Using Picnik To Enhance Your Halloween Photos

Tags

editing photos, Halloween decor, Halloween photos, Picnik

Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. My birthday is a few days before Halloween and as a result of this, I grew up having lots of Halloween themed birthday parties over the years, and more than anything, I love to decorate for Halloween. I do have to admit, since I’ve had kids, I haven’t got as much free time to devote to this kind of thing, but as they get older, I plan to recruit and teach them all about Halloween decorating, so that one day we will have the ultimate haunted house (hee, hee)! In the meantime, I settle for decorating part of the living room and the foyer.  I thought I’d share some of my pictures, and a bit about using Picnik to edit and enhance your Halloween photos.

Before I upload photos to my blog, I always edit them using Picnik. You can sign up for free, or you can pay $25/year to go pro. The main differences are the following: with the basic plan you get a few fonts and all the basic editing tools and effects (stickers, etc.) and you can upload 5 photos at a time. With Picnik Pro, you get many, many fonts (which is one of the main reasons I upgraded), you can also upload up to 100 photos at a time, and more special “effects” and “features” which the free program doesn’t include (like all of the Halloween textures and effects I’ve used below).

Here is a photo taken of my foyer unedited:

I used a tripod without a flash here… but still wasn’t able to achieve the haunted look I was going for. So… I uploaded the photo to Picnik and resized it, played with the exposure to get it just right, and sharpened the image (I almost always do these three things to ANY photo I upload). Then I added some special effects:

Here is the same photo after editing and applying the “featured” Halloween effect Scary Movies. I also applied a Matte effect to give it the white glow around the edges.

Better!

Here’s the same photo again:

This time I changed the image to black and white, and applied a Halloween “texture” to the background (all those spiderweb lines you see). I also added a few graveyard stickers to the bottom of the photo next to the ghoul. These stickers are great because you can change the size of them as well as overlap them, to make them appear nearer or farther away.

Here’s another unedited photo of my tablescape on the other side of the foyer:

Not bad, but could use improvement…

You can really notice how much sharper the image is. I added a little spider web just for fun.

Tablescape #2 – Before:

Tablescape #2 – After:This may be one of my new favorite effects – focal black and white!! You can choose which object you want the color focus on and shrink or enlarge the focal size. I also added a black Vignette to the image (which is the black shadow around the picture).

These hanging bats I made years ago from Martha Stewart templates:

Here they are cropped and softened with a Matte effect:

I cut these Halloween bottle labels out of one of my old Martha Stewart (Halloween Edition) magazines and glued them on – Unedited version:

After editing:

I applied a Holga-ish (don’t ask me what that means or does exactly, but it looks cool) effect and softened the photo.

I hope this inspires you to take your Halloween photos and spookify them!!

I have only been using the Picnik program for a few months, but I have to say that I have found it to be really easy to learn and use! I’m not being paid to say any of this, but I definitely think it’s worth the $25/year… especially if you are planning on creating any photo books for your family.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Linking up to the parties here and Wow us Wednesdays and Refresh Your Nest Friday

Goulish Girl

Tags

black painted picture frame, halloween picture frame, halloween picture of ghost girl, spooky halloween picture

A couple of weeks ago I was in Value Village with Livia and Hayden looking for ideas for Halloween costumes and perusing all of the decorations and ghoulish paraphernalia. My daughter Livia (a very persuasive four years of age), spotted these framed pictures hanging on display… one of a young man, a young girl, and a few others I can’t remember now. From one angle they look like an ordinary old-fashioned “posed” picture in black and white, but as you move left or right the pictures change to look rather EVIL!! I thought they would freak Livia out, but she really (really) liked the one of the little girl and so we ended up bringing her home.

Here’s what she looks like upon first glance:

I didn’t like the frame that she came in… it was a very bendy, cheap looking frame, so later in the week I found one at Michaels that was on sale for $2.00!! Now I’m kicking myself that I didn’t buy more – they had tons all priced for two bucks!

The gold didn’t really work for the Halloween look I was going for, so I got out my little sample of Behr paint in black suede and painted a couple of coats on the frame and the border on the mat.

Then I cut the bendy plastic frame off of the girl and put her into the new frame.

Are you ready?

Here she is all sweet and innocent...

Then... Ghoulish Girl!! P.S. - Now Livia has an imaginary friend named Chrisanty who is living with us, and I quote: ..."because her parents are dead and her sister made her drink blood!" Hmmmmm, maybe I shouldn't have bought the picture after all! {Linking up to the parties on my "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" page}

Vintage Pumpkins

Tags

diy white painted pumpkins, Halloween craft, Halloween decor, pumpkin craft, vintage pumpkins, white and black pumpkins

WOW. I’ve seen so many wonderfully painted craft pumpkins out there in blogland, that I decided to give it a try. I’m not what I’d consider a crafty person, BUT I have a major weakness for all things to do with Halloween and like to add to my decor every year. So, off to the dollar store I went…

I picked up these pumpkins and gourds  along with some silver metallic acrylic paint for under $8. I changed my mind about the silver (see – one of the pumpkins has a silvery glow to it?) as I was painting the first pumpkin… and decided to try a more antique look, which I thought would go better with the rest of my Halloween decor.

First I primed the pumpkins (can’t believe I’m saying that… who’s ever primed a pumpkin?!) and then gave them two light coats of antique white.

Here they are primed:

After the paint dried and I was satisfied with the coverage I mixed a little black suede paint (from a sample jar I had) with some glaze. By the way, I can’t say enough about the black suede… it’s such a soft lovely black! I took a small brush and dipped it in the glaze and focused mainly on applying it in the natural crevice lines of each pumpkin. My daughter Livia wanted in on the project too:

I followed my quickly wiping it away:

Then I finished these little beauties off by painting the stems black and as an afterthought adding a couple cute bows from some chocolate wrappers I had lying around the house. I’m not sure which way I like them more… what do you think? With without bow or with?

By the way, did I mention my inspiration for this project? My favorite perfume, Jo Malone (I wear the Orange Blossom & French Lime Blossom daily and NEVER tire of these fragrances) has the most amazing packaging…

I Heart Jo Malone!!!!!!

PS – Linking up to the parties on my Girls Just Want to Have Fun Page.