Holiday Swishy Brushes

Here is our weekly givaway! My brand new holiday swishy brush set for your photoshop page scrapping, card making fun. This is available for up to 100 downloads and the link will expire in seven days. Please use the brushes for your personal use only and don't pass them around. Feel free to send your friends here to download. If you'd love them for commercial use, please drop us an email and we can send you info regarding our commercial use licenses.

{download holiday swishy brushes here}

Thanks people for continuing to check the blog. Sometimes I am so surprised that people (many of whom I don't know in person) visit regularly and I especially appreciate the comments. I do love blogging and I hope you'll continue to find this site worth coming to.

The past while has been serious "crunch time" for creating custom cards, wrapping up photo shoots and orders for the year, and thinking about the direction we'll take studiocharm in 2008. I have a newborn session tomorrow at 8am with a family I photographed last summer. I'm also looking forward to another session with my famous tutu twins on Monday. As my photography business has grown, I have learned that one of the best complements I can receive is to have repeat clients. It keeps me working hard to stay creative and fresh with what I do, and the expectation is raised each time. I love it!

Someday when I figure out what I want to be when I grow up, I think I will have tried a million things just to narrow it down to the top 10. Here's my list of some of the things I aspire to do or become:

1- I want to be the most patient mom in the world, who always has arms ready to embrace my children.

2-I want to be the type of person who is the same inside my home, at church, with friends, with clients.

3- I hope to fine-tune the balance between family, work, church & self.

4- I want to be known by the images I create. I love the idea of my photography being identifiable by some intrinsic quality, whether by my style or by the way the image moves the viewer. I don't aspire to have a famous face, instead I hope it will be my work that people will remember me by.

5- I am working to be the type of person who lives with out regrets: taking every opportunity to act on what I know I need to do and should do. Always telling and showing my family how much I love them is a start.

6- I hope to some day have our house paid off & no other debts. :)

7- I want to travel with my family someday (with camera in hand of course) to Italy, Spain and Brazil.

8- I want to design awesome stuff for photographers and digital scrapbookers and learn how to be good at marketing.

9- I could keep going . . . but I won't since I meant to publish this post this morning and it took me all day to get back to it. I took an afternoon break to make gingerbread houses with graham crackers with my girls. ;)

~Amy :)

Loving the Blues & Browns

Here's a family you may recognize! Time for the annual photo shoot~ this time we went for a more studio look, even so, we were able to get a few shots that really spin, jump and point to fun. Meet the D Fam!

{the measure of a great dress- how does it look when twirled?}

{ready, set, JUMP!}

{Mom demonstrates one effective way of keeping a toddler on the backdrop: the upside-down maneuver}

{Hah! Joke's on you! ;) }

{and back to picture perfect!}

Thanks Turkey Givaway

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Here is the givaway for the week . . . I have added a brush set with several brushes and a .png turkey for your personal use. (That means if you need these for commercial use, please email me regarding a commercial use license).

Click here to download my free turkey brushes & colored turkey .png file. This offer is good for 7 days or up to 100 downloads, so get 'em while they last. Please don't share the turkey, but you are welcome to send your friends/ family here to catch him.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I will be catching up later on some picture posting. I am working on a couple of big projects today so the pictures will have to come later!
~Amy :)

Elf Family Fun

A good friend just sent me a link that turns your family into elves. I got such a good laugh out of this! Click here to see my elf family.

Downtown Family

I've been so excited to post these shots! This session was the perfect combination of great weather, superb lighting, fun location and a beautiful family of seven.

{Can I just say I love these shots? Great job C-fam . . .thanks for a fun session!}

Thursday Givaway- overlays

Hey everyone- yesterday I missed posting the Thursday givaway. I hope you'll forgive me. I will make sure to plan ahead for next week, as it is Thanksgiving.

So . . . this week's givaway will be for the FIRST 3 PEOPLE who leave a comment on this post. Your prize will include two texture overlays (.png files) that can be used for personal photo fun or even commercial if you are making cards for clients. If you are one of the first three to comment, please go ahead and email us an adress to send your files to. Our adress is sales@studiocharm.com

{This sample image is made with three layers: background- color photo, layer 1- oil wash overlay at 50% opacity, layer 2-black & white copy of background layer/ soft light mode @ 100% opacity}

Celebrating One

One.
Twelve months.
Four teeth.
Twenty-nine inches.
Two climbing, cruising feet.

Two busy hands.
One momma's boy.
One sweetheart.
One year.

{Happy Birthday, Little Bud}

We enjoyed celebrating M's birthday this week. I have been as busy as ever~ hence the lack of posts as of late. I have a goal to reach 100 posts by the end of the year. This means some serious blogging ahead, but I promise to try and make it worthwhile too!

My Blue Eyed, Blue Armed Girl

Here's the story in a nutshell. My two girls were acting scrappy so I sent them to their shared room for a little quite time on their bunkbeds. All was peaceful and quiet for a while. Mothers know this is usually a sign of trouble.

Just then my oldest DD yells out, "Mom! A. has BLUE on almost her whole body!"
I jump up and run upstairs to their room. Sweet A. was sitting quietly on her bed as instructed, with a blue crayola marker and apparently not enough paper to scribble on. She did this instead:



As you can see, she is devastated at the consequence of coloring her body smurf-blue. Unfortunately, she doesn't even know what smurfs are . . . so I couldn't even use that one.

