This past Christmas, I decided to give a little "greener" by making gift bags instead of using gift wrapping paper. "Reusable" gift wrapping is even better than recycled or recyclable gift wrapping paper! I went to the fabric store in search of some holiday fabric, but in the end, I opted for festive fabric that can be used for any occasion. I pulled out the sewing machine and got to work. Although I created drawstring style bags, I preferred the look of tying the bows lower and creating a "neck" on the bags (see pictures below). I used close-up pictures of the recipients to create simple yet personalized gift tags. I also decorated a few of the gift bags with flower hair clips - a gift + wrapping embellishment all in one!





If you're looking for other ideas for using photos for personalized "green" gift wrapping, here are a couple of suggestions: photo gift bags and photo storage boxes. For a photo gift bag, you can create a bag like the gift bags pictured above, but use a solid cotton fabric as the material (white or cream-colored would work best). You can then use your inkjet printer to print a photo onto iron-on transfer paper. You can typically find such paper at your local office supply or craft supply store. Follow the instructions that came with the iron-on paper to transfer the photo onto your fabric bag. Presto, you have a personalized reusable gift bag! If you don't sew, you can purchase a blank canvas bag at a local craft supply store and use that instead.

Photo storage gift boxes are easy to create and can later be reused as personalized storage boxes by the recipient. You can purchase a cardboard box at your local craft supply store. Most craft stores carry inexpensive, solid colored boxes, about the size of a shoe box, for storing photographs. They also often carry larger sized cardboard boxes, if a shoe box size is too small for the gift you want to wrap. Print your favorite photo(s) of the recipient and glue the photo(s) to the top of the box. I like to print wallet-sized photos and whimsically place them on the top of the box. See the example photo below.



So you see, eco-friendly gift-wrapping can be fun, practical and personalized!

It was early evening last month and as I was looking out the kitchen window into the backyard, I noticed a LOT of bugs flying around. I thought to myself - am I paranoid, or does it sort of look like the locusts are coming?!  It turns out that they were bees - and a lot of them! My husband and I watched them as they hovered in one area of backyard and then another and then back again. Then, they started forming huge clusters on an area of our eave. They would cling onto one another until the bottom bees could not hang on any longer and a clump of bees would fall to the ground. After awhile, they were able to hang on, and it looked like our bee swarm was trying to make a new home on the eave of our house.



At this point, what started out as somewhat fascinating to watch, quickly turned into mild panic as we realized that they probably weren't going to go away on their own! Some quick internet searching and a phone call led us to the local Bee Guild and soon a beekeeper was on his way.

It turns out that one only needs a five-gallon bucket and a brush for bee swarm relocation. Well, actually, a bee suit and an experienced beekeeper don't hurt, either! The beekeeper climbed a ladder, held a five gallon bucket underneath the bees and carefully swept them into the bucket.



  
Once most of the bees were in the bucket, he put the lid on, which had a small hole cut into the top of it. Since the queen bee was already in the bucket, the remaining bees were drawn inside of the bucket to follow her.



Once the temporary bee condo was full, the beekeeper was on his way, taking the bees off to their new home!
 

You would think that since I work for Kodak, I would be very diligent about archiving, sharing and organizing my digital photos. I wish I could say that I am that organized, but the truth of the matter is that it is easy to get distracted by other things and to put off transferring, organizing and sharing until some later time. After all, the two gigabyte memory card in my camera gives me plenty of storage to just keep on shooting those special moments. Thank goodness for Eye-Fi! Eye-Fi has rescued me from my disorganized self.

What is this Eye-Fi thing you ask? An Eye-Fi card is an SD memory card with built-in Wi-Fi. You configure wireless and transfer settings for your Eye-Fi card on your computer and then use the card just like you would any other SD memory card in your digital camera. The magic behind Eye-Fi is that it will transfer your pictures directly from your camera to destination(s) that you specify. If you have good wireless connectivity, your pictures will actually be uploaded right after you capture them!

There are a few different variations of the product available: Eye-Fi Home, Share, and Explore. I have the Eye-Fi Share version which lets me upload pictures to my computer as well as to one or more online services of my choosing (e.g., photo sharing, blogging or social networking services). Kodak Gallery is one of the available destinations, so I have my Eye-Fi configured to upload directly to my computer and to Kodak Gallery. By default, Eye-Fi even organizes my pictures into folders labeled by the date on which they were captured. This organization by date is used on my computer and on Kodak Gallery - very convenient!

For example, this past weekend, I sewed some pillow cushion covers for a couch (just the square back cushions, not the whole couch!):

I even managed to sew a zipper into the bottom of each pillow (and I've never sewn zippers into anything before):

This is exactly the type of project that I would typically document with my camera but then not do anything with the pictures until the next time I got around to transferring the pictures from my camera to my computer. With Eye-Fi, I can take the pictures and by the time I walk back to my computer, they're already there. Presto! The magic of Eye-Fi!

As you may have gathered from my previous blog post on color (and paint), I've been doing quite a bit of home remodeling. Now that we actually have some finished walls, I can actually start thinking about what to put on them! I love the life-sized prints that Tom highlighted in a blog post on the Olympics. That idea would make great wallpaper for an accent wall. I also like the Wall of Art project included as one of "Paige's Projects" in the Kodak project section with Paige Davis of Trading Spaces.

