…as in, can you say “Happy as a Pig in Poop” ?  That’s what I was this past Saturday.  Captain Hubby & I paid a visit to the family in Sarasota and while wandering around downtown during a street fair, we discovered this amazing place on the outskirt of downtown…

Sarasota Architectural Salvage.

We spent a very happy hour and a half perusing the offerings.  How about some glove forms?

Or some beautiful moldings?

Or perhaps these gorgeous Indian doors (the set were only $3900).  You can see the whole thing on their website here.

Loved the way the light was hitting these…

Don’t forget to look up…

Some pretty hand-painted tiles?

Captain Hubby checks out the large selection of ironwork…

How about a big pot?  These were only $400 each…

I loved him ~ he looked so serene amid the chaos of the side yard…

I of course wanted just about everything I laid eyes on, but only these treasures came home with us…

This was labeled as a “teak and iron dog gate”, but Captain Hubby’s mom & aunt are sure they are doors to a pie safe.  Either way, they look great in front of our fireplace.

Also now ours is this cool tiller wheel.  I was going to put it on the fence in the back yard, but am contemplating an inside location instead…

SAS will certainly be on my “must-do” list on all future Sarasota visits!  I already can’t wait to go back!

Now and again, I get the urge to try something different from the art I create for licensing, and recently, abstract art has been of interest.  I took my first class in it at Squam Art Workshops last fall and really, really, really enjoyed it.  So, when I saw a 2-day workshop being offered locally, I cleared the decks and made time to participate.

The class was led by Fred Samuelson, a wonderful abstract painter who, given his long, wonderful career, it is difficult to find info about him online.

So, let’s see what I did!  Here’s my painting that I did on Monday…in stages…

And here’s what I did on Tuesday…

Boy, was that fun!  I am kinda disappointed to not be doing it today.  But, gotta get back to the “real” work… I am just glad I had this opportunity.

During the 2 days, Fred worked on a painting of his own, demonstrating & explaining various things & thoughts.  It was just myself and two other really nice gals ~ Patty & Shirley ~ so we had a nice group. Fred’s wife, Rose Ann who is also an artist joined us on Tuesday.  For me, since I work in relative isolation most days, it was nice to have that interaction with other artists.

Here’s the beginning of Fred’s painting…

And, here it is almost finished…he said he had a couple more days on it.  Thanks for a great class, Fred!

…do you think I have a problem…?

I was noticing how many measuring devices I have on hand.  Is this more than others have?  Less?  I wondered which I could do without.  None!  I use them all.  I swear it!  Oh, and I just realized there are actually 4 more missing from this photo…I have a three-sided rule, 2 tape measures (retractable ones – a big one and a mini), and a sewing measuring tape (like the kind you take your body measurements with)….hmmm..maybe I do have a problem….  How many measuring devices do you have?

… Carol!  You have won the citrus thermometer!  Now you can look out the window and say, “BJ says it’s 75°”

Since Captain Hubby had already left this morning when I realized I needed to draw a winner, I had to devise a method…  I had five comments, so I wrote each name on an individual index card, shuffled them good, then laid them in a row, face down, and since it was a total of 5, I decide that the center card – the 3rd – would be the winner.  That’s you, Carol ~ so I’ll be sending out the thermometer shortly!  Hope it reads warm temps for you soon!

Joan Beiriger has a post on her blog about extracting images in Photoshop.  I saw that this very useful method was missing, so thought I’d post it here.

This method is precise and avoids those jagged, pixeled edges.  If you’re already working in Illustrator or Corel Draw, and have never done this in Photoshop, it will be a snap for you.  If, however, you are terrified of the pen tool because you think it is hard to use, I have a piece of advice:  Make friends with it.  You’ll be very glad you did.  I can’t teach you how to draw with the pen tool here, but with some patience and practice you’ll be zipping along in no time.

Let’s see if I can make some sense here…

Say I want to lift this acorn out of this image…

I select my Pen tool…

…and draw around the acorn….

Until I close the path.

I then go to my Path Palette and select the path I’ve just drawn and make a selection of it.  I can do this by either clicking on the icon at the bottom of the Path Palette (see below here)…

…or I can go to the fly-out menu on the right of the Path Palette and choose Make Selection (a dialog box will appear asking what flatness – I always enter 3 – and click OK).

Now that I have a selection, I can easily lift it off the background – I use Command J to lift the item into a new layer by itself (leaving the original layer intact), or you can use Command Shift J to cut it out of the original image entirely and lift it onto a new layer at the same time. (Sorry, I have no idea where those things are in the pull down menus!)

Voilà! A clean, precise selection. No Pixel edges allowed!

Hope that made sense and is useful!

**POST UPDATE**

Since so many have written that they will try it, I thought I’d post this as well….

The pen tool is one of those things that I have found that most artists in our biz do not use.  I think everybody either doesn’t know it is there and what it can do, or they tried it once, said, this is too hard to draw with, and abandoned it.  I learned it by necessity while a graphic designer many years ago.  I very often needed to lift items out of backgrounds as well as creating logos, etc.

When I started using the same tool in Illustrator (which I learned before PS)…font choices were very limited back then and I wanted some elegant script cap letters to use as drop caps, so I scanned them and started drawing them in Illustrator, which necessitated learning to use the pen tool, which took practice to get the hang of like anything else.  However, I will say that this one little tool is well worth the time it will take to master.  I wish I could teach somebody how to draw with it, but it really is one of those things you have to just practice to get the hang of.

However, I can offer links to a couple tutorials…

This one is rather lengthy, but he does take you step-by-step through learning all about the pen tool.  I love what he says in the beginning, because it is essentially, very true:

When it comes to making selections in Photoshop, there’s really two types of people – those who know how to use the Pen Tool, and those who struggle.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/pen-tool-selections/

Here is one that is shorter:

http://www.elated.com/articles/photoshop-pen-tool/

If you Google “Drawing with pen tool in Photoshop” you’ll find all sorts of tutorials, but it will take some practice to get the hang of drawing curves.

