Texture Tuesday - Thistle Lover

I took this photo last fall with my Big-Girl Camera, with the telephoto lens.  I still had to crop in to focus on the goldfinch. One of the better shots on that photo walk.

Here's the Photo Processing Recipe :
Layer 1 ) Background Image, cropped and balanced.
Layer 2)  MO8-2012-3 Overlay texture by Jerry Jones - Screen Blend Mode at 48%
Layer 3) 2LO Creative Mask Set2-22 Texture - Overlay 21%
Layer 4) 2LO Grandeur 1 Texture (masked off bird) - Multiply  at 56%
Layer 5) 2LO 2(5) Texture from Artisan Collection (big set) - Overlay at 23%
masked off bird
Layer 6) Kim Klassen's Waterfront Magic 7 Texture - Screen 26%

Check out what everyone else posted for this week's TT.   

Texture Tuesday : Free and Easy

Here's a photo I took on our last trip to France.  Albert P.  (a dear, family friend) is famous for drinking the strongest cup of coffee, and then promptly falling asleep at the dinner table.  After witnessing this phenomenon for the past 15 years, I wanted to capture the moment ...

Processed with 2 layers of Kim Klassen's Cool Grunge Texture, masked off the texture from the coffee cup and his hands.

Check out what everyone else posted for this week's TT. 

By the way, Kim is offering a FREE class called LightRoom Begin.  Even though I've taken her 8-week class and have 2 notebooks full-to-the-brim with notes, I might take this one just to review.   There are still some points about LR that have me mystified ...  like the difference between virtual copies and snapshots.  Sometimes I'll work up an image and then it seems to disappear ...   So usually, I just wind up going back to Picasa for my photo catalog and basic edits.  

Arc en Ciel Quilt Finished

Just finished this baby quilt for our newest little cousin in France : Baby Eole.    In American English, we think of him as Errol (as in Errol Flynn, the great swash-buckling actor from those old movies).      
This was the Baby Bargello kit from Keepsake Quilting several years ago.  I worked it up into a cascading rainbow pattern rather than the cardiogram shown in the pattern.
  

I quilted it with swirls and loops--Eole seems to mean wind.  It was a character in ancient Greek myths.  Eole was the one who blew the wind into Ulysses sails on his epic journeys.   With all those rectilinear squares in the quilt, the quilting needed some softness and curves to counter all the right angles.  

I like to use Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting.  I LOVE the way it crinkles up and looks antique after it's washed.  It's a magic moment to pull it out of the dryer to see the transformation from a stiff and compacted piece you've been working on to the soft and crinkled work in the pictures.

I just need to show my Mom and Aunt Rosita next week, then make a label and pack it off to France. 

Here I am with little Eole back in May when we got to meet him on our trip to France.  I offered to hold him during dinner so his parents could eat their meals.  I remember how hard that was with a little one ...  He's a good baby, with very attentive and wise parents.  ;-)

Composed Fabric for June

I was getting ready to quilt the baby quilt, and decided to "warm up" on a piece of composed fabric.    See the recipe for Sweet Leaf Composed Fabric here.    All those little bits of thread tails, schnibbles, and cut off ends otherwise too small to save.

 

I was able to use up 2 baggies of scraps, yarns and thread tales--including a few spools of rotten rayon thread that just breaks in the machine anytime I try to sew with it.   See that purple clump in the middle?  I cut the thread off the spool, rather than dribbling the thread on top.

I started using black silk to do the overlay.   It has a much smoother / richer feel to it than the rough and plastic-y tulle.  I'm not sure if it's the black silk gauze or chiffon, though.  I ordered both from Dharma recently but can't quite tell which is which.  The amazing thing is that is literally disappears over the scraps while it's holding everything in. 

 

 

 

Here's a slightly wider shot of about 1/2 the piece. 

Destined to be a journal cover later this year.  I think I can get 2 regular size covers out of this piece, and possibly a 1/4-size journal. 

Texture Tuesday : Free & Easy : Unfold Your Own Myth

There are so many possibilities with a feather like this, don't you think?
There's the Icarus story, where he flew too high and fell from the sky ...
There's the idea of writing your own stories as with a feather quill pen ...
Wings unfolding ...

So many stories just waiting to write themselves, just waiting to be lived!

What will you do with your wild and precious life?  -- Mary Oliver

Photo Processing Recipe :
Layer 1 : Background image
Layer 2 : Copy Layer 1 - Screen blend mode : 19%
Layer 3 : Text : Aquiline Two Font
Layer 4 : Text - Author Attribution in same font
Layer 5 : Kim Klassen's Paper-Stained Light Texture ; Multiply 100%
Layer 6 : Kim Klassen's Storm Texture; Soft Light 33%

Check out what everyone else posted for this week's TT.

2BD49 : Kim's Tulips - A Make It Yours Editing Challenge

I've had this lesson open on my laptop for a few weeks now.  That curled up tulip petal makes me think of a story from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (at least I think that's where the story is from.)  She talks about a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, but that it only has a certain amount of time to pump juice into it's wings so they "fluff out" and are ready to fly.  This particular butterfly must have gotten stuck in the coming out process.  When it finally did emerge, it's wings were  monstrously deformed, crinkled.  This butterfly would never fly.  It walked away as best as it could ...  I'm sure it was picked up by a bird soon thereafter.  

Not quite perfect.  And that's ok.    I'm still talking about that butterfly with awe and wonder many years after it happened. 

 

Here's the image Kim shared with the class.    

We all started with this image.

 

After some basic edits in Picasa, adjusting the highlights and shadows,

I pulled it into RadLab and added the Rusty Cage and Iron Mouse filters.

 

After that, I pulled it into PhotoShop Elements.

Added The Coffee Shop Orton Effect Action 

Text : Aquiline Two Font

Brush Banner to set off the text (Soft Light 38%)

Texture Tuesday : Nature and The Bee-loud Glade at Innisfree

One of my all-time favorite poems, by one of my all-time favorite poets.  Yeats is an old friend to me.
The Texture Tuesday theme this week is Nature.  I took this photo with my brand new "big-girl" camera on a nature walk last fall.  It really does a nice job--which makes me wonder why I don't go out more often ...

I knew I wanted to use the photo of this bee working a thistle.  And as I thought about it, Yeat's  bee-loud glade at Innisfree kept coming into my mind.

Enjoy your trip to :

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

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Here's the recipe for the image above:
Layer 1 : Background image
Layer 2 : KK-1402magic Texture ; Soft light - 33% opacity (slightly smaller than the image to create a frame)
Layer 3 : Copy Layer 2 ; Screen at 26%
Layer 4 : KK waterfront 7 Magic ; Screen 26%
Layer 5 : Brush Banners ; Multiply 47%
Layer 6  : Text Aquiline Two Font ; Normal 71%

Check out what everyone else posted for this week's TT.