Christiana Childers Photography Blog

I’ve been a crafting fool the last couple of weeks.  My friend Amy’s mom sent me some great fabrics from her online quilting store so I’ve been a bit on a sewing binge until my machine started causing me some trouble!  It’s fixed now so I hope to get back on the sewing projects but I thought I’d share with you another photo project I was working on as well.

Remember how I told you about the last project (Record Clock) where it was easier than I thought it’d be?  Well, this project lays (lies?…Mom’s always on me for not using this word correctly…I never can remember the rules), as most of my projects do, solidly in the “That’ll be a piece o’ cake!” and hours later….I’m swearing “Krauss!“  It shouldn’t be hard.  I was just wrestling with my printer…grrr.  ANYWAY, the project is this – Lora found me this super cool tray and our favorite boutique (aka Value Village). 

I wanted to take one of my photos and glue it to the bottom.  I’m trying to add a bit more color to my life so I picked a photo with a lot of blue.  It’s the bottom of a small boat that I took while living in Ireland.  I love the rusty stain and the crackley paint.

I found this free software that takes a photo and chops it up for you so you can print it out on your printer.  It’s called PosteRazor.  It’s pretty cool and easy.  My problems came when I wanted to print it on thick paper and my printer refused.  It also printed different colors for each piece and much darker than the actual photo (which I don’t know if that is a printer issue, software issue or a monitor issue) so that it doesn’t go very seamlessly together.  So I haven’t glued it down ’cause I’m not a 100% satisfied.  I might try printing it as one poster at somewhere like Kinkos but I don’t know.  What do you think?  Like it or try again?

Meanwhile, the tray looks kind of cool as is under my candles on my table…

I’ve had the idea for this project in my head for years and I can’t believe it took me so long to finally do it because it was so freaking easy!!  I’m not kidding.  You know how you have a project in mind and you think “that’ll be pretty easy” and it always takes longer than you think it’s going to – this one was one of the few that was actually easier than I thought it’d be!  Once I bought all the supplies, the whole project took me about 20 mins start to finish including taking the photo for the project.

Here’s the project – I bought a record and a clock at Value Village yesterday.  I think the record was a couple of bucks and the clock was $2.99.  Some of them where even cheaper but I liked this clock’s hands….

I took the clock apart in a minute while I was talking to my sis on the phone.  Then I took a few pictures of R listening to music and picked the one I liked best -

I then printed out the photo onto a CD label and stuck it onto the clock leaving the middle part of the label.

Next I took an exacto knife and cut the middle hole out, stuck the motor through the back and attached the hands…and that was it!

Here it is hanging in my kitchen -

I ended up putting double stick puffy tape that I had in between the motor and record just so it didn’t slip around.  The first time I put it together I put the hands on upside down so they were going back in time so I’d recommend either noting how its going together when you take your clock apart or put it together and watch it a minute before sticking it to the record.  I might add numbers someday too….  Try it and send me photos of your clock!

I love Summer.  I really really do.  So all the rain gets to me after a while.  It’s about now that I daydream of going to Hawaii, Mexico, Palm Springs…you get the picture.  But alas, it is not in the cards this year.  The next best thing, I’ve found, is to go through my photos from the previous summer.  It actually works!  It reminds me that it’ll be warm again – even HOT!  Yes!  So here are a few that made me feel warm.  Hope they make you feel that way as well – Have faith, my friend.    It will be warm again!

I apologize for my lack of posts lately.  I’ve been working on a bunch of cool projects!  More on them soon!!

Oh!  And one more thing – one of my favorite things to do is to talk books!  Mamabloo has her top ten list up and then people are adding to the list in the comments.  So fun to see what people’s faves are!

I’m sorry to do this to you all again.  I have more photos of my breakfast.  Maybe there is a self-help group I could join.  But this one is special and I’ll try to explain why.  First, for Christmas I was given the first dozen eggs from my sister-in-law and brothers chickens.  For all the teasing I’ve giving them for having chickens, I loved this gift.  I mean, would you just look at how beautiful they are?!

Then I made a perfect soft boiled egg, toasted some Irish brown bread that I’ve been savoring since a recent delivery from Ireland and served it with homemade jam from our neighbors.  Wouldn’t you take a photo too?  Please tell me you would…