I’ve been obsessing over cinemagraphs for ages – in essence they are still images with a small isolated section that moves. When you first see them they’re quite confusing but totally entrancing! I’ve always wondered how they were made and how you can get essentially a still image to have bits of moving video within it but today (eeek) my questions have been answered. When I was sent this Photoshop tutorial by photographer Violet Short I literally gasped. Check out this cute one she made of her dog Marshmallow!

My name is Violet and I blog over at Blythe Ponytail Parades, a compilation blog featuring my photography and progress with the business, food and crafts! I am always trying to keep things fresh, new and exciting while posting throughout the week! Come on over if you enjoy vintage inspired photography, new decadent recipes or a load of inspiration to brighten your day!

Today I will show you how I worked through my video to create a cinemagraph. I will note, using living objects or anything near someone’s face (like moving hair as I did for this tutorial) can be difficult. I wouldn’t recommend it for your first one.

I will preface by saying that you will need a basic knowledge of photoshop to attempt this tutorial. If you aren’t sure how to use photoshop, than this tutorial might end up not being explained well enough. So bare with me and ask as many questions as you need to!

Step One: First, you will need to come up with a subject matter, decide what you want to be moving and what you are going to isolate. For my video, we set up a tripod (which is essential) in our living room and turned on the video recording spot on my camera. I sat on the couch with a fan blowing at me and I wanted to isolate everything but a few hairs that would move with the air.

Step Two: Once you have your video file, here’s what you do: File – Import – Video Frames to layers – locate your file.

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NB Other considered and witty titles for this feature included  ’a clock-tail display’ and ‘gin o’clock’…although granted I came up with those on my own and Chloe, who created this tutorial, is much much classier than I. Over to you lady…

I like being thrifty. It’s my adult version of ‘doing a makeover’, only instead of lipstick and eyebrow-high green shadow it involves glue guns and gin.

Cue one creative afternoon with Butterworth Photography and Darby & Joan! We treated twelve vintage Baby Sham glasses to a project restyle, transforming them into a quirky cocktail clock. Perfect for adding some personality to a blank canvas venue or some ‘retro cool’ to your living room afterwards?!

Supplies Needed:

♥ A large piece of MDF (sanded and painted white)
♥ A clock mechanism
♥ A drill
♥ 12 cocktail glasses
♥ A glue gun
♥ Gel candle wax
♥ Red food colouring
♥ Card
♥ Glitter
♥ PVA glue

Method:

Step One: Measure and mark out the centre of your piece of wood and drill a hole to fit your clock mechanism

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Hi there fellow RocknRollers! Some of you may already know me from www.cabinetsofcuriosity.co.uk but for those that don’t, I thought I’d share some pearls of wisdom with you. My name is Holly and my business Cabinets of Curiosity which specialises in eclectic, event styling including handmade stationery & decorations. Kat featured my own wedding which took place last October and there were a lot of people asking about the twine wrapped letters on my guest book table. So, I thought I’d make a little tutorial for those of you out there who would like to have a go! If you would like some initials or lettering for your big day but don’t have the creative fingers, please email my site with your requirements! Big thanks to Kat and thanks for looking!

Supplies Needed:

♥ Styrofoam or polystyrene
♥ Marker pen
♥ Knife
♥ Ruler
♥ Scissors
♥ Twine, wool or ribbon to wrap with

Method:

Step One: Decide on a simple font – capital letters work best. Using the ruler draw your letter onto the foam, making sure it is even and all subsequent letters are the same height and width.

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As I’m in the birthday spirit, what could be more celebratory than a big fat pink cake!? And with ombre being a wedding trend I’m still utterly loving, I thought this DIY from blog reader Heidi would be the perfect way to get the party started…

I’m Heidi, and I write the blog LittleMissLove. I work in Digital Marketing, drink too many iced lattes, and am also a pro hula hooper (more on that on the blog soon!) I write about things I love, and I love fashion, film photography, and getting crafty. I post a lot of mini DIY projects – pretty or tasty things you can make on a lazy sunday. It just so happens that my chap Dikki proposed to me over a home-made chilli just before New Years Eve, so since then most of my crafty projects have been some kind of trial run for the Big W. I’ve seen a lot of gorgeous ombre wedding cakes around t’internet recently, so here’s a how to if you want to try it out yourself!

