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. 

Photo Art Friday - March 2, 2012 Day Dream Believer

Welcome and Happy Friday!  Are you ready for more great Photo Art? - Well head on over to Bonnie's Blog (Pixel Dust Photo Art) because it's time for, PAF 

This week the suggested theme is:  any piece of Photo Art or an Abstract Piece.  So I chose the last one because it's just FUN to play around with photo's and see what you can do with them!

Before I Post I want to dedicate this post in memory of Davy Jones (Monkees) Dec.30, 1945-Feb.29, 2012

Who sadly passed away this week at the age of 66.  Davy was my 1st ever teenage crush and I remember putting up posters of him (Tiger Beat Magazine was my favorite)in my bedroom, dreaming of having him and the Monkees sign my autograph book, which I didn't own and maybe one day even becoming Mrs. Davy Jones.   May he Rest In Peace.  You will be missed.  (Music will remain until next week).

Davy Jones Pictures

Please Click on Images for larger versions:

I started with the photo below: Which of course is certainly not "abstract" by any means.  So I used one of Bonnie's Free textures:  Dreams of Spring (yeah I'm still dreaming for Spring to arrive-it tried to snow this morning but it didn't amount to much.) Still....

Using GIMP I Inverted the flower photo and pasted the texture using Hard Light at 100% and got this:



Still not totally satisfied with the result I uploaded the photo to Picnik (sure am going to miss them) and used a feature there called, Hypnotic by Mr. doob that does some really strange things to photos.  I got this:

Pretty cool! Now I was really having fun so I couldn't stop at just one photo so I took the same photo that I started with but this time I inverted the texture and pasted the flower photo in at 100% Hard Light and got this:

So now back to Picnik and the Hypnotic feature to finish off with this (which is my favorite) 

"Whatever" Wednesday - A little of this and a little of that Edition

Hello,  Welcome to the 2nd edition of my "Whatever" Wednesday feature where I'll share photos of whatever I want (no challenge or meme) just whatever strikes my fancy.

First up today:

This is a Posterized (Picnik) Version of a head shot of, "Fluffy" the neighbors cat who was curious about the camera the other day.  Below is the original shot before any editing. It's an, "In Your Face" shot for sure.  I rather like the "Posterized" version, gives it an entirely different feel.

Up next a fun shot of Coleen goofing around.  She's got the dogs chew bone in her hair. She was going for the "Pebbles Flintstone" look. 

Last up is a shot of the night sky I took a few weeks ago.  The moon was in it's Crescent phase which I thought was really cool but for some reason I just can't see to get really great night shots of the sky with my little Point and Shoot.  At any rate after a bit of editing I like how this turned out.

Thanks for visiting, I hope you'll come back again. 

Tidbit note:  Bowling Scores today:  139 (nothing to write home about) - 177 and 151 

Till next time...Happy Snapping!

Macro Monday 2-27-12 - The Plant Edition

Hello and Welcome. - Hope your week is off to a good start.
It snowed here last night (if you could call the light dusting we got snow) but it's cold, and overcast and oh I am so ready for spring.  But enough whining let's move on to something a lot more fun.

It's time to share some Macro goodness over at Lisa's Chaos  She's got some lovely photo's of Snail Shells that you will want to check out along with many other entries by other participants so do take a peek.

For my selection(s) this week I'm sharing some Macro shots of plants that Coleen and I spotted on our walk up to the Park a couple of weeks ago. 

Love the colors on this plant and the fuzzy little spiny things on the leaves.  Have no clue what kind of a plant this is but Coleen thought it was pretty and so did I so I took a picture of it.

This is a type of Succulent. I like the bright cheery colors of this plant.

I believe this is also a Succulent plant of some type.  I love the soft yellow color of the bloom.

This one I think was just a weed of some kind but it had such pretty little flowers and those leaves were pretty cool too.  A very delicate beauty for sure.

Lastly I'm sharing a photo of my Hen and Chick plant with some ice crystals from last nights snowfall that I just took a few minutes ago.