Christiana Childers Photography Blog

I love Summer!  If you could tell by several of my posts where I whine about the rain and cold and no sun.  I’m so happy that we had such nice weather this weekend.  It changes my whole outlook.  I decided to decorate my mantle to reflect the season.  I’ve had this idea floating around in my head of taking an old book cover and use it t build a vintagey looking frame and use it for sepia photos or something.  Here is kind of what I was thinking…

But when I found my book, I fell in love with all the illustrations…

…so decided to make it more of a sea theme collage with a photo and illustrations from the book.

I cut the cover off the book and then cut some pieces of book board (really thick card board available at art stores) to fit the inside of the book as well as the binding -

I then flipped the piece above over and decoupaged photos and illustrations that I cut out of pages from the book.  It all looked a bit stark so I painted it a little.  OK, a lot.  I think I over did it a bit. Ah well.  Then I glued the book board piece to the book cover and put it on my mantle.

The photo is of the girls taking in the sunset in Northern Ireland.  It was such a beautiful evening and wonderful memory so I love this photo for all the feeling it evokes.  I also through some shells up on the mantle from Dublin which made me happy to use those in a fun way.

I saw a photo in Martha a few months back where she had illustrations of birds in the inside of  jars so I thought I could do the same with more of the illustrations from this book to add to my Summer themed mantle.

So that’s it!  What do you think?

I’m going back a little bit for this post as the baby that this shower was celebrating is now in her third month.  Here she is a few weeks old…

Isn’t she sweet!  So I hosted a shower for my dear friend Kari – we met in HS, went to college together, were roommates in college, in each others wedding and now we are neighbors!  Could you ask for anything better?!  Anyway, I wanted to use photos in my decorations because, well, that’s what I love. I collected a few baby things from friends who are in the baby stage and took photos of them then printed them out on thick paper and made decorations out of them while also adding some fun paper in there.  Here is the result -

I couldn’t let the paper scraps go to waste so made little flags out of some skewers I had on had and stuck them into the cupcakes.

All in all, it was a great little party and I just love using photos in new and unique ways!

Well, I feel myself slipping there.  I’m becoming a birder.  I think it has something to do with my camera, of course.  Although I prefer to take photos of people, there is something very satisfying about getting a shot like this…

Ben and I went down to Juanita Bay park on Sunday morning and I was just giddy at all that was going on.  This Red Wing Blackbird defending its nest against the Heron.  I love listening to the RW Blackbirds.  They have the coolest call.  One landed right by me and posed for a shot.

The turtles were also out all over enjoying the sun like true Seattlites.

And then there were THREE Bald Eagles out on the water.  One started heading towards us and I snapped this.  Its a bit out of focus probably because I was so excited it was coming toward me!  If you think I’m uncool for being a bird nerd, you cannot tell me that it isn’t cool to see three Bald Eagles soaring over the lake!

The weather this Spring has been a bit much for me.  Just when you think it’s going to warm up for good, we get hit with more rain and COLD.  I’m trying to decide if the rain would bother me as much if it wasn’t so cold.  Anyway…with umbrella and grumpy attitude in hand I walked R to school this morning when I saw this!

You can almost just see the fairies collecting water beads to make their tea!  So I ran home and got my camera and starting walking around the ‘hood snapping shots of all the water collection on the leaves.  I started to feel the grumpiness peel away.

This one reminds me of the “Mustard Off Pools’ from Dr. Suess’ “Happy Birthday To You” book.  That was my favorite part of that book growing up.

And this one is for you Muggs!

This one is in my garden.  I forget what this plant is called but it usually has a pool of water saved in the center of its fan leaves.

So if you are feeling grumpy about the weather, pick up your camera to help you see the rain in a whole new way.  It certainly helped me.

Here’s one that my friend Amy shot in Dublin.  She was tired of waiting for the rain to stop to go out and shoot.  I love it!

I did a photo shoot this weekend that I’m so proud of and I’m dying to post about! One of my favorite photos of my life has come out of it. But I have to wait until the first of June as it is a surprise for the family.  Obvisiously, they know I took pictures of them but they can’t see the final product because it is getting rolled into their house remodel which is being done Trading Graces.  Trading Graces is a whole post on its own. It’s so exciting!  I can’t wait to tell you all more soon!!

