My Place & Yours; New Home.

Deb from Works in Progress has taken on MPAY kids, so head on over & join in for her first go ‘round! This week she wants to see your favourite cup, like this beauty of her own…

(And now, for reals this time; over and out. xx)

Ripping off the Band-Aid.

I just want to get this over & done with quickly so here it goes;

Punky & Me is fini.

Thank you so much for reading for however long you have; this blog grew into something I never expected it to grow into & brought some wonderful people into my life who I am proud to call friends; but I’m just not feeling it anymore. The blog love. The love for my blog, or your blog, or anybody's blog… I am rarely on the PC, commenting on blogs on my iPod is a frikkin nightmare & there are just so many things I feel like I’d rather be doing with my time now than blogging or thinking about blogging.

I guess I was selfish. I started this blog when I was in a new place & far away from my friends & family. Nobody I knew thought opshopping could be a fun hobby, or that a tablecloth could legitimately be turned into a skirt. I was alone & reaching out into the internet.

Now I know reams of vintage addicts, crafty vixens & generally clever peeps. I know who will most appreciate seeing my latest oppy treasures, who to ask a sewing question of & who lifts me up when I’m feeling down… & I know all these people will still be available to me post-blog. Because they’re ace & they’re my mates.

So thank you again guys, for indulging me. For encouraging me. For sharing things with me; birthdays, Christmases, getting my licence, having Spency… it’s been a blast.

If you miss me I’m at Instagram, like, all the damn time, & occasionally on The Twitter. Geek Amour will be getting more designs & probably a facebook page at some point… I can’t think about that right now as my head hurts.

If you’re interested in taking on the My Place & Yours meme, shoot me an email.

See you around, promise.

Love Vic.

Flea Market Finds

My finds for this week:

I stopped in at the oppy while picking up a few groceries this morning – I started going downhill in the feeling well stakes but it was totally worth it to score these lovely doilies, a piece of Johnson crockery & a nice little doll quilt.

The pile of goodies below cost a grand total of $5 all up….

This gorgeous lamp works & has a lightbulb in it that was made in Holland… it’s amazing! (Don’t worry, it’s not plugged in anywhere at the moment, waiting to start a fire, but one day I’ll get it checked & find the perfect place for it in my huge dream house….)

I wouldn’t have found this gorgeous big eyed doll if I hadn’t taken Punk shopping with me – she found the body first which I barely glanced at, thinking it was some weird scarecrow ornament, & then she found the head in a box & I just about died of awesome. Born to be a thrifting queen, that one.

The sausage below wasn’t my find, but a sweet pressie from someone who knows I’m partial to all things dachshund, I love it!

More finds with Sophie!

My Place and Yours; On The Wall.

Wow. I got one whole post in between memes. I guess that’s better than none….?

This week’s theme is an easy one for my poor sick self – it requires no tidying or making pretty.

Show us what’s on your wall! Your kitchen wall, your bedroom wall, both or neither, let us have a bit of a sticky beak!

My Place & Yours starts on Saturday but you can join in any day throughout the week, just follow these easy guidelines;

• Link back here somewhere in your MPAY post so that people know where to come to join in – the more the merrier!
• To play, take a photo or a bunch of photos of or relating to the theme & leave the link to your post in the list below. The photos can be as fancy pants & stylised as you like, or they can be quick & dirty via a phone pic – whatever you like. If you would like to write a little something, a lot of something or nothing at all, that’s cool with me too.
• Do try to pop by & visit some of the other players & let them know what you think of their posts.

Emotional Eating.

Also known as “that’s not vegetarian”….

I’m feeling a bit off today & wasn’t able to manage breakfast, so when I was wandering the aisles at the supermarket before lunch I was hoping to find something that I wanted to eat. While loitering in front of the Vegemite I looked up & saw these “Peck’s” pastes.

Obviously, they are not a vego option, nor are they, usually, particularly palatable to anyone under 57, but I stood there looking at them all the same.

I remembered the last time I had actively noticed a jar of Peck’s paste was many, many years ago, in my Nanna’s fridge. My Pa used to have a couple of different little jars on the go at a time, with delectable sounding names like “anchovette” & “chicken & ham”.

I remembered how the smell of them intrigued me (there is no other word for it) & how I would often have a little bit spread on some buttery toast to nibble while my Pa munched on his own much more liberally spread slice.

The memory was nice. I miss my Pa still, even though it has been a very long time since he passed away; he was much more than a Grandpa to me, he was my father figure when I didn’t have one & so many of my happy childhood memories have him at the center.

So I bought some damn Peck’s paste.

And I brought it home. I spread a little on some buttery toast & I ate it, & it was good. It’s not something I would recommend… ever… it has a salty, odd taste, a taste that I would struggle to liken to anything else, but to me, today, it tasted like I a much-needed hug from someone I wish was still here.

Just quickly;

Can anyone that hasn’t received ALL of their CDs from the music swap (who I haven’t heard from in the last two days) contact me so that I can chase them up please?

