love my new camera? Its a cherry red Nikon Coolpix L830 that I got almost new on ebay.
Have I mentioned I love ebay?

It has an incredible 30x optical zoom (incredible when I had a 3x with my old camera). Its very handy when you want to take pics of animals in the distance. Like the geese.

Of course, full zoom needs a tripod or you just get blur, but I have one of those. A Velbon tripod, in great condition.

I got it on ebay.

Naturally.

Did I mention we’re one goose down? We had three geese originally, they had 3 babies. Two girls and one boy.

Unfortunately one of the girls got into the yard before Christmas and the dogs killed her.

I was really upset. But to be fair, they did leave her when I called them. It was just too late. They’d already broken her neck and she died in my arms.

Wayne and I buried her near the dam.

Everyone said “Why didn’t you eat her? She’d have made a great Christmas dinner”…

How could we? She was our goose. She wasn’t bred to eat.

One of our new chickens is going broody. She’s trying to nest in a sky box in the chicken coop. No forethought on her part. I mean, what’ll happen to any chicks she has soon as they step out of the box?
Splat.
Anyway, we’ve been taking her eggs and she’s been getting increasingly cranky about it. Wayne thought that maybe we should just catch her and let her go broody in Stalag 13*. That way any chicks won’t have to skydive before they can walk, and will be less likely to be crow food.
I’m not sure I want chicks.
We have 4 chickens and currently get 4 eggs a day. Its hard for us to keep up with that. Sure, with the new law saying that people with under 20 chickens can sell eggs without going through all kinds of regulations and stamping of eggs, which cancelled out the previous new law which made it illegal to sell home laid eggs without accreditation, we can sell our eggs to support our chicken habit…
But having chicks means getting roosters as well as hens.
And that means we have to make a decision: what do we do with the roosters? We can’t drive them up the highway and dump them on the side of the road like so many people do. We can’t bribe people to take them, or smuggle one into every visitor’s bag as they’re leaving. 
We can’t eat them cause by the time we know they’re roosters they’ll have names.
Sheesh. 
Mom was wrong. I’d never make a good farmer’s wife!
z
*Stalag 13: Original dog kennel on the property when we bought it. Its been used to incarcerate escape artist dogs, house roosters (given to us by a friend for the pot, and accepted by Wayne who thought ‘no worries’ then found he couldn’t kill and eat them cause “they were cute”), and raise various clutches of ducklings to save them from aforementioned crows. I was considering converting it to a green house for winter, but hey, winter is months away and who needs a green house in summer?

anatomy of a fall

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I’m feeling a bit better this afternoon. The pain killers no doubt helped some. I think I’ll live.

On one of my short breaks from the ugly purple recliner I thought I’d take some photos for you.

These are the culprit tyres.

And this is a diagramatic re-enactment.

I don’t care if that’s not a real word.

Ouch.

Imagine me lying on my side, elbow bent underneath me bottom left, my feet up between the two tyres. Not a pretty sight. Luckily no one around with a smartphone.

Please note the gravelly clay soil. Much like cement.

On the upside, I’m getting to catch up on computer and mobile phone stuff… On the downside I’m not crossing things off my never-ending-renovation-To-Do-List.

Speaking of smartphones, did I mention my new mobile phone? New to me anyway.

I had an el cheapo mobile phone which I bought when I lost my old mobile about 4 years ago. It cost me something like $75. It was simple. Took calls, made calls. Took photos which were impossible to see on the tiny screen, and refused to open multimedia messages.

I’d been wanting a new phone for a while. Not a long time, but I was getting there.

Then one day I ran over my old phone.

I swear, I did not do it on purpose! Many won’t believe that, but I swear its true.

In fact I have no idea how my mobile ended up on the other side of the driveway, near the gate.

Anyway, while lamenting my carelessness great loss on FB (as you do) cause I was going through an especially broke stage and couldn’t afford a new phone… and at a time when my grooming work should have been booming, but wasn’t, due to a lack of aforementioned roadkill phone…

… someone offered me an old phone.

