It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas

I thought I'd share some Christmas pictures with you! I'm going to be entering several photography contests, but I don't want to clutter up the blog with a million and one posts. Thus, I am going to put all of the pictures here in one big long post-- and will be updating this post with any new photos. 

Enjoy!

1.

This little ornament is so beautiful-- pure, simple, and patient love and joy, awaiting the birth of the Savior!

Notice that I used a new technique-- bokeh lights!

2.

This was another attempt at Bokeh Lights. All I had to do was set my camera to macro, low apeture, and no-flash, step 10 feet away from the Christmas tree, focus on my hand, move my hand, and take a picture!

...sounds much more confusing than it is. :)

I ran the bokeh shot through Photoshop a couple of times... :)

I also tried to do some Custom Bokeh Pictures, and seen in the tutorial at Kevin and Amanda, but there are always downfalls to not owning an SLR camera.

3.

My parents gave me free reign to decorate a shelf in our living room. I went all out-- totally dismantling and re-decorating our wreath, wrapping boxes, promising to climb up there each week to water the poinsettias...

4.

There is nothing more exquisite than a collection of little Nutcrackers. I am seriously in love with these. And isn't the sepia tone perfect?

5.

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7.

Of course, one must never forget the reason for the season. No matter how overused that phrase may be.

This is one of my favorite music boxes of all time. It is so beautiful... Be sure to "click to enlarge" on all of these!

Older Photos 

Photos I took a few years ago that I still think are rather good. I love discovering forgotten files.

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10.

11.

9.

These photos are from a failed attempt at a photoshoot last year.

10.

Photo Challenges

This is my first time doing these photo challenges, and I'll admit it-- many of these challenges I just heard about. (Mostly by bloghopping links from Aspire and on from there.)

Photo #1 ~ Little Drummer Boy

Photo #4 ~ Nutcrakers ~ Week One, Decorations
Photo #2 ~ Bokeh Lights ~ Week Two, Christmas Lights
Photo #8 ~ My Sister Laughing in the Snow~ Week Three, Faces

Photo #8 ~ The First Snow

Photo #11 ~ Firewood

Photo #8 ~ The First Snow

Photo #2 ~ Bokeh

Photo #4 ~ Sepia Nutcracker Family

Photo #7 ~ The Holy Family

(I would also be entering the handmade Christmas presents part of this Festival, but many of my family and friends read this blog... So none of it is going up here until after Christmas!)

And on that Note...

Dear readers, do you like how I've clumped all of these photos together in one post? This is an ARTS and crafts blog, and photography is one of the arts I enjoy. However, the focus is not on photography. In the future, should I always do long posts like this that I occasionally update? Or should I make new posts? 

Also... do you like any of these photos? Which are your favorites? What could I improve? 

Leave a comment, please!

I&F December 2010

"It's time to journey into the past along with the I&F staff as we take adventures in one-room schoolhouses, homes without running water, and visiting the little houses of Laura Ingalls. Also a special interview with Melissa Wiley, author of "Little House in the Highlands." "

The December issue of Ink and Fairydust is out!

Find past issues on our website: { www.InkAndFairydust.com }

Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication between me and Q (the head graphics/layout manager), my column and comic did not make an appearance this month. But there are some really, really neat articles about life back in pioneer times!

Wordle Word Cloud

"Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe" word cloud

I love typography. Words themselves are so beautiful; they are an art of ideas, and can be an art in themselves.


Maybe that is why I love calligraphy. Even without the fancy pens... I tend to add swirls or lengthen lines or change the shapes of many letters. (although I will NOT claim that my ordinary handwriting is very pretty). And on the computer... Oh, so fun! I love downloading fonts and creating typography. It's amazing what a little difference can do to impact the visual presentation and the "theme" of a word!

I've found a really neat website, called { Wordle } which lets you make word clouds and edit all sorts of settings. It's about 100X faster than making a typography cloud yourself, and you still gets lots of customization!


Wordle lets you manually choose words, as I did in the first picture. I ran the image through Photoshop to make it focus on the words "Shealynn's Faerie Shoppe".  You can type words multiple times, and they will appear larger than other words.

I tried this for an essay-- copy and paste into Wordle's magic box. The result was much prettier than the essay :)

Click to enlarge

Wordle can make clouds based on websites! Here, you can see the most frequent words used on this blog, all on a pretty little word cloud!

Click to enlarge

Here it is again-- but with different settings.

Click to... you get the picture

Even my { ArtFire shoppe } can be made into a Wordle. I had no idea that my most-used word was "SOMETHING"!!! Haha! The Shoppe is full of lots of "somethings!"


This is a quick typography project for anyone! You could do so much with it... I might print one out and slide in a school binder; what do you think?

Beautiful Ideas...

A dream...

I recently stopped by the craft store while they were having a wonderful sale on the beautiful Swavorski Crystal beads and findings.

I absolutely love these beads... but they are expensive, even at sale prices. So I settled with a couple of sets of my absolute favorites...

These beads are so stunning that I immediately went to my craft table to dream away. I saw dream, because making a bracelet in the stunning design shown above would cost almost $30 for the supplies alone...  I can't justify that for myself. And I don't yet know if something like this would sell in my Shoppe... and besides, I bought the beads to use as focals in some more of my popular "Royalty Teardrop" design.

(However, if any of you readers want a bracelet like this, you'll make me very, very happy.)

While dreaming, I took pictures of some ideas... And I say some, for I am always chock-full of ideas. I sooo wish that I had an excuse to buy a ton of these beads and make these ideas a reality!

The same design as shown above

Wouldn't clusters of these be stunning on a bracelet?

You can always use different colors... or a mix of colors!

Cool necklace idea...

I want a jewelry set like this! A crystal drop necklace... Sparkling dangle earrings... (I didn't have enough purple beads to put one at the bottom of the other earring for this picture, lol!

Well, there you go. My musings in beads...

Christmas Is a'Coming!

Advent is here... Did you know that Adventus means "preparation" in Latin? Yah, I hate Latin with passion... but sometimes it's nice to know a bit.

It's time to prepare for our Savior's birth. To make our hearts ready to welcome Jesus. A time to enjoy God's gifts: friends, family, and the countless blessings that literally make our lives. And, of course, a time to give gifts, just as God gave us His Son. (But none of our gifts are anywhere near as awesome, lol!)

Getting ready for Christmas... The Fairy dressed up just for you. :D

I always like to make homemade gifts for Christmas. Spending time making handmade gifts is truely a way of showing you care-- and a way of fighting the materialism that is taking over the season. Not that I wouldn't like any of the expensive gadgets or toys or bajillion things you can't make by hand... :) But handmade gifts are more personalized, aren't they?

Please be sure to explore my blog and use any { tutorials } to make some handmade gifts! Feel free to ask me questions if you run into problems. If you do make something, leave a comment on my blog! It would make my day if someone put all that hard work to good use!!!

Don't have time to make enough handmade gifts? Do you lack the experience or somehow lost out on the crafting-gene?

{ Check out the NEW Christmas-themed jewelry in my Shoppe! } These jewelries go great with anything, any season. :) They make the perfect stocking stuffers (and will make your blogger very, very happy!). Each is one-of-a-kind, and I am happy to work on custom orders!

Don't forget to order soon, so that your order can arrive on time!

Shealynns-Faerie-Shoppe

Unique Gifts

(Isn't this Artfire feature cool? It's called a "Rapid Cart" and allows you to purchase items from the Shoppe, without even leaving my blog! If I had the paid version of Artfire, I could customize it to show only the Christmas-themed jewelry. Unfortunately I can't afford that yet... so here are 15 randomized items from my Shoppe.)