Thanks! (In other news I have stuff to blog but…. meh. I will TRY to dust the cobwebs off the camera, soon!)

My Place and Yours; Outside.

Your garden, your door, your apartment steps, the view from your gate, your local park; “Outside” is this week’s MPAY theme!

Huge thanks to the players last week, you can see all the lovely green finds here.

My Place & Yours starts on Saturday but you can join in any day throughout the week, just follow these easy guidelines;

 

Link back here somewhere in your MPAY post so that people know where to come to join in – the more the merrier!

To play, take a photo or a bunch of photos of or relating to the theme & leave the link to your post in the list below. The photos can be as fancy pants & stylised as you like, or they can be quick & dirty via a phone pic – whatever you like. If you would like to write a little something, a lot of something or nothing at all, that’s cool with me too.

Do try to pop by & visit some of the other players & let them know what you think of their posts.

Addictagram.

That’s not even all of them. I upgraded my old iPod with a new (second-hand & a ridiculous bargain) one that had a camera JUST so that I could Instagram, it’s a true, if sad, story.

So eager was I to play that I jumped right in with some seriously bad pictures taken in terrible lighting that I didn’t even like myself & then I thought “Well this is pretty crap, actually”. I even said as much, grandly declaring “I don’t like Instagram!” to anyone that would listen… but then I went back….

Oh. I. Love. It.

I’ve taken more photos of the kids lately than I have with my camera for ages – at this precise moment, I don’t even know where my camera IS. It’s so easy just to grab the iPod out of my pocket & take a snap. It’s fun. It’s inspiring following the tags to other #dachshund #baby #country #breakfast #vintage photos (…not together mind you, although, that would be an interesting photo…) & it seems more personal than twitter but it’s just as fast, as Bianca said, it’s like blogging but without all the words…. we all know a picture is worth a thousand of those anyway.

So, if it’s too quiet over here & you’re wondering what I’m up to, you know where I’ll be.

The Picnik is over…

…or at least it will be, soon. If you, like me, are already a big Picnik user, you’ll know by now that Google are closing it down in April & integrating some (not all) of it’s features into Google+ in an attempt to force more people to use their facebook alternative.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll resent this sly move & try to find an alternative rather than be forced to use a platform you weren’t going to use on it’s own merits (although I did try, when it was new, for about a week…).

After perusing twitter links &, ironically, Google searches, I’ve found two online editors that certainly aren’t Picnik, but could fill the void somewhat. Below is my original photo of Suspence which I’ll be using to demonstrate what these two programs could do.

Exhibit A: Pixlr Express.

I think this is what I’ll be turning to, at least initially. The Pixlr Express interface is nice & clean & the functions are smooth & easy to use. I really like the overlays & you can easily adjust the basics like brightness/contrast.

It has plenty of nice filters to choose from & many, many, many more borders than I can ever imagine utilising, but it doesn’t have some of the things I really love Picnik for, like airbrushing which I often use as a kind of more specific focal soften (where you can focus on one area of the picture & it blurs the rest)… speaking of which, Pixlr Express doesn’t even have that. Here’s my Pixlr Express’ed Suspence;

As you can see, I really went to town with the effects, normally I wouldn’t edit a picture this much, with overlays & filters & a crazy border, but for the purposes of this demonstration I decided to click a whole bunch of things & hope for the best.

Exhibit B: BeFunky.

Yeah… the name is a bit of put off right there, but I have been using the app version on my iPod so I thought I’d give the web version a run too.

The interface is… juvenile I guess, and you won’t be able to ignore the advertising easily, or their bold attempts to get you to upgrade at every turn, but if you can get past that there are some nice effects to be had in just a few clicks, it differs from Pixlr Express in that it has some arty effects in addition to photo filters, I’m not a huge fan of those but they can be fun to experiment with. BeFunky have stickers too which I know some people loved to utilize on Picnik.

My BeFunky’ed Suspence:

Special mention: Sumo Paint.

I couldn’t find another online editor that will help you fake the depth of field like Picnik (Why I don’t know, nearly every image editing app for the iPhone or iPod do it almost as a default), but Sumo Paint at least lets you try with it’s Linear blur filter.

Sumo Paint looks & is much more complicated than Picnik ever was, and I honestly think if you’re going to take the time to learn & use Sumo Paint that it would be more worthwhile to learn & use Photoshop or it’s free equivalent Gimp instead. I can use Photoshop & I like it, but it really does take a lot of time & effort to get a photo looking as good as Picnik did with three or four clicks, which is why I am so damn bummed about it closing in the first place… I might not want to be forced into the realms of Google+ just to access the Picnik features I love, but, after all this, it might happen anyway.

More online editors to try for yourself:

FotoFlexer

Phixr

Big Huge Labs

Lunapic

Feel free to let me know about any others you’ve tried or like in the comments – believe me, I want to know!