Every Friday for the next few weeks, I am planning to offer a new item inspired by a photograph. In truth, today's design is inspired not only by this photo, but by Amy's request for pale pink shoes for her daughter. The Evy shoes are pink linen, great for summer, and will be available Monday night, June 28 at 9 pm CST. I will add the listing to my website with additional photos and pricing over the weekend. I have a list of additional shoes, styles, and sizes on Facebook. Have a lovely weekend, and special thanks to Sixth and Main for the inspiration.

"Change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.” ~John Steinbeck

These are one of the shoes I've been wanting to show you, and with it comes a confession. While I do love the flowered shoes, sometimes I want to do something different... still cute, but something you haven't seen before. I admit, flowered shoes are my hallmark. The reason I decided to make a pair of booties for Mia those two years ago was because I saw felt flowers in a Pottery Barn kids catalog. I loved that look, but couldn't find any anywhere. So, I made some flowers and thought, "Gee, this fabric would make great little booties." Two years later: here I am. So, flowers have always been a part of my product. The problem with a business that is born out of chance is that it beckons the question of identity: What is my style? What is my ideal product? What is my business identity?

Sometimes, after making shoes with flowers for so long, I want to get away and do something different.... less sweet and more avant-garde. Then again, all those flowers were what established my business and took it from a simple craft to a genuine company. It's like Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books. {Yes, I have read them. Yes, I am a closet Twi-hard. Yes, I will be at the midnight movie, but only because it's my birthday and a friend bought me a ticket. What can I say: it's an insatiable story, despite being almost entirely devoid of literary devices.} Anyhow, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight put her on the map. Now after she has spent years on the Twilight series, I read online that she is a little fatigued of the story and wants to focus on something new, like the sequel to the Host, which in my estimation falls short of her previous books that established her fame. {Stephanie, can't you just write more about Edward and Bella? ;) }

Do you follow my analogy? As I am nearing the point of finally--finally--really pulling the trigger on a large order of shoes, it begs the question of my product identity and how I want to define my business style. Anyhow, maybe it's too much deep thinking for a Thursday morning.... It's eight o'clock, the children are still sleeping, and the house is deliciously quiet. So, I'll leave you with one more photo and a $2 Giveaway.

The shoes are made of perfectly peach satin; they will be available soon. I had some raw ruffles leftover, which I twisted and turned in a random fun little brooch with beaded center. *see previous photo* If you are fast, you can nab the brooch for $2. Hope you are well, my friends!

***BROOCH IS SOLD OUT***

Remember those new styles I've been dying to show you? These are not the ones. I like them, though; not too unusual but quintessential summer. I have quite a few of these, size 2-7, some of them for sale for half price. I have been training Paige, and she made them. Some are quite polished and some of them are rough--hence the 50% off. However, all of them will look adorable when worn. They are coming soon.

Why not now, you ask? Some of you know that it's been a very rocky start launching the website. These problems range from orders not ever being emailed to us, to addresses completely voiding when we go to generate the label, to items overselling. The latter part has us particularly buried at the moment. If you're thinking, that sure sounds like a major snafu; well, I couldn't agree more. Which is why I am not selling any new shoes. I have been in touch with my web host, which is a very impressive company, incidentally, and we are rectifying these issues. In the interim, it's very important to me that orders ship timely, and I don't want to sell any more shoes until they will ship within a week of purchase. I was feeling distraught and a little inept over the whole issue, but then I was talking to my brother about Mac's ipad and how they have had issues and "first generation product complication." It made me feel a little better that even big corporations have glitches. But, gosh darn, wouldn't it be better if life just ran perfect?!

As for Aidan, he does not need surgery for his broken nose. Hooray! Although the ENT doc did say it is extremely hard to break the nose of a child. {Did I ever mention that the name Aidan means "fiery"? So apropos for him.}

I have several new posts coming... new designs, a $2 giveaway, a tutorial, new press, and a chance to win a free pair of shoes. In the meantime, here is a photo taken by the fabulous Jen of Dear Lillie of her daughter in the Kaila shoes and her Audry tutu. {Jen and I arranged a trade back in April.}

In closing, if you have any questions about your order, please do not hesitate to email me at hello@joyfolie.com. If you have ordered from me before, then you know that at Joyfolie we try to ship each order as if it was a gift going to a treasured friend. This is something I love about my company and hope to always retain, regardless of how we grow. However, it does make the packaging process more personal and more time consuming, and I appreciate your patience as we get some of these details straightened out.

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If these shoes were for women, I would use words to describe them like "gun metal grey" and "toe cleavage." But they are for kiddos, so let's just say they are the most perfect shade of vintage silver, perfect with a fancy dress or distressed jeans and everything in between. I have these and oh so many more designs I am dying to show you. However... I. Am. Behind. Very. Some of you read that my precious boy fell and broke his nose. I can't even begin to describe how terrible it looked when it happen--so very scary. Paige {the intern I just hired} and I lost a full day of work, and instead I got to sit in the ER with my wounded little guy. We have to consult with the ENT on Monday to see if he will need surgery. So, until I get a little more caught up, I am not going to offer anything new. I have so many shoes though... new and old designs to sell. For now, it will have to wait. Have a lovely weekend!