Hope this helps! And just think, if you learn the pen tool in PS, you can carry that same skill over to Illustrator.

After attending Squam Art Workshops last September, I visited a good friend in New Hampshire for a few days.  She had lots of red accents in her kitchen and pictures of tea pots, and since she really liked what I’d done at Squam.  I thought, for Christmas, I’d create a piece just for her, incorporating red & a teapot.  Of course, time got away from me with all that was December (and January for that matter) and I didn’t quite make the holiday deadline…. So, I finally got this out to my dear friend last week ~ better late than never…

P.S. the frame is one I found in a thrift store and immediate thought I’d use for this piece because of its color.  This is actually the back side of the frame.  I liked the flat, wide simplicity of it rather than the rounded other side.

Did all those exclamation points get you excitied?!  They did me!!!!

I don’t know about everybody else out there, but I am ready for some warmer weather!  I know that living in Florida, I should not be whining, but I will anyway.  Like the rest of the country (and much of the northern hemisphere, it seems), we’ve had an exceptionally cold winter here. It’s all in what you’re accustomed to and, I am accustomed to temperatures much higher than they are right now.  Remind me I said this when I am posting that it is hot as Hades here in July & August….

So, here’s what you really want to know ~ what am I giving away!  I received a lovely box of samples from Toland the other day and since temperature is on everyone’s minds, I thought this fun, summery thermometer featuring my Citrus Toss art would be fun to offer. I’ve already stuck one to my kitchen window and every day urge that red line to go higher…

All you have to do to be qualified to win is comment with an answer to the following question:

What weird thing do you have in your studio, art space, sewing area, etc., that you use as a tool and couldn’t live without?

I’ll get you started ~ I have a chop stick.  When I took sewing lessons, my instructor gave me a chop stick and said it would come in handy, I thought, Yeah, OK, whatever, and tossed it in my bag.  I would now be lost without that chop stick!  There doesn’t seem to be a time I sew that it doesn’t come out for something, whether it is holding the fabric tight to the piping as it goes through the machine, or pushing a small piece through (so my precious fingers stay needle free) or poking a corner out…  So, what’s your weird, odd, strange tool?  I’ll draw a random winner on St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m not really in a cranky mood, I had just been jotting these things down here and there with the vague idea of a post some day, and today is the day.

• Music on blogs; I am usually playing my own music or, I find it distracting while I am reading the blog.  I especially hate it when they bury the on/off ap far down in the blog side bar.  My keyboard is third-party because I liked the touch, so it does not have a volume button.

• Not counting the change back.  When did it become OK to just dump a handful of change in somebody’s hand and say, “There ya’ go.”  I bet if that machine didn’t tell you how much to give me back you wouldn’t know how much to dump in my hand.

• Those pop-up show preview bars that cover the bottom of the TV show you’re watching and often have moving parts that are distracting.  I’m trying to watch a show here, people!

• People who can’t stop checking their cell phones or reading (and replying to) texts while they’re eating with you or talking to you.  Or people who are constantly on their cell phones because they can’t bear to have a minute of down time.  Like, get on the plane, immediately pull out the phone, (and in loud voice) “Yeah, I’m sitting on the plane waiting to take off, what are you doing?  Uh, huh.  Yeah, you wouldn’t believe how long the security line was.  Uh, huh.” (etc).  Heaven help us when it is OK to use them on planes in flight.  Also annoying are people who talk on cell phones in restaurants (I know I am not alone here).  I really don’t want to hear your side of your pointless conversation at the top of your voice while I eat…or worse, both sides of the conversation accompanied by an annoying trilling beep after each transmission.  I really love the folks who wear those silly-looking blue tooth Star Trek-looking things in their ear while they eat dinner with their family. They look important!

• When you order something from a website and are given the option of clicking Yes, send me specials, coupons, etc.  and you don’t click it and get the email ads anyway and have to unsubscribe from their email list – often more than once.  No thanks means No thanks, people.

• When I order something online and I end up on their catalog mailing list and I call, cancel the catalog, eventually order something else from the website and end up on the catalog list again.  It is a vicious cycle.

• Magazines that start sending you renewal notices right after your first issue.

What’s your pet peeve?

Is très charming, non?  I snapped up this dessert-sized darling ~ plus three sibling and a big brother ~ at TJ Maxx of all places.  I couldn’t bear to leave the mug behind either…  What I love, even more than the always-endearing Eiffel Tower, are the ubiquitous Parisian rooftops…

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, long-time-no-post.  It is nice to be busy, but even nicer to get a break.  And last week, that is just what I did.  I unplugged, hung up, disconnected and logged off in order to reboot my creative spirit.

I spent four heavenly days in Cozumel, sitting mostly on a warm balcony with a gorgeous view, blowing through book after book.  How about this view from our room’s balcony? (click image for closer look)

We usually go here to scuba dive, but a yucky cold that seemed to turn to bronchitis while I was there kept me top-side.  I am not complaining ~ how often do I get to sit still, far away from the computer, and just read?  It was bliss, I tell you.  I threw in a few naps for good measure as well.

Sunset cocktails on the balcony didn’t hurt either…I was starting to think I could live on this balcony…

What was not bliss was the traveling part.  Whoever said “Getting there is half the fun” hasn’t flown lately.  I won’t bore you with each and every travel delay and drama ~ of which there were many ~ coming and going.  Some of it bordered on sublime ridiculousness.

So here I am, back at work, feeling MUCH better, thank you ~ both health and spirit-wise!  I needed that!