Photo Art Friday - Jan. 13 Birds of a Feather

Happy Friday! - Well the weather has certainly cooled down from last week and the dreaded (Snow) is in the forecast for next week, much to my dismay.  I am so not a "Winter" person but I'll survive.

In the meantime it's time for Photo Art Friday on Bonnie's Blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art.
This week Bonnie asked us to use one of her FREE texture's in our Photo Art.  She has some really great textures to choose from so be sure to check them out. 

I've chosen to do not 1 but 2 pieces of Photo Art this week and a couple of different versions.  I hope you like them.  I struggle with Photo Art because I don't know half the time what I'm doing and not having Photo Shop I've had to try learning to use Gimp (a free program similar to PS) and just haven't had much luck learning it either.  I would love to take a class so I could have someone show me how to do different things.

In the meantime I do what I can so here goes.

Original Photo #1 - Taken at our local city park Bird Aviary. 



This is a female bird:  The male is really a gorgeous bird.  I'll have to share his photo another day.

For my 1st Edit I used two of Bonnie's textures:  Sapphire Dust and Acceptance.

I also edited the photo on Picnik adding a Matte look to the photo and the quote.

For this edit the same two textures were used but at different levels.  Then I tried to get creative and added a layer of a photo of some leaves that I had taken as well.  They were softened on Picnik before adding them to the photo.

Here is the picture of the leaves.

They aren't real visable in the photo by you can see the color and some of the leaves in the upper portion of the photo.

Next up:  For this photo I've chosen the Male bird. 

Again I have two different edits of this photo.  For these photo's I used:

Bonnie's Cinnamon texture and Acceptance.

This was also edited on Picnik using different features there and adding a Canvas feel to it along with the quote.

My last photo uses  just the Cinnamon Texture and a few edits on Picnik.

I tried hard to write down what I had done but after several different changes my paper started getting all mixed up with different edits and before I realized it I couldn't figure out which edit went to which photo. 

I'll try harder the next time to keep everything straight.