I just saw on a friend's blog that i ♥ faces was having a photo submission on little babies, including pictures of baby items or little booties. So, I took a picture of these and then a picture of these, but neither turned out quite "baby" looking enough for me. So, I went through my archives and found the photo above of my friend Amy and her then infant son. I took this photo the same week I got my "real" SLR camera, and I still like it: the blue of his eyes and the way he is looking at her. A newborn baby watches his mother as though she contains the whole world. The shoes in the pictures are size 2. Send me an email if you want them.

Soon I'll do a quick tutorial on white backgrounds and tell you how I took this photo.

One of my favorite things about having a business is that it has connected me to so many other amazing female entrepreneurs. One of those is Jennifer of Dear Lillie. Jen and her creative team offer all sorts of feminine items for little girls and women, ranging from handmade silk wedding bouquets to tutus and embellished tanks {like the one Mia is wearing in the first photo.} It's always a treat to see another seller's product, and Jen's come professionally crafted and deliciously packaged.

Mia loved her new tank, as evidenced by the photos below, though she was already giving me instructions on the skirt I should make to go with it along some new shoes. Incidentally, Mia thinks every pair of shoes with a Joyfolie label are hers.







As much as I love her children's items, my favorite things from Dear Lillie are the women's tanks and dresses. The Adeline dress is especially cute and very flattering. I paired mine with a sea glass ruffled hem chemise from Anthropologie. In addition to running her Dear Lillie shop, Jen is also an impeccable interior designer and her blog features great decor tips and photos of her home that was featured on HGTV. Thanks, Jen, for the lovely items!

If you get a chance, swing by the Dear Lillie blog and say hi. I'll leave you with a photo of me in one of her rosette tanks. Robert did a great job taking the photo, but it's still sort of embarrassing... another hazy picture of me at sunset, not really looking at the camera. I have quite a few women's items in inventory {belts and necklaces} that I haven't sold simply because I have not taken the time to find a model. So, if you happen to live in the area and now of good one, please drop me a line.

Per some previous requests, I have a step by step guide how to apply textures to photos. These instructions assume a very minimal knowledge of photoshop. {I use CS3.} If you have additional questions, please feel free to ask in the comments. Also, I tried not to get too heavy in technical jargon, so even those who do not own photoshop would enjoy seeing step by step how a photo is processed.

Here's the photo straight out of the camera. This was taken at our local farmers market. The flower was a beautiful shade of purple with silvery green leaves.



The first thing I did was run some actions on the photos. I am using almost exclusively Florabella's actions and textures. Shana {the owner} not only sells great photo processing tools, but some of her photos have also been licensed by Papyrus and Avanti Press. So, first I ran Shana's Soft Color Pop action with the opacity at 50%.


Then, Vintage Spring, also at 50% opacity.



Next, I ran Pioneer Woman's Boost Action.



What you'll notice is that the flowers are getting pinker and pinker. I really loved the shade of purple they were in person, so I added an adjustment layer, "Hue/Saturation", and moved the Hue left to -22, so the flowers were purple again. You can read more about adjustment layers in this post.



Now, let's talk textures! Many of Shana's textures are very easy to use and apply in one step w/little tweaking. A good example of that is Shana's "Grunge Edges" from her Textures II. To add a texture, simple go to File --> Place and place the texture over. Here is Grunge Edges at 100%.



I thought something a bit softer would be nicer, so I reduced the opacity to 75%.



Before/After



Finished photo:



Here's the edited photo again, minus texture.



Let's try another look... this time something over the entire photo, not just the edges. I chose Scratched Vintage, also from Textures Set II. The way textures work is that you are placing another photo over top of the original. Lots of photos make interesting textures, like concrete, wood, stone, parchment paper, etc. Some artists actually paint their own images, photograph them, and use them as textures.



As you can see in the photo above, most often a texture will overpower the original photo at 100% opacity or even cover it up completely. This is where you need to know how to use layer masks. Layer masks, found here, allow you to not only adjust the opacity of the entire image, but also use your paint brush to paint parts of the image on or off. {Black erases, and white adds.} This is how I made only the flowers purple and not the whole image in the earlier part of the editing. First, I adjusted the opacity of the entire Vintage Scratched to 50%.



Then I used the brush on my layer mask at 100% to paint away the texture over the purple part of the flowers.



Before/After



Final photo:



Also, you don't need to limit to just one texture, but can layer on several; i.e. Grunge Edges and Scratched Vintage:



In keeping with the purple theme, I have a pair of vintage-y, girlie purple shoes, size 7 available here.



And another picture of my kiddos in a bucket in the backyard, playing while I answer emails on my laptop. {I'm currently a day or so behind, but hope to catch up with messages this afternoon.}



The same photo in black and white.



Wishing you a lovely, restful Sunday!

Available this evening at 9 pm CST on the Joyfolie website:

Amry size 3-8
Tiffany Blue - size 6
Nichelle {blk/white damask} sz 5 {several pairs}
Dalia - size 4-8 *with velcro straps*
Kaila in gold size 4-8
Kaila in persimmon size 4-8

I was not able to complete all the shoes I anticipated because I am still busy packaging orders. Additional shoe sizes and designs will be available next week. Regarding the shopping cart, any item placed in your shop cart will be yours for 30 minutes while you shop and check out. After 30 minutes, the shopping cart will be reset {i.e. emptied for you.} This was added for your shopping convenience. Due to this feature, multiple checkouts in one day are no longer necessary. If you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask!