Jessika, Author at JESSIKA REED

Car Seat Canopy

My cousin Kimmi is having a baby in October and for her baby shower, I wanted to make something for her. I haven’t sewn much in my life but wanted to get some more practice and I have seen some *super* cute baby car seat covers that allow a mom to carry her baby in style, while protecting them from the weather, sun and unwanted touching by strangers! I thought that something like this would make a great gift. I didn’t really take pictures to show step-by- step instructions but you can go here to see the tutorial I used from a blog I found! It was quite simple and I am really happy with the way it turned out!

I obviously don’t have kids, therefore I don’t have a car seat so… these pictures were taken at Walmart!

I heard Kimmi is a big fan of owls and I love them too, so I thought that would be a fun addition! Doing the owl like I did, with the hand stitching and frayed edges, you can’t go wrong because it isn’t supposed to be perfect, that is the cuteness of it! I just cut this out of a scrap of fabric and pieced it together! I love it, hopefully she does too!

Here is the inside fabric. Stephen helped me pick and decide on these and I think they coordinate quite well! This picture was a little rushed because there was an employee giving me a shifty look and I don’t know if my crowning moment would be getting kicked out of Walmart for taking pictures!

Fix-It Friday #2

This is my second time doing the fix-it Friday challenge with

Here is the original image:

Here is the image with my edits, feel free to let me know what you think!

Final Design Project

This is the last week of classes for the summer semester, my first semester back at school. I have been taking an online graphic design application course, basically learning Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. I had never used InDesign and my skills in the other two programs were a lot of self taught things so I feel like I learned quite a bit. My final assignment in this class was to produce two portfolio pieces that we could present at a job interview that demonstrate some of the skills we have learned through the course and the teacher recommended that we stay conservative in our choices. That was the only instruction given. Of course when someone tells me to come up with something, I can’t, I get a creative block and find everything that is not related to the project to occupy my time and wait until the last minute to do the project. Granted the two projects are due tomorrow at midnight but I still have been putting even thinking about it off all week.

This is the first one I have done. All of the info is made up.

One of my favorite things in this class was learning to use photoshop for more editing than layouts like I have done in the past. We learned how to clone things and how to make more panoramic pictures and I wanted to be able to do that in my final. Now I need to come up with my second idea… then work on my final photography portfolio and study for a comprehensive health final exam!

I Heart Faces

I came across this website called iheartfaces that has a weekly fix-it friday challenge where they post a picture and allow people to practice their editing skills and submit their edits to the site! How fun!
Here is the original picture this week:

Here are my edits:

Sepia

Black & White

Let me know what you think of these!

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I am not a big chocolate fan in any way. Stephen loves it but I just don’t. But even with that in mind I think these cookies are the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had! We got this recipe from some good friends and we have been loving them ever since!!

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Landscapes & Portraits: Antelope Island, Utah Lake & Stephen

For my last assignment before my final in my photography class, we have to do a print of a landscape or portrait. I had 2 rolls of film left and they weren’t the right ISO to use them for my final portfolio next week so I decided to take a stab at both Landscapes & Portraits. We decided to go on a little 1/2 day trip to Antelope Island at the Great Salt Lake. I had never been there and Stephen hasn’t ever been to the Great Salt Lake and we thought it would be fun to take the dogs.

Before we got Molly, whenever we were getting ready to go somewhere, Royce would get into his carrier and sit there to let us know he wanted to go where ever we were going. When we were getting ready to leave yesterday, I think he knew something was up because he was frantically trying to get into his carrier, which he hasn’t done in a long time. We don’t use the carrier anymore because they seem to get really hot, pretty quick in there but it was still so cute that he knew he wanted to go where ever we were headed!

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Low / High Key Assignment

This week my assignment in my photography class is either a high or low key assignment. I think I am drawn to dark things because all of my shots have been low key so far! I am a dork and want to get my stuff right, because my class is a film class not digital so I can ruin my assignment if I am not careful. So what I do is take the picture with my digital camera and try to get what I am looking for and then I take a couple with the film camera and hope that they work out. I won’t develop this roll until Monday, so I am hoping my assignment will turn out. The assignment was to shoot something that has at least 90% low key (darker tones) and 10% of the photo can be in a higher key (lighter tones).

These were what I got from my digital camera, I turned them to black and white since that is what I will get on the film!

This was supposed to be a little creepier than it turned out but I like it!