Meanwhile, I got to go to an Fashion Show called “Sunny Mood” with some local designers in Seattle on Friday which was really fun!  The designers where uber talented.  I’m not much of a high fashion gal so I was really there for the art but I did really like what I saw in the fashion show.  The venue for the show was so cool also.  It’s called Sole Repair on Capital Hill.  It’s what I always wanted in my dream home which looks a lot like a warehouse apartment.  Exposed brick walls, giant metal beams and a funky huge roll up window in the front.  My friend Neece Clark did all the art for the show (and this is how I knew about the show).  She had some stunning paintings up and it is so fun to see her work evolve.  Just when you can’t imagine it being better!  I’m fortunate to own some of her art and this show made me want even more! ”Honey, would it be OK if we sold one of our cars to buy a painting?”  I’m almost there.

I was also so impressed with the floral design at the show.  So creative!!  Here’s a photo I took on my iPhone of my friend Mary and the dress form bouquet.

Isn’t that clever?! And isn’t Mary the cutest thing?!  The floral designer is Meghan Stoller (meghannaehr@hotmail.com) and her business is called Mum.  Now I kind of want to have a wedding so I can have clever flower arrangements done by Meghan.  “Honey, we are selling the car and getting married….again.”

Here’s a fun photo project if you have a bit of sewing know-how.  The girls and I made one of these for my nephew and my sister-in-law liked it so much she asked me to make on for a friend of her’s who just had a baby.  I think it turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

If you want to try this yourself here are a couple of tips;

1. I used iron-on transfer paper which worked OK but for the book I made for my nephew, I used a special fabric that you can print right onto.  This worked so much better since you have to iron the pages over and over again when making the pages and with the iron-on transfers, you have to be really careful not to put a hot iron right on the page.  The only reason it didn’t do that this time is I felt like they really sucked up the printer ink so thought it’d save my ink.  If I do this again,  I think I’d go back to that printer paper(fabric). It saves a lot of time because your not ironing and then sewing, it’s just there for you.  Pretty cool.

2. If you use the iron-on transfer, you have to print it backwards!  Big tip!!

3. It worked well for me to make this book so each finished page was sewed together to three other pages (foursided pages) and then I sewed those finished pages altogether to make the finished book.  The middle page was a stand alone so I sewed the ribbon on there to finish it.  I had to make up a mock book out of paper in order to make sure I got all the pages together right.  It made my brain hurt to try to figure this out until I made up a mock.  So the front and back pages are sewn together but, as you look at it the front is on the right, and then back on the left so that when you fold it, it opens the right way.  Then I sewed that together with the first page and the last page and so on.  Does that make sense?  It’s hard to explain but if you do a mock up, it’s easy to figure out.

If anyone tries this, send me a photo!!  I want to see it!

We’ve started a tradition with my friends where when one of our girls turns 13, we have a little weekend away to honor this transition from girl to young woman.  My friend Michelle came up with the idea feeling that we don’t do enough in our culture to recognize this stage in kids’ lives.  I think she’s right.  In a culture that tries to ignore teenagers (i’m not saying I don’t get why!), I think it is important to say “Hey! We’re behind you and we love you.”

So Jade recently turned 13.  Jade is my good friend Kari’s neice who now is Jade’s guardian.  She is a sweet and massively cute girl who is a regular (and very popular) babysitter for my girls.  We all went away for an overnighter at a cabin and had enough food to last for weeks, chatted, laughed, painted and just enjoyed each other.  It is good for the soul to just be with other women!

One of the things we did and have done in the past to commemerate the event is to do a group art project.  This always falls to me to organize.  Usually we take a photograph and chop it up into smaller squares and have each person paint a square and then put it all back together.  It always makes me laugh when I hear from almost everyone, “Oh, I can’t paint/draw”, or “I’m not creative” or simply “Do I have to?!” and I say “yes, you have to and it’ll be great.  Trust me.”  I’m happy to report that it always is great and it seems to suprise people that they can actually do this!  For Jade’s art we didn’t have a picture but did individual tiles and put them all together.

Look how good it turned out!