I was faced with a dilemma. Do I scold? Laugh? Cry? Get the camera? I got the camera . . . and told her we needed to take a picture to show her dad what she had done (trying to be stern, but holding in my laughter).

She was striking the poses, I tell you. Admiring her artistic creation. Amazingly enough, she didn't get ANY marker on her bedding. I don't know how, as you can see she was pretty thorough with this. She is also a lefty, as you can see her right arm was the more "artistically rendered" one.

Enough admiring. Off to the bath. As she smiled while the blue water filled the tub, I told her, "You're going to be blue for a really long time."

"Oh." She casually replied.

Big sister added, "That's not going to look very good at church!" (Always thinking ahead!)

Eventually the blue did come off and my darling A. emerged from her brief smurfdom.

The moral of the story: Beware the quiet child, as she is more likely to get into mischief.

Butterfly Princess Brushes~ Givaway?!?

"More free stuff?" you may ask. Yes, it is true. I do love to share stuff with people, and I thought these brushes may be put to good use. This free download is for personal use. Please email me regarding a commercial use license.

This set of BUTTERFLY PRINCESS brushes are .abr files, and will work for PS & PSE. Place the file into your presets folder (usually a subset within the PS folder inside drive where you have installed PS). To load the brushes open up PS> go to edit> preset manager> load> select the name "butterfly princess" then click "load." Let me know if you have any troubles with it.

This free brush set expires in seven days or after 100 downloads, whichever comes first. Enjoy!! I'd love to see what you come up with! If you are sharing your creations online, please reference http://www.studiocharm.com/blog . Enjoy!

click here to download

Cowgirl Portraiture

Tonight {this morning?} I was feeling creative and apparently was having enough fun to forego sleeping and here are the results . . . my little cowgirl, taken from a photograph of my dd. I created this oil painting via corel painter and my wacom tablet . . . and I think I have just rediscovered a love for oil painting!


Some of you may know that my degree is in art education. I taught junior high art and photography for a few years, and have been a mural artist for the past 10 years. I only took one oil painting class in college and honestly didn't fall in love with the mess, the long time oils take to dry, the fumes, the clean-up. Needless to say, my murals are all painted with water-based acrylic. My DH enjoys painting once in a while and prefers oil to acrylic, but not me.

Until now. {Here's a close up of the texture and blending}

So I can't wait to create my next portrait! I had never installed this program until tonight. As an artist, I am surprised at how intuitive this program is. I really created this image in the same sequence that I would a 3-d painting. It takes quite a bit of time, and many layers are involved. There isn't a magic button or setting to create a realistic oil painting . . . that is why the process was so rewarding for me. I think I may have this one printed on canvas masonite! I'll let you know how it works out!

{I kept her face on the smooth side and the background/ bandana pop with a bold texture. Does she pass the test?}

Thanksgiving Card Template Givaway

This week I decided to offer a givaway to a few more of you (up to 100) . . . it is the Thursday Givaway, but it will last this whole week! Wahoo!!

If you would like to download this lovely 5x7 Thanksgiving card (to be personalized by you . . . as it is a fully-layered .psd file) just click here: studiocharm thanksgiving card. Offer expires in 7 days, or after 100 downloads.

There is also a tutorial for using clipping masks/ group with previous layer on our studiocharm website: template tutorial.

I'd love to hear what you think of the template! This template is set up the same way our holiday collection templates. Remember, the template does not include fonts so you will be asked to update your font layers upon opening the file. Your computer will replace with a similar font, or you can highlight the text and select a font. Please don't share the template- but printing cards made with it is encouraged.

~Amy

Tricks and Treats: Halloween 2007

I have many lists in my life. I have "should do's" "have to's" "want to's" and "will do's." I decided to endulge in a little "want to" time and sort through a few pictures from yesterday:

{a quick visit to Grandma & Grandpa's house . . . can you tell who is thrilled to be part of this photo?}

{Grandpa raked up the biggest pile of leaves EVER . . . just for the kids to play in. I even jumped in, and felt like I kid myself. Matthew was delighted with all of the crunchiness of his leafy mound. Our visit was longer than planned because I lost my car keys. After searching through the biggest pile of leaves EVER, we realized the keys were locked inside the car. A little help from AAA and 2 hours later we were finally home to greet Daddy-0 and ready to commence trick-or-treating. Good one, Amy. }

{Cool tree, great candy. My favorite trick-or-treating snap so far.}

{Spooky.}

{A. and the horse . . . actually she is supposed to BE the horse. Confusing but cute costume.}

{Loving interaction between my girls . . . lucky capture!}

{She's the toughest, sweetist li'l cowgirl around!}

{Watch out! This horse BITES!}

{This is M. in his "Mom got carried away bidding on a Tom Arma limited edition zebra costume on ebay" outfit. Isn't he the perfect zebra though?}

Now onto November. . . and I will share some photos from the cabin just as soon as I can. Promise.

Givaway Three: The Winner!

Congratulations Katie- thanks for playing! Please contact me with your 3 selections: (ie. c-3, d-1, a-2) and an email address and you will receive your prize!

Next week (Thursday) we'll have some more fun with another drawing!! I promise to add some recent pictures up ASAP . . . as this is my busiest time of year! Happy November 1st!