Recently I met with my bridesmaids, to watch the awesome Bridesmaids film, drink cocktails and have a gossip. Of course, I need a cake for every occasion so I made a lemon sponge with blackcurrant jam in the middle. I tried out ombre icing for the first time – a gentle graduation of colour from light to dark. Here’s how!

Supplies Needed:

♥ Cake
♥ White Icing (can be bought ready made or you can home make some butter cream or cream cheese icing)
♥ Food Colouring in your choice of colour (I used red to make a white-pink-red ombre effect)
♥ Palette knife
♥ Spatula
♥ Bowl

Method:

Step One: Firstly, cover the cake in white soft icing, this is called a crumb layer, and it smooths out your palette. I cheated and bought a tub of Betty Crocker ready made frosting, since you can’t buy white butter in the UK (unlike the US) so you can’t make white buttercream at home. If you do want to go fully DIY just make a cream cheese frosting, that way it will stay nice and white (and it’s delicious!)

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I may be biased but this cameo necklace DIY Tutorial from Cat Morley of crafty community Cut Out + Keep  may be my favourite ever! If you’re of a crafty persuasion and fancy making some personalised wedding jewellery or gifts (how cute would these be for bridemaids?) then you’re going to get very excited indeed about this one…

Of course you don’t have to make your necklace of me (!) or with my logo but I’m sure this tutorial will inspire you to come up with your own designs. You could maybe put each bridesmaid’s name in place of the Rock n Roll Bride logo?

This tutorial looks like it might be complicated when you see how polished the final result is, but honestly I was shocked at how simple (and genius!) it is. All you need is a little shrink plastic (remember that!?)

Supplies Needed:

♥ Shrink plastic in a variety of colours
♥ Glitter glue
♥ Jewellery chain (can be bought from craft stores like hobbycraft or fabric shops)
♥ A clasp (again should be easy to find in craft or fabric stores)
♥ 1 large and 2 small jump rings
♥ 2 eye pins
♥ 2 small black beads
♥ Beaded Trim
♥ Small crystals
♥ Strong adhesive
♥ Wire cutters
♥ Jewellery pliers
♥ Tweezers
♥ Scissors
♥ Xacto knife
♥ Paper (for template)

Method:

Step One: Start with a portrait photo and trace around the silhouette on to paper. Make separate templates for the head, hair and the jewellery. Remember you’re template should be 7x bigger than you want your finished template to be.

Step Two: Cut out your templates and layer on top of each other. Create an oval template for your silhouette to sit on and then make a second slightly larger and third even larger oval template. Line up the two largest ovals and punch a hole through the top of both.

Step Three: Draw around the templates on to various colours of shrink plastic. When working with clear shrink plastic, use blue-tack to stick the template to the plastic and cut around it.

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Hello Kat & Rock n Roll Bride readers, I’m Rebecca Douglas of www.rebeccadouglas.co.uk a Kent based wedding and lifestyle photographer who loves working with people and making and creating beautiful things!  When I’m not shooting and doing photography related stuff I love to get a make on with all sorts of materials.

I really loved the images that I was seeing from wedding photo booths and so wanted to develop these blackboard speech bubbles for guests to write messages on while in photo booths at weddings.

Supplies Needed:

♥ 3mm thick MDF
♥ Chalkboard Spray Paint  (I bought mine from amazon but you should be able to get it in craft stores or places like B&Q too)
♥ Chalk board pens (as above)
♥ A laser cutter or jigsaw
♥ Sandpaper

Method:

Step One: Cut the MDF into the shapes you want the speech bubbles to be. You’ll find there are a lot of sellers on eBay that already sell pre-cut shapes if you don’t have a laser cutter or jigsaw yourself. I’ve had a google around and there are also a lot of companies that offer laser cutting online, where you just email in your order and voila, the cut shapes are sent to you. That said a bit of elbow grease with a jigsaw and sandpaper will do the trick too.

Step Two: Set out a wide area of newspaper and lay the cut shapes out. Before you start spraying, make sure you have a big border of newspaper, or you’ll be left with a newspaper shaped outline on your garden path like mine is now sporting! (Whoooops!) When you start spraying, be sure to keep a consistent movement across the shapes as you don’t want paint to build up in one area (this will show up in photos). The can recommends that you spray at a height of 30cm from the surface which gives a good even coverage.

Step Three: Leave the shapes to dry for around 20 minutes. I used this time constructively and had a cup of Yorkshire brew and a few obligatory custard creams.

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