Monthly Archives: December 2009

2009 in brief

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So it’s the last day of 2009 and the last day of the ‘noughties’. I had a good year, here’s a brief run down of what happened (in no particular order what-so-ever).

  • Bought a dump of a house.
  • Spent most of the year fixing up said dump of house, adding tetris tiles, bright colours and depleting my bank account.
  • Headed over to Hong Kong to visit a friend, great experience!
  • Passed my driving test first time.
  • Started to learn Spanish.
  • Went back to life drawing class.
  • Adopted two mental kittens.
  • Started selling FinestImaginary at craft fairs and finally meeting some customers rather than them being faceless email addresses!
  • FinestImaginary had it’s very own print ad in Bust magazine (okay, okay, it was only tiny… but it’s a start!).
  • Cut a fringe back into my hair and liked it (believe me, this is an achievement).
  • Saw some great live music, cat empire, bat for lashes, gym class heroes…
  • Went to the cinema far too much/little.
  • Dressed as Hermoine to Adam’s Harry for Halloween.
  • Went to Jodrell bank and saw the giant telescope!

Big plans for next year. Not only is it the start of a new decade, but I enter the realms of real adulthood when I turn 25 in 11 days, shitting hell. I have lots of things on my to-do list, exciting! Hope you all have a good NYE (we’re sick so staying in and having tapas and cheap as hell homemade sangria). Hopefully the blog will be back to regular scheduled posting next week too.

xx

The End of Fairs

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Last weekend we did our last fair/market of the season for FinestImaginary, it was held at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and organised by the Manchester craft mafia. It was deifnitely the best fair we’d taken part in this year, a great group of sellers and a constant stream of customers. Nice! It was held in a really bright, high roofed gallery room, too, which made all the difference.

The weekend didn’t go without a few odd occurrences, of course, on the Saturday I broke a filling on a soft mint (wtf is that about, a soft mint?! jesus) and on the Sunday a giant bird (a woodcock) flew into the window behind us at full force and perished. o.O Anyway, I took a few photos of the event. If you came along I hope you had a great time, and if you didn’t then you should definitely come next year!

4203148838 beaac56fb1 b The End of Fairs

4203149034 4b1661a43f b The End of Fairs

4203149204 46bbfe4c65 b The End of Fairs

There were more photos taken by a friend of mine who somehow got roped into being the official photographer for the show, even though he’d just dropped in to do some shopping. I’ll see if I can find out where they are :)

Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

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To keep the blog ticking over in this busy period, here’s a draft I’ve had for a while. Enjoy!

So, my weapon of choice (uuum… what’s the term for camera? you know, like an axe is a guitar?… anyway) is a canon 400D (that’s XTi to some). And whilst I love love love it for all it’s worth, I do love my lomography and vignettes. Sooo I once saw this tutorial on how to make your DSLR into a pinhole. Nifty, thought I! So here we go!

Here’s your ingredients

1 DSLR camera (or, a camera with convertable lenses)
1 spare body cap (don’t use the one that you actually use, cos we’re gunna drill holes and shit)
Thin aluminium or thick tin foil

Here’s the tools you’ll need

Coarse sandpaper (try 20 or 40 grade)
Dremel/hand held drill/power drill
Thin needle
black marker
electrical tape (darkest colour you can find)

First things first, you want to sand off the name from the body cap. There’s no real reasoning to this, other than it gives you a nicer flat surface and looks tonnes neater with the finished lens. Use you rough sandpaper, or one of your dremel attachments, then finish with a finer grade.

Then, drill a hole through the very centre of the body cap, quite a small hole is best! On the inside of the body cap, over the top of the hole, stick your thin aluminium/tin foil using the black electrical tape. Through the centre of the hole, and the aluminium, use the finest needle you have to poke a tiny little hole. TADA! You’re done.

pinhole 5 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

Here’re some photos I took using the said pinhole lens, have fun playing with you camera settings for this one! Long shutter speeds and a tripod are most definitely your friends. I also really like the dirt spots, but they also make me feel like a bad camera mother.

pinhole 1 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

pinhole 2 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

pinhole 3 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera

pinhole 4 Lens Hack: Making your DSLR into a pinhole camera