An Update and some Thank Yous

I know it's been awhile.  I've been pretty busy for the last while because I moved into my own place.  I also got a cat, who is a sweetheart but we've had some issues with scratching and food.  So in the middle of all this, I haven't taken many pictures lately (except for those related to my move and Merlin).

But during this time, I've actually made a couple of sales on Redbubble.  So a big thank you to the people who bought greeting cards and prints from me.  :)

Greeting Card Thanks!

After a long dry spell on Redbubble, I've suddenly sold three greeting cards in the last week.  So thanks to the person who bought a copy of "Out for a Ski," and the two people who bought copies of "Bumblebee Lady in the Flowers."  :)

Uploaded to Flickr!

It's actually been about a month since I've been on Flickr.  I had several pictures (from camp and from around my yard) to upload but just didn't get around to it.  I finally wandered back to Flickr yesterday, uploading "Japanese Doll" (pictured).  At that time I got caught up with most of my friends, too.  Then today I finished getting caught up with friends and uploaded another 17 pictures.  I'm glad I finally got all these pics off of my camera - and now it's definitely time to take more!!!

Phone Cases!

As I mentioned on August 3rd, some of my pictures on Redbubble look awesome as phone cases.  So to show that off, I created a new collection featuring all of those pictures!

The collection is a fun mish-mash of my photos.  There are Lego pictures (which make some very fun cases!), flower pictures (which make for some very pretty cases), animal pictures, and even some landscapes (like this fun picture of Duluth, Minnesota's Aerial Lift Bridge).  But not everything I have available on Redbubble is available as a case - some pictures just didn't look good, so they didn't make the cut.  And one picture, "The Crystal King's Closeup," looks fine as an iPhone case, but terrible as a Samsung case (so it's only available for iPhones). 

After making the new collection, I ended up removing my old Animals collection, combining it with the Miscellaneous one.  I like that there are only five collections on my profile page so it doesn't look too busy.  The new collection is now at the top of the page, giving it center stage to the other collections. 

Tink

Last week, I showcased the three pictures of mine which have made Flickr's Explore pages.  Today I want to talk about the cat in the second picture, Tink.

Tink was my aunt and uncle's cat.  They moved out of province and weren't able to take him with them.  We agreed to take him as a trial, to see how our cat, Sasha, would get a long with him.  Of course, as those things go, once he was living with me there was not way I was letting that cat go.  He became my best friend, spending almost every night with me except for the few nights I was away traveling.  Sasha, being Sasha, never liked him, but she slowly let him get closer before she would hiss and growl.

But then the unthinkable happened: I left for Duluth just for the day on Monday, August 21st.  When I left in the morning, Tink seemed absolutely fine.  But a few hours before I got home, he passed away quite suddenly.

From what we can gather, Tink was part Maine Coon.  Maine Coon's have a genetic predisposition to a form of heart disease, where they will seem fine to their owners until their hearts fail.  I don't think there was anything we could have done for him except what we did: we gave him a loving home for the two months he was with us.  He was an awesome cat and I still miss him terribly, even three weeks later.

I've put together an album on Flickr for him, with all of the pictures I took of him and his stuff while he was living with me.  There are a few other pictures of him on my Flickr account as well from when he was living with my aunt and uncle.

Spider in the Rosebush

I've always loved this picture. We used to have a rosebush in our front garden, and these really cool white spiders lived on it.  They were white with a little bit of pink, helping them blend in on the roses.

After updating Redbubble and playing with all the new options, I thought this picture would make a really deadly phone case.  And boy was I right!  I cut out the house in the background, focussing on the spider and the flower; it looks awesome!

I'm also trying something different with this image - it's not available as a print because I'm not really a fan of the house in the background.  I did make it available as a tote bag and throw pillow though because I was able to focus more on the spider and the rose.

Explored!

So it finally happened - I made it into Flickr's Explore pages!  And even more exciting, it's happened three times so far!


The first one was "3 Blooms - March 15 2014 2," a picture I took of my mom's orchid blooming.  This one made it to #79 on the March 15th Explore page.  It has over 9000 views, beating out "Blurry Sasha" (my reigning champion since 2010) by about 1000 views.


The second one was "Tink, Day 4."  That one climbed to #110on May 22nd, 2014.  It's currently got just over 6000 views, about 2000 less than "Blurry Sasha."


Finally was "New Camera!"  I really don't know why everyone was excited about this one, but it climbed to #6 on July 29th, 2014.  It's actually got over 20,000 views right now, beating out "Blurry Sasha" by about 11,000 views!

Redbubble Updated with Cool New Things!

So it's been awhile since I updated my Redbubble site.  In fact, the last time I updated it was when I last posted here.  But I was clearing out some of my emails, when I came across a Redbubble newsletter that had this article.  Realizing I haven't actually gone to Redbubble in months, I decided to look at my profile and see if I could use some of their tips to improve it.