Its a 2 year old Huawei Ascend and its my first ever smartphone.

A steep learning curve which I’m enjoying.

I am ever so grateful.

I am a big believer in doing good for people cause good will come to you from unexpected sources. I’m always giving things away to people who want or need them rather than sell them for personal gain. I’ve never been a “what’s in it for me” person.

Then, when I need something, someone kind will give me what I need.

Like a mobile phone. Or old carpet, or a doona cover.

So I’ve spent today working on a logo design, editing and cropping photos, cleaning up files on my computer, learning about apps and figuring out how to fix an “insufficient storage” error on the phone.

Anyway, I leave you with a couple of pretty pics of the tyre embankment which shows that one day, this will be a pretty wall of plants and not just a row of tyres.

z

no longer an ugly duckling

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You’ve come a long way baby!

(Does anyone remember the Virginia Slims ad? or am I just too old?)

I am loving my home. I get so much enjoyment out of stepping out the door onto our front porch and just looking at it and the garden. Sure, the back deck (or the poop deck as its affectionately known) is still a mess, it really needs a roof and bird evictions, and there’s still a healthy farm-like amount of crap around the place… but its home and its becoming beautiful – and I love it.

We went from this:

To this:

What’s not to love?
You can read more about the before and afters here.
Here is the back deck, unpainted, exposed… I have plans for that… one day… till then I pretend I can’t see it.

The deck is welcoming and cosy now. The potato vine has gone bezerk and provides dappled shade in one small area.

Soon the pale yellow banksia roses on the trellis should also hide the water tanks on the left. And once the potato vine spreads a little more to both sides there’ll be more shade in the afternoons.

The plan is that when we roof the back deck we’ll just put more trellis on the corner and make it sort of like an arbour area where you can sit in dappled sunlight with plants growing around you. Perhaps a pink banksia rose… I’d love a purple potato vine but they’re not so hardy, and I’d love a jasmine but I’ve killed two of them so far.

Maybe I’ll stay away from them.

Ah… home. In this pic you can almost not see the bare spots on the weeds lawn where I sprayed Roundup. As I keep saying, if it wasn’t for weeds we’d have no green. 

There is still much to do but at least I can say I’ve managed to do something over the Christmas break. I finished painting the front of the house where we had bare timber from moving the kitchen windows. I undercoated the enclosed porch area ready to paint. And I put up my corner brackets, something I’d been planning to do for the last couple of years.

Now, if I wasn’t such a clutz I’d be out there painting today. Top coating the enclosed area and all the window surrounds.

Instead I’m sitting in the ugly purple recliner trying to move as little as possible.

Why you ask?

I was climbing ladders, on uneven ground, for days painting and screwing in brackets and I was fine.

All I did was water the embankment yesterday and I think I’ve cracked a rib.

I need to rethink riding again… I don’t think I should get on anything with its own feet. I can’t be trusted on my own two feet.

Let me explain: the embankment is made up of old tyres. A bit redneck but in the spirit of recycling, which I’m into big time. Its a steep embankment, impossible to walk up at the best of times. The other day I’d walked along the top tossing down the tyres from the top line that I thought were unnecessary.

Obviously, I didn’t put them out of the way or stack them nicely. I left them where they fell.

My bad.

So, while watering last night I was walking along the bottom of the embankment, a small channel which catches rainwater and directs it away from the house, when I tripped on one tyre, stepped back to get my balance and stepped on another, bounced off it and landed like a sack of potatos.

Hm… not quite. A sack of potatos keeps its shape.

I landed like a sack of potting mix. With a big splat, on my left side, on my left arm and on my ribs. My whole weight just kind of formed around and over my arm so that I had to kind of pry myself up.

After I’d caught my breath… ie about 3 minutes of moaning and groaning in pain.

It probably took me 5 minutes to stand up and pick up the hose again. I’d been lying in the ditch of course so of course I was covered in mud.

