After just getting back in town from being on the east coast for 2 weeks, I headed over to my new studio (unfortunately, my old studio closed very unexpectedly two weeks ago becuase of issues with the peole leasing that space, so I found a new one that’s close to downtown and this was my first time checking it out!) I’ll miss the old space a lot, and this new space doesn’t have nearly as many props, and is missing some other things..but it does have 2 cyc walls, and you don’t need to rent 2 studio spaces for it, so there are advantages. Just need to up my own prop game, which is just fine, and good for me to do anyway. The guy who owns the studio seems nice, and it has a lot of the same basic stuff, so it works for the time being.

Sarah, Marina, Beau, and Baby Charlotte

Marina, aka “Miss Sparkle” is very excited to be a big sister, and seems to have recently developed a teacher-oriented alter ego named Miss Sparkle, who made an appearance later in the evening when we were working on some shower invitations.

Sunday, the day we did the shoot, also happened to be Sandy’s Birthday. Sandy was Sarah’s older sister, and one of my best friends in the whole world. This weekend marked four years since her passing. We all ended up having dinner at Sarah’s mom’s house that evening, which was a nice way to finish things off, work on shower invites, and most importantly, remember the birthday of my very special friend (who I’m pretty sure has come to visit me recently, this week marks both her bday and her  anniversary of death, (and that death right there, makes this blog post at a word count of 444 which I think means your angels are with you, so maybe she’s here right now, laughing at my shitty, rambling attempt to blog…. Hi Sandy! <3) Needless to say, I was really honored that they asked me to come for dinner and that I got a chance to celebrate her birthday with them. It made the whole day extra special.

Anyway, to avoid any further posting involving my goofy randomness, I’ll just post a few of the amazing shots we got. Seriously, I don’t even need to say anything else anyway because there are no words for how gorgeous of a family they are,right!? Marina is always SUCH a fantastic model, but this time she also was helping with set up and creative direction, so lookout for my new  little assistant coming to a shoot near you!!!  Or maybe assistants, since baby Charlotte should be here very soon!!!

Baby Belly!

Big Sis

Beau getting kicked in the head

The good ol "heart" shot

Marina was LOVING the heart thing after that

XOXO!!

It looks like a pretty easy, straightforward process… though I’ve never tried it myself. That being said, I’m not totally sure that all of the brushes will work in GIMP, especially older ones that I made in old versions of Photoshop. If you try it, please do let me know how they work.

Here’s how you do it:

• Check the Gimp version you are using. Before you can use Photoshop brushes in Gimp, you will need to make sure you have a version of Gimp that supports the Photoshop brush format. This means making sure you using version 2.4 or higher. To check this, open Gimp and choose “Help” from the top tool bar. Now click the About option.
• Find the brush directory. You will be putting the new Photoshop brushes in the same place as your native Gimp brushes. To find out where that is click the “File” menu and choose the “Preferences” option. Near the bottom of the list you will find the option labeled “Folders.” Click the plus sign next to the folders. This will reveal a whole list options. One of the first (if not the very first) will be “Brushes.” Click on the “Brushes” icon and make note of what directory Gimp is storing your brushes in.
• Install the Photoshop brush file. Now that you know where to put them, you can load your Photoshop brushes into Gimp. This is simply a matter of copying the ABR brush file into the folder you identified in Step 2.
• Refresh the brush list. In order to make your new brushes usable, you will need to refresh the brush list. Go to the brushes within Gimp. Click on the small paintbrush to bring up the “brush selection” dialog. From here, you will see a button marked with two arrows. Click this button and your Photoshop brushes are now ready to use in Gimp.

Happy Gimping!
(and Happy Holidays for those of you that are into that sort of thing ;P)

In the next window again click on the small arrow on the right, this will open another menu panel, from there we can now load the new brushes.

From the new menu panel select ‘Load Brushes’ then select the photoshop brushes you want to load. All you need to do is locate the .abr file on your machine. And thats it, lots of things to click on but once you get used to it you can do it pretty fast. Once the new photoshop brushes are loaded you can select them by using the menu panel above.

Select the airbrush from the tools menu and then select a photoshop brush to use. You can downloaded Photoshop brush sets from here, or you can view more details on loading Photoshop brushes here.

Once you have selected a brush to use, there are a number of settings you can alter to produce different effects.

One good way to keep full control over the image is to use photoshop layers, these give great control over an image. To create a new layer click on the small icon at the bottom of the layers palate (figure 1) then click on the new layer, this selects it for use. Once you have spayed an image with a photoshop brush you can alter the opacity of the image by reducing the number in the opacity settings (figure 2). this is handy if the created image is too dark or if you want to overlay the image on top of another image.

Here is an example using a set of photoshop brushes showing what happens when you change the opacity settings on a layer, as you can see the smaller the number the more faded the image becomes.

Another good reason for using photoshop layers is that if you mess up on a layer you can delete it and the rest of the image is still ok. And another tip is to Duplicate Photoshop Layers then turn its visibility to off so its safe then work on the other layer, if you make a mistake on one of them up delete it and turn on the safe version and try again.

Another way to control the use of the photoshop brush is to alter the settings of the brush itself. In photoshop 5.5 the brush options are displayed in a floating pallete, to access this double click quickly on the tool you want to view the options on. Again there are quite a few settings to choose from but the main one is the pressure of the brush.

Now we have covered some of the basics select a Photoshop brush, add a new layer to the document, select it and press the mouse button, the longer you press the mouse button the stronger the image will become. Another technique to try is spraying e.g. white over the dark colours and build up layers, you can always change the opacity of the layers to add a transparent ghosted effect to the image.

(NOTE: The tutorial above is for an old version of Photoshop but the application and usage is still applicable for the most part if you are comfortable navigating the menus.)

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, the holidays have really been catching up with me this year! Lots of great stuff is coming up in the new year, though. Just wanted to throw up a couple pictures I took of the Lunar Eclipse that happened on the Winter Solstice…. incase any of you missed this amazing event.

Now I’m off to finish my last minute Christmas shopping! Pray for me, people

The ultimate power of the human mind is practically unknown to everybody. Different research and evidences have proved that we - human beings use only about 10% of our brain. However, there are different kinds and levels of psychic ability which vary with every individual.

All human beings are born with some kind of psychic abilities. All of us do have different psychic experiences in our daily lives. To be a psychic it is not necessary to be born with some extra ordinary and supernatural abilities. Psychic intuitions are something which can happen at any place, at any time and that too without any reason. The role of a psychic is not limited to predicting facts and events or giving messages. In order to act according to the information received, it is very necessary for a psychic to be a good communicator and be a compassionate human being. Thus the psychic powers can be developed by an individual at his/her own free will.

Lately, there has been an increasing demand to test the psychic ability present within an individual. In the recent past, psychics have never experienced such an overwhelming response and interest as it does today. This has especially been possible because of the rising trend of Internet and websites.