I started out by hiding a bunch of pictures.  Most of them were Lego ones that haven't gotten many views.  I did end up keeping a few on there that had less than my arbitrary view count to stay, just because I liked them.  When that was done, I hid a bunch of other pictures, too; ones that I decided for one reason or another don't need to be there.

It was around this point that I rewrote my bio and decided to upload a few flower pictures I took with my new camera (oh yeah, I got a new camera!)  I chose a couple of flower pictures with ants in them based off of my newly rewritten bio.  And that was when I first noticed that my pictures were able to go onto the new Redbubble throw pillows and iPhone cases.  I didn't think some of my older pictures (ie the ones taken with my Canon PowerShot S3 IS) were capable of being on the new throw pillows and stuff.  But I figured out how to actually get them there.  Around that time, I also decided to drop my prices.  I've been putting a 50% markup on all my pictures since I started on Redbubble.  As per their tips, they suggested that I rethink the price; I decided to go with their suggested 20%, just to see how that goes.

So for the next hour or two, I was changing all my prices, and reuploading pictures so they could be on throw pillows and stuff.   I played around with everything, trying to make all the pictures look good on whatever I'm offering them on now.  If they didn't look good, I didn't enable whatever it was as a buying option (so, for example, if something didn't look good as an iPad case, it is not offered as an iPad case). 

So now I have a smaller selection of pictures available to buy as a greater number of things.  And everything looks gorgeous!  (Doing this really made me want an iPhone - some of my pics look absolutely fantastic as phone cases!) 

Red Bubble Updated!

Today I decided it was high time to update my Red Bubble site.  Apparently I haven't added anything new to Red Bubble since July 2013!  I uploaded 16 new Lego pictures, 11 of which were from my Minifigure Alphabet.  Enjoy!  :)

The Blood Moon

Last night I saw the blood moon! Unfortunately this was the best picture that I got; my Pentax isn't very good at taking night shots of the moon. Even though the picture isn't great, you can still see that beautiful red! :)

Z is for...

Z is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

And here it is: the end of my Minifigure Alphabet series! I feel like I cheated a little bit, because I used the undead for U and zombies are clearly a member of the undead. But I couldn't come up with any other minifigure that I have for Z, so I guess the undead ended up with two spots.

Y is for...

Y is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Here we are, at the second last letter for the Minifigure Alphabet. I had Y narrowed down to two different minifigures early on, Yoda and the Yeti. But it took me a long time to decide between the two. The Yeti would have been fun because there's still a lot of snow on the ground. But it's also been really cold outside, making a picture outside not really ideal. Yoda was a good choice because I could shoot him anywhere. I think I actually decided to use him for Y when I remembered that I have his house (and have never taken a picture of him near it).

I have a newer Yoda that I could have used (I think he's from the Clone Wars), but instead opted for the old one. While his eyes are all the same colour (unlike the Clone Wars Yoda), there's something about this Yoda's face which just seems more fitting; his face denotes wisdom and peace in a way the Clone Wars Yoda's does not.

So stay tuned tomorrow for the end of my month-long minifigure project!

X is for...

X is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Today's letter was one of the harder ones. Pretty much the only minifigure I could think of was an X-Wing Pilot. And really, that's kind of pushing things - he's technically a pilot, which would be good for P. But it was all I could come up with. Luckily I was telling a friend about this project before it began, and he suggested that I have the X-Wing pilot having an X-Ray taken, covering a couple of X words (even if neither word is technically a minifigure).

The frame was made with paper, glue, and toothpicks to hold it up; it's taped to a base made up of the black bricks you get with the Collectible Minifigures.

W is for...

W is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

...Witch! Today's a rather busy day, so I wanted to get today's shot taken and posted early.

This witch has the body of Willa the Witch (from the Fright Knights), and the head of the Fantasy Era witch. I got a hat for her, but I like the hair on her a lot better. :)

V is for...

V is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Today was the fifth last letter of the alphabet, V. And what better minifigure than the Viking to signify V?

Today's picture involved the towels from D, F, and M, but rather than using water, I just used the same background of P (which happens to be another one of my pictures, "Powder Rock," which I printed out a long time ago for use as backgrounds).  I'm quite happy with the result.  :)

So now there are just four letters left to go!

U and T

U is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

I felt like I cheated a bit for this one. But try as I might, I could only come up with two possible things for U: the undead, and UFOs. I was originally going to use the UFO idea, but afterwards changed my mind and opted for the Undead. And I'm quite happy with my choice. So here today are a pirate skeleton, a vampire, and a mummy all hanging out having a drink. It's a simple shot, but I quite like it.

T is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

In case you missed it, yesterday's T was a picture of Trolls. I took my three trolls (one being the Troll Queen, who was absent from my Q picture) and posed them in the poinsettia we have in the house from Christmas. I took a lot of shots, but everything was just okay. And then I decided to try a different DOF, focusing on the Queen's staff as if she's blasting you with magic. I've done this DOF before, most notably in my "So Be It, Jedi" shot, and quite liked the results. And so "T is for..." became a very different shot from most of the others in this series. But that's okay with me - I'm very happy with how it turned out (even if it's hard to make out all three trolls!)