Like a trooper, I kept watering. It had to be done, right?

Then I went into the house and sooked to Wayne while I changed and washed the gravel off my arm.

The elbow is bruised but doesn’t hurt. In fact, the right elbow (which was nowhere near the squash zone) still hurts more than the left, but the bruising is impressive.

Its my ribs that hurt. And the weight of my left breast. Youch. (Wayne kindly offered his support. Pun intended.)

I can breath but deep breaths hurt and moving hurts.

Wonderful.

I’ve had broken ribs before. Many times.

You don’t want to know.

There’s nothing to be done but rest and patience. So, whether its soft tissue damage or a broken rib, I just have to wait it out.

Wonderful.

I still have a week off work and I had so much to do.

NOT happy Jan.

z

PS. I watch too much TV and have a head full of quotes and movie trivia.

new year, new resolutions?

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Its been a quiet day in Lake Wobegon at Wind Dancer Farm. I know its the beginning of a new year and all that, but really, its just another day for us.
I got up this morning and brushcut the lawn since our mower is broken (great). And soon I’ll be going outside to attempt more house painting despite the wind. My resolution is to finish painting the house before I need to start re-painting it.
I spent the last couple of days painting my decorative brackets, figuring out how to attach them to the porch posts and pre-drilling them. They’re now ready to go up. If my right arm can manage it, I’ll put them up today. I own a very heavy drill and have a dodgey elbow and wrist…
It’ll be nice to have the porch finished. Wayne got annoyed with all my junk on the porch a few weeks ago and did a huge clean up. It looks great now (or will once I finish painting and can pick up drop sheets, ladders and paint buckets), but my workshop is full of the crap I had ‘resting’ on the porch. 
At least the front of the house is almost looking gorgeous. The porch facing the back of the house (though its technically the front of the house cause that’s where the front door is… go figure) doesn’t yet have a roof over it and thus no posts to fix brackets to. I haven’t even painted it. Seems silly to paint the rails on that side since I’m planning to redo that part of the porch in the future.
The distant future…
You know what they say? Time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve been resting, relaxing, reading, socializing and trying to get a few things done while I’m on holidays. Hopefully I can cross a few things off my To Do list before I get back to work. And do some creative stuff to share as well!
Hope everyone has a great 2015!
z

boring pine chest to pretty pine chest

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Here’s something I learned today:

Sanding dust can give your hair great texture. Forget expensive sculpting gels, mud or whatever. Just go sand something.

…It does nothing for your hands however.

Anyway, thought I’d share a successful makeover (unlike so many not so successful ones).

When Wayne and I moved in together, he had two tallboys and a wardrobe. They were plain pine and rather boring. One of the tallboys was a mess, the drawers kept dropping when you pulled them out, the base was falling out of them… its in the casita right now holding odds and ends till I decide whether I can fix it.

The other one and the wardrobe went into our bedroom… I use them for my own clothes cause I made Wayne his own walk in wardrobe

Yes. The man has more clothes than I do! And shoes. What can I say?

I make do with a measely pine wardrobe and two chests of drawers: a smaller one I bought when I lived in Fentonbury and the one Wayne owns.

I always planned to do something with them but I had to wait till I had time and energy. Not so much for the painting, but for the carting and carrying. I’d already painted my chest of drawers white many years ago, so I wanted to make the three of them match better.

At least be less offensive.

I don’t have any before photos cause I didn’t take any. And the external drive I put all my old photos on has decided to not work… I found this photo online which will give you an idea of what it looked like. The one I’ve done up is a 6 drawer tallboy, it doesn’t have the two smaller drawers at the top. The one in the casita has the two smaller drawers, but you get the idea. Nothing fancy, just a plain pine chest of drawers. No cute feet, no fancy bits, just plain jane.

So, first thing I did was empty everything onto the bed (and then the floor cause we need to sleep in the bed!) and take it down to the casita where the tools are. I gave it a very light sand and then painted it with some antique white I mixed up with a bit of unsanded grout. I like the look and feel of chalk paint and have always just made my own.

