Luloveshandmade

Colorful DIYs and Recipes for a Bright Summer Party

June 27, 2016

[Werbung:] Hello and happy summer day! Have you already seen my post with colorful summer DIY projects, the one with bright summer outfit inspiration, the article about happy and colorful ideas for grey April days and my post with tipps for explorations and springtime discoveries? For all of them, I teamed up with OTTO for our Pinterest cooperation. Also part of this collaboration are my fellow bloggers Pinspiration and provinzkindchen, so check out their blogs as well and make sure to also read their posts! :)

In today’s blogpost, I am sharing recipes, decor DIYs and inspiration for a bright and colorful summer party. So let’s get this party started, yay!

Bright DIYs and Recipes for a Colorful Summer Party:

For a tropical summer party food table, make pineapple cupcakes and matching cake toppers. // Buy helium balloons for an extra impressive decoration.

What about delicious raspberry milkshakes? // Invite your friends for a summer party with a tropical food table and matching decor elements.

What about helium balloons, pacmans and ghosts as nerdy decor elements? // Make a sweet strawberry dessert in a jar and take it to a picnic.

Mhhh, thirsty? Surprise your guests with a super delicious mango colada cocktail. I wish I had one right now!

Make colorful fruit sticks for your guests as a snack and discover the recipe for my favorite potato salad of all times.

Cut out stripes of cardboard, use a stapler to connect them and make buntings for your theme party. What about pretty cupcakes?

Craft colorful food toppers to embellish anything on your food table. // Mhhh, have you ever made a watermelon margarita? They are divine!

Homemade exotic bagels are delicious, trust me!

Set up a food table with charming details for a bright video game party. // Make strawberry mint milkshakes as summer refreshment.

Colorful honey combs are perfect party eye catchers. // Hmmm, make blueberry banana pancakes for a summer brunch with loved ones.

Wuoah, raspberry coconut cupcakes are one of my fave sweet treats, they are so so good! Try them out yourself!

Today is the Day for Summer:

Enjoy all the projects for making a bright summer party and check out our colorful Pinterest board HeuteIstDerTag für Sommer
(= today is the day for summer) and find ideas for making pretty decor elements, ideas for a food table and recipes for drinks and delicious treats.

Yippie yay, enjoy summer! Happy day,

P.S.: This blogpost was written for a cooperation with OTTO. :)

Merken

Everything Else

A Colorful Portrait Shooting (& Advice for How to Prepare for It)

June 22, 2016

Hello and happy summer day! Back in spring, I decided that it was time for a new blog look and makeover and consequently of course also for new portrait pictures, because my old social media photos I have been using everywhere have become quite outdated during the course of the time.

So back in spring, I approached my pal Alexander Rentsch. He is a Berlin-based photographer and does portrait shoots as well as wedding documentaries, architecture shoots, fashion, food and event photography. I have always loved his photos and back last summer, among some other sessions we did a spontaneous shooting in the park during a sunny day with friends to test his new lens.

A Colorful Portrait Shooting in Berlin with Alexander Rentsch

We have been a good team for several occasions and so it was clear that he was my first choice in finding a person to take my photos. Luckily, he agreed immediately, I made a briefing (see my advice for this on the bottom of this blogpost) and we then quickly met for the shooting which took half a day.

We went trough Berlin, visited a few locations that either of us had chosen, tried out different backgrounds, color schemes and poses.

When the rain started pouring in between, we took some fun shots. Apart from the umbrella accessory, I was dressed in a relatively neutral way.

This is the photo which made it as my new final profile shot for all social networks. I love the way the background becomes blurry, I like the perspective and also my facial expression.

We shot from different angles and took plenty of time to experiment.

Of course, I also wanted to include confetti (which was even handmade :)). It was pretty windy and it took us a while to find a corner where there was no wind at all.

All those happy pops of color, hooray!

This is the photo which finally made it for my business portfolio and business network pages, yay!

We found an empty yellow staircase and had fun trying out the best perspectives and angles.

