Zesty!

Ugh, I worked 10 hours today. Up and down the stairs, answering phones, and spending some quality and not so quality time with my good friend Photoshop. Some days when I walk out the back door at 5, 6, 7ish PM, my brain is literally throbbing from all of the multi-tasking, computer staring, and workflow organizing I do throughout the day. Today was one of those days.

I thought the last thing I would want to do is sit in front of my [superior] home computer and spend more time with Photoshop. So I didn't. I watched some HGTV, even took a power nap during "My First Place." But then I heard my name.

Rachel!

Rachel! :crinkle crinkle: Rachel!

RACHEL!

It was my new Photoshop User mag, still in plastic packaging (hence the crinkling) sitting all by its lonesome on top of my coffee table. In all fairness, it was in good company with my unread Rachael Ray and Vogue mags.

Well anyway, I gave in to that little voice, ripped off the plastic, and started rifling through the pages. You can guess what happened next... Yep, I sat down at my computer and start playing.

Warning: these photos are ROUGH and literally just for fun. Please don't judge me on my sloppy extractions or poor creative ideas.



I spent some time looking for arrows, but they are all too clip-art-ish or ridiculous. Wouldn't it look cooler with an arrow in the wood right where he's looking? Shout out to Eric for being such a great subject!



Googly eyes are back. This one is a little silly but I liked the overall feel of it. The orange in front is lacking something. It needs something else to give it the UMPH it needs. But I'm not too unhappy with it - I'm unveiling it here aren't I?

So my head hurts a LOT now. Time for bed.

bookcases.

Are your bookcases crooked and relatively pointless?



Reminiscent of a geometric pattern?



Featuring an alternate purpose such as climbing to another level of your house?




Ridiculously sorted in a pretty neat looking rainbow pattern but impossible for ever finding the book you want simply because you cannot recall the color of the binding?



Cleverly placed behind a decorative curtain with a ladder for the tall shelves?


Ooooo I've always wanted bookcases that require the use of a ladder. I can't wait to have my own home so I can take advantage of some of these amazing uses of the things-that-hold-my-precious-books. My semi-obsessiveness probably wouldn't allow for color coding because you have the size difference problem, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't have any (ahem, many) books in black, brown, or red. Also, what do to when you have more than one book by the same author? You can't tear them apart! Atrocious.

No, no. I won't be color coding. But I can appreciate those who do.

I'll just be dreaming of a shelf so high I must roll the ladder out from behind the decorative curtain, climb 2 to 3 rungs high, and comfortably pull out my non-dog eared copy of (fill in the blank here) then proceed to lounge on my extra comfy couch for a nice little reading session.

Sigh.


All images found via google image search of "bookcases" "bookcase" or "color coordinated bookcase."

Scars & Work

I've been doing a lot of retouching at work these days since I am now in charge of all of our orders. So pretty much all day I go from file to file, face to face, using the clone, healing, and patch tools over and overrrr again. Fun right?

Well what starts happening when you do this day in and day out? You see people with under eye bags, and you want to pull out your tablet, hit 'S' on lighten at 20% opacity and just swoooop under the eyes a couple times. Voila!

Only, it doesn't work in real life. Darn.

So I came to a realization that when Eric and I get married and someone somewhere spends a couple days processing our images (ok who am I kidding, it will probably be me) what will they take out as blemishes/flaws and what will they leave in?

If you scroll down to the last posting you'll see a photo of Eric and I. I did NO retouching to the image. Not because there's none to be done, but because I loved the photo and didn't want to spend the time obsessing. Anyway, Eric has these adorable little freckles scattered across his face. An average retoucher would probably not remove them all but would certainly lighten them and remove about 40-50% of them. Also, you may notice I have scars on my forehead.. See below:





I had chicken pox, and instead of heeding the warnings of all the adults around me, I scratched the big one right on my forehead. A decent sized circular 'pit' (official term) is what I was left with for that indiscretion.

I also walked into a coffee table when I was a toddler. Mom calls it walking into, Dad calls it fell onto. Either way, silly me. A half moon shaped scar from the stitches sits pleasantly next to the circular pit.

On my 6th birthday, I fell onto a filing cabinet. I remember it vividly. I thought it was a great idea to get up on the dining room chair to reach for the festive birthday balloons, lost my balance and !%WHAM#@! Forehead smacked into the corner of the metal filing cabinet (for some reason located in the dining room? Confusion.) 5 stitches later, we were walking into the parking garage of the ER and my dad says,

"So, it's your 6th birthday..."

yea?

"And you got 5 stitches..."

ok?

"Why don't we go back in for another so you can have 6 stitches on your 6th birthday!"

I'm pretty sure I cried.

Soooo anyway, my point is coming. Mom always said I had such a giant forehead it had to hit everything first when I fell. I'd say that is kind of embarrassing, but hey, it's part of who I am! Scars and all. Freckles and moles and all.

So retouchers beware! Sometimes you may find people content with their imperfections, flaws, or scars.

Sometimes it just adds to the story of how we came to be who we are today.