In the vein of using what I have and not spending extra money, I looked through my collection of handles and knobs. I needed 12, not so easy to have 12 matching ones. So I decided to mix and match and I love the result.

For the top two drawers I used simple black metal handles I got on clearance last year. I wish I’d bought more.

For the lower drawers I used the black cup pulls I’d originally bought for the kitchen but decided they were too small. They’re fine for the drawers. I have delicate fingers…
After the entire thing was painted (and some of the drawers glued and clamped) I gave the whole thing a light sand, revealing a bit of timber here and there… not overly distressed. Just enough.
Lastly I gave it a wax using some lemon scented furniture wax I got on ebay last year. The wax gives it some protection from being marked or getting grimy fingerprints and makes it easier to dust.
If you ever feel like dusting, that is.

All the bedrooms in this house are small. Annoyingly so. Its not easy to decorate and have storage without the room feeling cluttered. Unmatched items make it worse.

Maybe I really need to try and fix the matching chest of drawers…

I wonder if I can change the tracks on the drawers to make them work better…?

z

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the laziest christmas tree in the universe

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Ok, since I mentioned my poor attempt at Christmas decorating, I thought I’d share my pathetic ‘tree’ for this year.

I was going to build a tree out of old timber or a pallet, which would have required sawing, nailing, measuring, assembling… but while searching my scrap pile I saw this piece of door I’d been using to spray paint items on. You can see some gold, white and black…

I checked it. It was rough, it took chalk… So much easier than building a tree!

There. Are you satisfied?

The poodles are ok with it, so I’m good with it.

And no mess to clean up. When I’m over looking at it, I just take it down to the casita and use it to spray paint on again.

z

artist case

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In case you’re wondering what Wayne got for Christmas, well he got a couple of things. Two of them were Viking related: a feast knife and a Fenris cross (a norse wolf cross).

He likes Vikings… what’s not to like about them?
Anyway, the other thing I got him involved a bit of gathering separate (but related) items and a bit of DIY.
I’d seen a soluble graphite presentation box which I liked but when I went back to get it they were sold out. They only had a smaller version but it just wasn’t as good. The box I’d seen originally had a soluble graphite block, a soluble pit charcoal block and a brush. 
I decided I’d buy the bits and make my own presentation/carry case for Wayne. I bought a small tub of soluble pit charcoal, one each of graphite in regular colour and one sepia, an eraser, 2 soluble graphite pencils in different leads and three brushes of different sizes.
I located an old tin toolbox I had in the casita which was perfect. I had two of them, cause I collect things like that… I made one into a grooming room sign a few years ago (and sorry, I don’t have a photo, I put all my photos and a heap of other stuff on an external drive which decided to give up the ghost), and the other was the perfect size for Wayne’s gift.
So, first things first: I gave it a good clean and a bit of a scrub with some steel wool. Its got some rust and some staining, but hey, that’s part of the beauty of it, right? I then painted his nickname on it.
 
But the best thing is the inside!
I had to make compartments for each of the bits so they wouldn’t just jumble around. They needed to have their own little spots. 
I had an offcut of pine which was just the right size. I cut the bits I needed, sanded any rough spots off, then used liquid nails to glue it together.
Overkill? Perhaps. But I couldn’t find the PVA and the liquid nails was there, saying “go on, use me!”

I also used the glue to fix the pine frame to the tin.

I added a small bowl I had for water, put in the pencils, brushes and graphite blocks. Voila. Presentation case and carry case all in one!

I had planned to spray paint it, but I like the plain pine. I may have to give it a clear coat later to protect the timber from staining, but maybe not. It might add to the patina… what do you think?
I added a good quality drawing block and gave it to Wayne this morning. Now I await his masterpieces.
At least I hope he tries it out. He used to do pen and ink work years ago and I’d like to see him art again.
z