In the end, we had A LOT of photos and it took me several days to limit my choice to about thirty images which I then bought in the end. I am extremely happy with the result, because the shooting day was so much fun and the photos with their overall look and feel came out even better than I had imagined and Alex made all my portrait photo wishes come true. Thank you again! :)

As I already told you in the beginning, I found out that for me it was helpful to prepare a little briefing in order to visualize my thoughts and to communicate the photographer what I had in mind concerning the shooting. So here are my learnings for you:

Advice for Preparing for a Portrait Shooting

When I asked Alex for a shooting appointment and we started talking about the details, I immediately got the idea to make a briefing for him with some photo examples that I liked and with some information about my expectations for him to be prepared for what I was hoping to achieve.

As I have found out for myself, it was very useful to visualize my thoughts and it helped me to communicate my needs to the photograher. So my suggestion for you when you also plan to hire a photographer for a (portrait shooting) is to make a detailed briefing and include the following information:

What to include in a briefing to prepare for a portrait shooting:

– How do you want the look and feel of your photos to be? Which kind of esthetic impression do you want them to have?

For my photos, I communicated in advance that I wanted a plain, clean and simple look, but still with some pops of color so that they look like me. I wanted the photos to be mainly neutral from any season and weather (apart from the fun rain photos as you can see) and wanted them to convey my open-mindedness and positive attitude while being not too playful. Thanks to Alex and his great skills, this can all be found in the final results and I think a good briefing is very helpful for a photographer to be prepared in advance.

– What is the aim and what will the photos be used for?

Do you for example want serious business portraits, or rather casual blog profile photos? In my case, the photos were supposed be used as blog profile photos as well as to be included in my business portfolio. Therefore, we even took photos with different facial expressions and experimented with poses.

– Send photos of you that you like and briefly explain why.

I sent photos of different poses and angles I feel super comfortable with when being photographed.

– In case you are shooting outdoors and you want to be involved into the planning process, make suggestions for possible shooting location.

Before I approached the photographer, I had already been looking for plain and colorful backdrops like walls or garages for several weeks, so I was well prepared.

– Look through the photographer’s portfolio and tell him what you like (and what you don’t).

Thus, he or she can way better prepare and anticipate your needs. I browsed through Alex’ previous shootings and sent him photos of which I especially liked the perspectives, the display detail or the way he edited them.

Thanks a lot for reading, let me know if you have any questions and have fun planning your own portrait shoot one day! :)

All photos in this blogpost are taken by Alexander Rentsch.

DIY

Upcycling-DIY: Fruity Chain of Lights

June 16, 2016

[Werbung:] Hello hello my dear readers! Outside it currently does only partly look like summer, so let’s get it tropical inside the home with a new DIY project.

For this DIY project, I am working together with Energizer, a company which produces batteries. To create this tutorial, I received a pack of Energizer’s brand new EcoAdvanced AA batteries to try them out.

The amazing thing about them is that 4% of each battery is made of recycled batteries, so they are a good step for more sustainability and even have more power than other batteries. Awesome! And as it is foresighted, already in ten years, even 40% of the battery is supposed to be made of recycled batteries, wow!

Moreover, since June there are also rechargable batteries availabe which are made of recycled batteries, so cool! Energizer Accu Recharge batteries can be recharged several hundred times and thus help to pollute our environment less.

So exciting! To celebrate the fact that batteries can partly be recycled, I am doing an upcycling project with you. Just the way batteries are used again, we are now using old yoghurt cups to make something new and pretty. So learn how to make your own fruity chain of lights made from upcycled yoghurt cups and cardboard. Thanks to the batteries, the chain of lights can be used independently from a power station, so you can even use it outside. Have fun!

Supplies for Your Own Chain of Lights:

Here is what you need:

– Colorful paper

– A piece of white cardboard for making a template

– Scissors, a glue stick (not in the picture) and tape (you can use painter’s tape or double-sided sticky tape)

– A chain of light

– (Energizer EcoAdvanced) Batteries

– A pencil and a black felt-tip

– An awl

– Old yoghurt cups

Make Your Own Upcycled Chain of Lights with Energizer Batteries:

Use the awl and make holes into the bottoms of all yoghurt cups so that the light bulbs slightly fit through.

Use (the cover of) a yoghurt cup to make a cardboard template for all the fruity shapes.

Cut out the template and use it for cutting out pieces of fruit. I started with the watermelon and needed three different colors.

