Tuesday, January 24, 2012

New Camera for Taking Pictures of Miniatures

Just got this camera yesterday and have been playing with it.  Here are a couple examples of pictures of miniatures that I took using the supermacro mode.  No tripod needed - the antishake/stablization system worked perfectly!

Olympus Stylus 7040 Camera

I got it for $129 from Amazon, ordered Fri and arrived Mon with free shipping!

Miniatures made by Nantasy Fantasy

China by Christopher Whitford, peonies by Michele Carter, pottery plate by Jane Graber, pottery vase by Joni Heitz, table by Bob Carlisle.
It also takes excellent pictures of full size things...

Albert



Maria
Panoramic shots...


And special effects...  the camera took this line drawing in line drawing mode.  I did no editing at at, except a slight crop.


It also does HD video clips with sound!

Friday, January 20, 2012

Miniature Tea Cozy

Just finished putting together a tea cozy after stitching it twice.  The lesson here is to double check the count of your gauze, as it may not be the size it's labeled to be!  After stitching the front, and being unable to find a backing fabric that was the right color and thickness, I decided to stitch a back.  I quickly stitched it up, but when I went to sew the front to the back, they were different sizes!  Well, since the back was larger than the front, I experimented thinking I might be able to trim the excess off the back.  Nope.  Then in the process of ripping out the stitching, I cut both the front and the back.  Sooooo, back to the drawing board, stitching both pieces on the same piece of gauze.  One important note - since silk gauze is not exactly even weave, it is important to orient front and back in the same direction (parallel rather than perpendicular to each other).


Here is the finished tea cozy.  The back is plain yellow with the scalloped blue border at the bottom.  The blue splotch above the border on the back is really my initials.  I can't get a good picture to save my life - my camera used to take wonderful mini pics, but it's become crotchety in its old age.  If anyone has suggestions for a new camera, I'm interested!  This one is a Fugi Fine Pix, and won't work with Windows 7, another reason to get a new one.  Downloading pics onto my old slow desktop and transferring to the new laptop is not worth the effort for such poor results.




The tea cozy, when stitched on 48 count silk gauze, is a perfect fit for a Christopher Whitford 1:12 scale teapot. This one is the Blue Net Lomonosov pattern. It also works well on the slightly smaller pottery teapot I have that was made by Jane Graber. Her tea pot is about the same height, but smaller around.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

More on my Dick Van Dyke Show house

Last fall I received this wonderful painting done by Karry Johnson for my Petrie house.  She is a joy to work with and did an amazing job!  I have two color still photos taken during rehearsals, and Karry used those to choose the colors.  The painting was not shown in those color photos, but she took colors from the rest of the room to coordinate.  The painting measures 2 inches by 3.75 inches.  Now to frame it....  http://www.karryjohnson.com/

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Wise Words from Keeper of the Fire

Eileen Campbell-Reed was one of my teaching assistants at Vanderbilt who is now a leader in academia and a fine example of ministry.  She has an exceptional talent for blogging, and this is a post from her archives that is directed to women considering a vocation in ordained ministry, but there is much practical advise here for anyone who is concerned with living well.  Click on the 'advice' tag of the blog if you're interested in reading follow-up posts that flesh out each of the numbered pieces of advice.

Wise Words from Keeper of the Fire

Thank you, Eileen!