Photo Art Friday - March 16, 2012

It's time once again to join everyone over on Bonnie's Blog for Photo Art Friday.  This week the options were: 1. Any Piece of Photo Art
2. Continue with the "hidden in plain sight" idea or
3. Go with the Color, Green - because after all St. Patrick's Day is close at hand.

Can you guess which theme I went with?



Here are my starting Photo's - Click on them to enlarge:

The photo on the left is some moss growing on the side of a concrete wall and the photo on the right is some clover (shamrock) in our yard.

Here is what I did with the 2 photos:

For this version I rotated the Moss photo 90 degrees right and then over-layed the clover photo using Hard light at approx. 64-74 %  Then I used a Filter feature in Gimp called, Illusion to create the circular effect.  I added the Irish Blessing and the Frame with features on Picnik.

Still playing:

For this version I used the same 2 photo's as described above but then used a feature called, Mandelbrot Fractal Elements in Gimp to create all the different swirls of clover.  I added the Text (Lucky) and a sort of hidden in plain sight element...can you guess what it is?

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY -  I'm not Irish but I've always dreamed of going to Ireland and someday I hope that dream will come true.  In the mean time I'll just enjoy being Irish for a day.

Have a great weekend and be sure to visit all the other great entries for PAF.

"Whatever" Wednesday - Kids Rodeo Edition

Welcome! - I'm a tad late getting this up as I forgot it was Wednesday and I hadn't yet put anything up for my "Whatever" Wednesday post.  But as they say,  "Better Late, then Never."

Last Saturday Grandma and Grandpa took Coleen to the Cowboy Breakfast and Kids Rodeo that the local Community College holds every year.  She went to the actual Rodeo the night before with her mommy but I don't have any pictures of that to share.

At the kids Rodeo they have things for them to do like Ride a Horse, Rope Cows (not real ones), Get tossed around in the Clowns Barrel  etc...

First let me show you Coleen's Pancake from the breakfast.  They allowed the kids to decorate their pancakes with various items.  Here is Coleen's

For her toppings she chose,  Strawberry Syrup, Whipped Cream, Nerds Candy, Blueberries and a Gummy Worm!  - Doesn't that sound yummy! (NOT) - but she ate the entire pancake.

Here she is inside the Barrel with the Rodeo Clown.

Petting one of the Goats

Riding the Horse - This is her favorite thing to do.

Lastly a little Video of her Roping.  Be sure to have your volume on and watch her face after she High-Fives the Cowboy helping with the roping.

That's it for this weeks edition of "Whatever" Wednesday.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - March 11

Hello and Welcome to this weeks edition of Scavenger Hunt Sunday brought to over on Ashley's blog, Rambling and Photos.   Don't forget to stop by and see the other entries.

 I missed last weeks hunt so it was great to be able to join in again this week.

Here are the prompts:  Water, Light, Chocolate, Animal and Crowded.  - I will confess to using 2 "archived" photos this week.  Mainly because I really like both the photos and they've never appeared on my blog at any time.

First up, WATER:  I was experimenting using my husbands little Kodak camera the other day and took a photo of one of the little waterfalls (if you can call them that) on the river that flows through the local High School campus. 

LIGHT: - This is 1 of the "archived" photos.  I was going through my photos the other day and happened upon this one that I took of some candle holders last fall on our (fake) fireplace mantle.  It was so pretty I decided to use it for the prompt.

CHOCOLATE: - Oh yum! What a great prompt.  I confess to going out and buying a chocolate mint brownie to take photos of and yes I did take pictures and I shared the brownie too.  However in the end I decided to use a photo of a mini-Hershey bar instead (I ate it too!).

ANIMAL: I'm excited about this one.  - I bet you think you are going to see a picture of a "Cat" because what else would someone post who has 6 cats in their house and feeds neighborhood cats/strays and is referred to as the "crazy cat lady" by her friends post. - Well guess what?  It's not a cat.

This is our dog, Cricket.  The thing that excites me is that I "finally" got a decent picture of her.  She's normally very hard to photograph because she never sits still long enough to take her picture and if you do happen to get a picture of her she generally has her tongue hanging out of her mouth as well. And before you ask...no she wasn't born with 3 legs.  For those who don't know the story shortly after we got her as a puppy she fell off our back step and caught her right front leg in the chain link fence and broke a piece out of the growth plate that could not be repaired here and was far to costly to repair elsewhere so we opted to have it amputated.  She's never missed it and can run/play with the best of them.

CROWDED:  - This is my other "archived" photo.

I discovered a bunch of bees one day on the trunk of a tree while out walking and hurried home to fetch my camera before they disappeared.  They apparently had built their hive on the inside of the tree and were all crowding around outside waiting for their turn to get inside the small opening in the tree to their hive.  I'd say it was probably just as crowded on the inside as it was the outside.

That's it for this week.  Next week the prompts are:  Vintage, Word/Quote, Nature's Own, People and Photographer's Choice. 

Photo Art Friday - March 9, 2012 - Don't Squander Time

Well another week has come and gone (where is time going this year) and once again it's time for PAF over on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art. 
Once again we were given the option of posting any piece of Photo Art or incorporating a "hidden in plain sight" element into our Art piece.  Now I've got to say that really intrigued me but I have no clue whether or not my piece qualifies or not for that category.  I'm going to leave it up to you to decide.

Here is the Original Photo that I started with:  I always like to share what sparks my initial creativity.

A park bench at the local City Park was my subject material.
It's not really an inspiring photo (imho) but I liked it none the less.  However...after doing some edits to it both in Gimp and Picnik I really like the final result.


I used 2 of Bonnie's textures:  Splash of Gold and Light Dust in this piece.

I added a quote that stood out in my mind as it was used in a scene from Gone With The Wind.  The scene shows a cat sleeping in a garden under an old Sundial with that inscription on it. This happens to be one of my all time favorite movies and I truly wanted to add some sort of time piece to my photo as well but lacking the knowledge of how to do so I settled for the quote.                                                                     

 A funny thing happened while working on this piece.  Time got away from me and well let's just say we had to order out for dinner again because apparently I was "squandering" time working on my photo art!

Please take time to stop by Bonnie's blog and check out the other entries.  You'll enjoy them I'm sure.  Have a great weekend everyone.



"Whatever Wednesday" - Nature Edition

Happy "Hump Day" and welcome to my "Whatever" Wednesday feature.  This is where I share photos of whatever I want that I've taken.  Today's edition is "Nature" related.

I caught this Box Elder Bug doing a,
"Balancing Act" on a dried rose bloom on
Sunday.



A sign of spring in the arrival of Crocus in my mom's flower bed.  I love their sunny color, it's cheery.

I found this Spiderweb on the house and thought it was pretty cool, especially since there didn't seem to be any spider around to make taking the photo scary! (I hate spiders).

Finally a little video that I took of some Ravens that were in the trees behind the house and apparently were upset by something.  Be sure to turn your volume up so you can hear them.

That's it for this edition of "Whatever" Wednesday.