Cut all three layers into shape, use the pen to draw seeds onto the watermelon and then use a piece of tape to tape one ending to the yoghurt cup.

Next, take more tape, fold it (or use double-sided sticky tape) and tape the whole piece of watermelon paper to the yoghurt cup.

Tadaaa!

Next, cut out more fruits, for example pineapples.

So colorful!

Apart from watermelons and pineapples, I also made strawberries and oranges.

After having prepared all the cups (be aware, all that cutting and glueing takes some time! :)), insert the light bulbs. My chain of lights is battery driven, so that’s where Energizer comes into play. This is super pracitical, because now I am not dependant on a power point and can even use the chain outdoors for an evening picnic.

That’s it, you are done! It was super easy, wasn’t it? I love that this project turned out so bright, colorful and summerly!

All the colorful cups are so nice to look at and guarantee instant color happiness!

Hooray, done so easily!

Which of the fruits is your fave one for the chain of lights?

This is a great project for a relaxing afternoon and can then be used as home decor or even taken away for a picnic.

Which other shapes or motifs would you also use?

Have fun making your own chain of lights and I hope you are as excited as I am about the fact that there is the opportunity to produce rather sustainable batteries. I hope for next bigger steps to come soon!

Thanks for reading and happy weekend! :)

P.S.: This blogpost was written for a collaboration with Energizer.

DIY

Colorful DIYs for a Bright Summer

June 11, 2016

[Werbung:] Hi everyone! Have you already seen my post with bright summer outfit inspiration, the article about happy and colorful ideas for grey April days and my post with tipps for explorations and springtime discoveries? For all of them, I teamed up with OTTO for our Pinterest cooperation. Also part of this collaboration are my fellow bloggers Pinspiration and provinzkindchen, make sure to also read their posts! :)

This time, I am sharing inspiration and tutorials for colorful summer crafts related to fashion, textiles and accessories. See yourself:

Colorful DIYs for a Bright Summer

Make your own wire necklace or learn how to make a floral wreath as festival or celebration accessory.

Some years ago, I made plenty of those game boy felt pouches as a phone case. What about making one yourself? Simply try out something new. // What about a sewing DIY for a simple elastic skirt?

Make your own minimalistic necklace with booden beads or sew yourself a pretty ribbon brooch by hand.

Try something new: what about bold textile printing or sewing a kitty cat pillow?

As a gift or simply as a home accessory, sew your own camera-shaped pillow or learn how to print and sew kitchen tea towels.

Make your own geometrical wooden necklace or sew a drop-shaped pillow or baby rattle.

Try some more printing and made your own summerly statement fruit shirts. In case you would like to make it even more colorful, make your own knot and rope bracelets.

Have fun with the tutorials and check out our bright and colorful Pinterest board HeuteIstDerTag für Sommer (= today is the day for summer) and find ideas for a new summer style, travel inspiration, discovery suggestions, freebies and DIY tutorials.

Yippie yay, enjoy summer! Happy day,

P.S.: This blogpost was written for a cooperation with OTTO. :)

Merken

Freebies, Handlettering & Illustration

Free Samsung Galaxy S6 Phone Case Printable (to Color it Yourself)

June 8, 2016

Hello everyone, what a lovely summer day! To make it even brighter, there’s a free printable for you to embellish your phone case and to color it yourself.

For all of you who have a Samsung Galaxy S6, there is a free printable for your phone. I made one for myself and spontaneously decided to scan and share it with you.

Get Your Own Phone Case Printable

For the motif, I simply made a pencil draft, then drew everything with a felt pen, scanned it, edited the file and printed it out. If you want to know how this works in detail, see my post about the illustration process. :)

If you want this phone case motif yourself, here’s what you need:

– A transparent Samsung Galaxy S6 phone case*

– A computer and a printer

– Colorful pens (I used Copic Markers*)

Here you can find the file:

>>> Free Samsung Galaxy S6 Phone Case Printable

Save the file onto your hard drive and print it out. I uploaded it in maximum size for a better printing quality, so you need to adjust the final size yourself (depending on how close you want the pattern to be at the edge). After printing, you can cut it and put it between the phone case and your phone’s back.