Like Jenny and some of my other fellow Kodak bloggers, I too have been enjoying capturing panoramic pictures using the auto-stitch panoramic mode of my Kodak camera. Such panoramic pictures would also make great wall art. This post contains a few pictures from a recent trip to Hawaii - both panoramic and non-panoramic - that I am considering using as wall art in my home.

 


 


 




There are several reasons why I love the idea of hanging poster-sized prints of my photos on the walls at home. Here are just a few of the reasons:

• Leverage those megapixels. 8- and 10- megapixel cameras are now very common and affordable. You don't need a professional camera to create large prints - you just need a camera with enough megapixels for the size print that you'd like to make. You can use any picture captured from a point-and-shoot digital camera to create a nice poster-sized print, as long as it has enough megapixels. This means that it's easy to fill your walls with everything from everyday photos to special moments and beautiful places.
• Big pictures = big impact. Precious facial expressions, that perfect sunset, special celebrations and those once in a lifetime vacations - we all have those favorite photos that really make us smile. They look great in a 4x6 print or when viewed on a computer or digital frame. Show them off in big style on the wall and there's nothing to say but "wow!"
• My pictures are my stories. I think the thing I like the best about hanging poster-sized prints of my own pictures on the wall is that each picture tells a story. I'm not just hanging "pretty photos" - I'm surrounding myself and my family with memories and stories!

What about you? What photo stories do you have hanging on your walls?


 

One of the delights of exploring places both near and far away from home is that once in awhile you stumble upon something surprising - either surprising about where you found it or surprising about the discovered item itself. When that happens, it's great when you actually have your camera with you to capture the moment. This year, I saw buffalo (hence the title of this blog entry) for what I believe was the first time in my life!



The most surprising thing about them was where I saw them. Can you guess where this is? (You can list your guesses in the comments and I will reveal the truth in the comments tomorrow.)

I also saw a windmill in an unexpected location as well:



This past spring, I attended the "Monterey Festival of Speed" at Laguna Seca raceway, where I discovered that Kodak sponsors Doran Racing's #77 Grand-Am Rolex series sports car!



They even have a Kodak branded golf cart! (I wouldn't mind taking either of them for a little spin!)



What surprising pictures do you have in your collection? Share your stories and links in the comments!

There's nothing like a paint chip, a can of paint and a large painted textured wall to remind us of the relationship between color, light, texture and perception - both in real life and in the pictures we capture! Like some of my fellow Kodak bloggers, I too am doing some home remodeling. I've been without a kitchen for more than two years now, so we were ecstatic when we recently started painting our kitchen and great room. We were looking for a nice warm, earthy gold color to give the room a cozy feeling and to complement our cabinets. I picked up a number of paint chips that looked like they had potential:

I placed them next to a piece of cabinet filler to see how they'd look with our cabinet color:

I even looked at the final candidates under different lighting conditions. We finally settled on a color called "Warm Cocoon." Sounds cozy and inviting, right? To be really sure before we painted the walls, we bought one gallon of that color and one gallon of another color that we were considering for adjacent rooms. When I opened the can of Warm Cocoon, I was a little alarmed by the orange sherbet color staring back at me. "It's ok," I told myself - "when it dries, it'll be the perfect color!" We painted a couple of 20"x30" remnant pieces of textured drywall with our exciting new colors. When the orange sherbet dried, it really did look like the Warm Cocoon we were hoping for. It also looked great next to the cabinets and other wall color. Off to the store to buy more paint so we could do the whole room. A little taping and an excellent paint sprayer and we had the paint on the walls in no time. This is really exciting!

Hmmm... The color is looking a little loud and a little orange - what happened to warm and cozy?! Let's wait until it dries and take a look at it in the morning in the sunlight. Well, it took us less than 24 hours to realize that we wouldn't be able to live with Warm Cocoon staring back at us. There were some areas of the wall under certain lighting conditions that did look like that warm gold we had envisioned, but unfortunately we could not deny that the majority of the time the walls just looked too orange.

A little revisit with the paint chips, a trip back to the store to get more paint and we were ready for some "Calm Air." Ooooh, ahhhhh - there's  that warm and cozy color we were hoping for! Here are some pictures to show some of the contrast in the two colors:

 

Notice how Calm Air looks gold next to Warm Cocoon and vice versa. Lighting, perception and camera auto adjustments all play a role in the color of our digital pictures! Although the Calm Air looks more tan or taupe in the second picture, it really does look more golden in person and on the walls. Here's a picture that best captures the essence of the Warm Air color, as seen next to the ceiling and the cabinet:

So how does this affect my photography? It reminds me to keep in mind that surrounding colors, texture and lighting can influence the overall impact and emotion of a picture. I often focus on the central subject and don't always think about the surrounding environment. This can be important, especially when you do have some control over what will be in the background of a shot. A little color theory can go a long way to improve your pictures. Want to learn more about color theory and photography? Check out Chris Rutter's Color Theory Fundamentals for Digital Photography and other resources on the web.