Thanks!

A big thanks to whoever bought "Out for a Ski" greeting cards - that was a nice way to start my day. :)

You've also reminded me that my Red Bubble site is due for an update. I'll have to get some of my Minifigure Alphabet pictures on there. :)

Orchid Blooming Feb 2014

Orchid Blooming Feb 2014, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

The yellow orchid is blooming again! :)

My brother and I got this orchid for my mom on Mother's Day in 2009. I've heard that it's notoriously hard to get orchids to rebloom. But for some reason, that's not the case with this one! It reblooms about once a year. My mom recently repotted it because it was getting rootbound, so I'm taking this as a sign that the plant is once again happy (especially since it looks like there are more blooms developing than last time. :)

Lucifer

Lucifer, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Yesterday, my brother, Alex Kosoris, launched an Indiegogo Campaign for his novel, Lucifer. The video is absolutely fantastic; if you have a minute, please check it out (and feel free to share the video with friends and family!)

Special thanks to JasBrick, who gave me the the idea for the wings (specifically from here and here). I've been meaning to make them for awhile and never did; my brother's campaign finally gave me the motivation to finish them. Thanks also goes out to my dad, who helped secure the wings. :)

Here it Comes...

Here it Comes..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

In other news, a storm has been forecast for our area, bringing 25-30 cm of snow tonight and tomorrow. This appears to be the beginning. I'll post another picture sometime tomorrow.

R is for...

R is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Today was the first day this month where I opted for a plain black background. I was originally trying to think of something more exciting for this picture. But try as I might, nothing else seemed right. And many of the robots I have look rather striking on the plain black background, so in the end I feel it was well chosen. I have to admit, I'm rather proud of the fact that I've gotten all the way to R (the 18th letter!) before having to use it though. :)

Q is for...

Q is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Today I tackled the letter Q. I decided early on that I would use Q for Queens (although I later realized that Q could also be for Qui-Gon Jinn...). So I gathered as many queens together as I could think of.

Then came the biggest problem: what should I use for a background? In the end, I decided that the Sand Dollar Cafe would be an interesting locale for the shot. The Sand Dollar Cafe is the very first Paradisa Lego set I received when I was younger. While I wanted the Castle sets, my extended family kept getting me Paradisa sets, and so Paradise kept getting invaded by pirates and the like. So Paradisa may not have been a great place for minifigures to vacation, but it always seemed to be the start of some interesting adventures!

I've long thought about taking some pictures with the Sand Dollar Cafe. It's probably my favourite Paradisa set because it always suggests to me a great meeting place, where people from all walks of life can meet up and have a cup of coffee or an ice cream. And that's what the four queens (and Qui-Gon) are all doing here.

Minifigure Alphabet Returns!

P is for..., a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Today I once again returned to the Minifigure Alphabet, this time with pirates for the letter P. So that means there are only 10 letters and 10 days left to finish the alphabet in February. Having used up both of my possible break days, it's now going to be non-stop daily pictures for the remainder of the month!

500!

500!, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

Today I posted my 500th Lego picture on Flickr! My original plan was to set up 500 minifigures like this, but I don't think I have quite enough (and even if I do, I decided I didn't want to set up 500 minifigures - these 115 were bad enough because they kept falling over like dominos!)

I attempted to put a representative sample of the minifigures I have photographed in this picture. The 5 is composed of Castle-themed minifigures, including Dragon Masters, Wolfpack, Forestmen, Kingdoms, and some custom minifigures I'm hoping to eventually tell a photo story with. The first 0 is all Star Wars figures (with one custom from Arealight). The final 0 is the biggest mish-mash of figs, consisting of Atlantis, Power Miners, Space Police, Super Heroes, Pirates of the Caribbean and Collectible Minifigures. I also added the Crystal King, Eruptor, and T-Rex for good measure. :)

Minifigure Alphabet

For the month of February, I decided to take a picture a day of Lego Minifigures, corresponding to the letters of the alphabet.  I had this idea several years ago, but forgot about it until I stumbled on a list I had written in a notebook with ideas of minifigures I can use for each letter of the alphabet.  February has 28 days, so I thought it would be a great month to dedicate to the alphabet (and I even get two extra days in case something comes up and I don't have time for taking a picture). 

This month-long project seemed like a great idea, letting me try out the picture-a-day format without a long time commitment. I'm currently over half way through the alphabet with today's "O is for..." picture.  I am one day behind (I didn't take a picture on February 13th, but resumed again on the 14th). 

You can find the entire Minifigure Alphabet set here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, Flickr!, a photo by s.kosoris on Flickr.

-Love Shauna

Thanks!

Thanks to whoever bought a copy of "Out for a Ski" the other day. :)