Well, summer is coming to an end...myself, I am trying to deny this fact as long as possible. To prolong the inevitable (winter/snow/cold), I have acquired a new Glade fragrance to convince my brain that winter is not allowed to come. I call it the Hawaii smell, but the actual fragrance is pineapple and mangosteen. Let me tell you, IT IS AMAZING. I spritz it all the time for a little flavor in the air. Turn a fan on, plug in the humidifier, play some Iz in the background, and you'd think you were lounging on the beach, minus the sand and UV rays.
Try it out for yourself; I guarantee you will forget about winter after you spray it.
NOTE: I am a member of BzzAgent and was able to try this product for free via a coupon. The above, however, are my actual feelings about this product.
I gave myself a 10-day challenge: to see if this product does what it claims to do; that is, not irritate sensitive skin! Let me say that by day 5, I started to NOT notice anything...in a good way! My skin didn't have it's classic dry/red spots. Instead, my skin was smooth! By the end of the 10 days, I was glad I took up this challenge. I am completely sold on Burt's Bees Sensitive Daily moisturizing cream.
If you are looking to get yourself some, check out their facebook page for a $2 off coupon, and check out Target.com for a coupon on there as well, usually $1-$2. That's up to $4 off this! :)
Let me know if you try it and find it to be just as effective!
:)
*NOTE: I received this product from BzzAgent to try for free. This is my honest opinion of this product, however.
I realize I have been posting these things called "manipulations" for quite some time on what is supposed to be more of a photography blog. I still do a lot of photography, but I tend to upload those pictures on facebook; it's a lot of work to upload them here, and much easier to just upload them in one place. The blogosphere is somewhat quieter these days, at least where my friends and family are concerned. Not too many of my friends use a blog anymore, which is why I don't really update this that often.
Anyway, I thought people would be interested in how I put my manipulations together. I don't really plan them out; on DeviantArt (DA), I have many, many favorites of images called stock images. Stock, for those who don't know, are images people upload to DA for other people to use. I typically will go through my stock images to see what makes me feel inspired, or what grabs my attention at the moment. Sometimes I have ideas just floating around the back of my head, and I'll start piecing them out with stock I've already added to my favorites list on DA. Often, I'll get an idea but not have the right stock, so I have to go stock hunting. Honestly, that's often the most time consuming part of the entire manipulation, and with good reason, too. A manipulation will pretty much look like garbage if you don't use the right stock, no matter how much time you spend on it, so it's important to start with the right stuff first.
Many times there isn't stock out there that is exactly what I want, or I just can't find it (as a side note, a lot of times people will make images or manipulations with stuff they find in any old google search, and in the art world that is a huge no-no. That topic I could go on about for days, and I will reserve for a later post). Copy right exists even on things like images, so you need to be careful what you use out there, which is why I don't just go to flikr, type in "black horse" and use the first one that pops up. For the times when there appears to be no stock exactly fitting my needs, I either grab my camera and shoot it myself, if possible, or I combine images to try and get what I want. That's basically the first step in a manipulation.
Below, I am going to post links to all the stock I used that makes up a final manipulation of mine, "Castle of Water". This one used more stock than normal, which is why I am posting this. Typically I use 2-5 different images in 1 manipulation; for the castle I used 10 or so different images to come up with the final result. I unfortunately don't have any uploads of stages in-between the start and finish, but maybe I'll do that for a different stock image.
(**Note: Since I've made this image, several of the people who had stock that I used either deleted the images or their account, which is why some of them are not linked to through DeviantArt. Others don't have the code on their DeviantArt image that allows it to be linked to outside DA, which is why I have it uploaded elsewhere.**)
Above image copyrighted to http://jezhawk-stock.deviantart.com/
Castle:
Above image copyrighted to http://faestock.deviantart.com/
Foreground:
Above image copyrighted to http://texurestockbyhjs.deviantart.com who deleted their DA account
Sky:
Above images copyrighted to http://stock-jm.deviantart.com/
Rocks (mid picture):
Above image copyrighted to http://finsternis-stock.deviantart.com/
ALL of that stock went into creating the final image, along with other things, such as brushes and filters of Photoshop and stuff hand drawn or edited out by me.
Tools I used: Photoshop CS3 Wacom Bamboo Digital Tablet
Haven't posted any for a while, so here are some new ones, from oldest first, to the newest ones at the bottom. They range in date from Nov. 16 2010 to Feb. 26, 2011.
