Canon EOS Rebel XS

This has got to be the MOST awesome camera ever! Ok...so maybe I'm exagerating, but it's the best camera I've ever owned, I've had it less than a day and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! If you have a spare $499 lying around I highly recommend it! Yes, I splurged a little with my income tax refund, but I really needed a good camera to take pictures with if I'm going to try to become a pro, right? Check out some of the awesome pics I've taken already!

Notice the great detail of the scales under his chin!

LOOK...you can see the fur on him and it's obvious that he's a black cat and not just some random black blob. This is probably the BEST picture I have ever taken of him.

It allowed me to focus on a single drop of water. Amazing, and this is just with the standard lens too.

I'm going to have to stop loading pics on here because they are very large files and take a long time to upload. Another thing I wanted to mention about the above photos. Most of you have seen my digital art, my editing skills, I have not touched these! I haven't so much as opened them in my editing software yet. I hope to have some time this weekend to work on some nice new images for my Shop. If you aren't following that one, you can go HERE and follow so you can see the new images as I load them. I am hoping to get a few done and put up in the next few days so keep a look out for them. I also plan to TAKE lots more pictures. It is just so fun with this great new camera. And the even more fun part is, I haven't even learned how to use all the cool features yet!

Hope you all have a great day! I plan to have an AWESOME weekend!

"Review Me", Valentine's Cards, and other stuff

I have been looking for ways to make money with my blog since I started this thing a few months ago. Call me a greedy blogger if you wish, but I am really tired of having to wake up at 4:15 AM every morning to work a 10 hour shift at astore where the corporate office is hundreds of miles away, yet they think they know how to run the store (by run I mean what items, products and how much what said items and products) better than I do. I have been doing this job for over 2 years now, and I have yet to have a bad audit (I mean a really bad audit) and have actually been told that I have one of the best audit numbers for the entire company (over 70 locations). I have also been passed over THREE times for a promotion to District Manager and I am just all around fed up! So, yes, I want to make money with this blog, lots of money, so that I can quit that job and 'fire my boss'! Anyway, back to the topic at hand. ☺ I found a great site called Business2Blogger and signed up for their e-mails  as soon as I read about it. It's a free service to bloggers and I would recommend anyone going and joining. I did some more hunting around the other day and found the Review Me site. I'm not trying to bash this site, but I was a little frustrated to get this e-mail from them today.

Hello,


We are sorry but the website you have suggested http://www.jaydescorner.blogspot.com has been declined at this time. The main reasons a website is declined are:

- The website is a suspected fake.
- The website does not have enough link popularity.
- The website does not have enough traffic.

*Please note that our algorithm that accepts or rejects inventory submissions can make mistakes and if you feel the above criteria does not accurately describe your website, please reply to this email asking for further review by our editorial staff.

The first one is the one that really gets me...my site is a suspected FAKE! What? You mean I've been posting counterfeit blogs all this time and didn't realise it? Holy crap! Then the others, not enough link popularity and not enough traffic. Well, I know I don't have a lot of traffic yet, that's why I'm hunting down these sites, silly people! Finally, my absolute favorite part "our algorithm that accepts or rejects inventory submissions" so my site is a suspected fake because a computer program looked at it and said so? A real person didn't even bother stop by and check it out? Ok, maybe they get a lot of requests and I am certain that their program usually works well. I am just frustrated that I have to build my traffic to build my traffic! It seems like a viscious circle to me, kinda like the you have to have credit to get credit deal. I won't go into that one now!

Secondly on my list is the Valentines that I created for my daughter this year. This will be her last year to pass out mandatory Valentine's at school since she will be entering Junior High next year. Amy is into Twilight right now (what teenage girl isn't, or adult girl for that matter!) She really likes the romantic goth look and skulls. Since the prepackaged Valentines they sell don't usually come with skulls on them, I decided to get a little creative. She approved them last night and I will be sending them to the printer today after I make sure they are 'perfect'!

Pretty nifty if you ask me! I'll be printing this as a 4X6 image from Wal-Mart on regular photo paper. The prints usually only run about .15 cents each so I'm not looking at spending too much to get them done. Just a little bit of gas money to get to the Wal-Mart (which we don't have IN my town and that sucks).

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling for one day! I'll leave you with a recomendation to visit my friend's new blog Pic Crazy. I posted a blog about it here. She is new to blogging and could use some new friends to help her along! Hope you all have a great day!

This Week's Featured Image - Week 8

I know I haven't been on in a few days, but I have really good excuses reasons. Friday was a busy day at work, so couldn't do much there. Then I had to get ready for my date Friday night as soon as I got home. I had a great time. We went out to eat and watched Avatar. Yes, it really is a great movie. I loved the scenery as much as anything. Then Saturday I HAD to go shopping, because my income tax refund came in and I had lots of stuff that I needed (and still need) to do with it. So forgive my absense, but I did actually remember that I am supposed to change my Featured Image today. Here is last week's image.

The flower is a Rose of Sharon (or so I've been told, because I don't know much about plants, trees or flowers except that I love them) from my back yard. It has pale purple blooms and they are truly gorgeous. I started by cutting the flower from the original image in which it was actually centered. I then used Brightness & Contrast to increase the definition, and of course Saturation to enhance the color. The 'drawn' look is accomplished with the Colored Pen tool and I really liked the way it looked with that alteration. Time for the background. I found an older image I took of just some foliage and went through the same process as above, B&C then Saturation. I placed the flower over the foliage, but it seemed too .... something. I just knew I didn't like it. Then I remembered the gradient tools I had and used that to 'cut' the stripes out of the background. I used a purple Gradient Fill on the base, then replaced the cut piece and I really liked the play in color. I then used the Colored Pen tool once again to match the flower and added the shadow behind the flower for depth. I really like this one, I think it turned out very well. As you can see (if you look to your left), I used a cut of this image as my Shop button.

Here is the original images I used, the flower and the foliage.

Hope you all enjoyed my image for last week and that you will enjoy this week's as well.