A freebie

Here's a collage sheet I made using some of my stash of postcards etc.

Technorati Tags: freebies,ephemera

Wings on things

Here's my entry in the Three Muses' Wednesday Challenge

The Scream Revisited

I guess it only very loosely fits the description as I think I was supposed to put wings on something that doesn't necessarily have wings. Still, the bird's wing is "on" the "screamer"...

After last weeks cheery entry I wanted to try something a little gothic. When thinking of wings, I immediately came up Alfred Hitchcock's film, "The Birds". It was then just a matter of finding a way to portray the horror.

The skyline and birds are brushes from JMC Designs- Skyline. The sky is from one of my own photos, and the "screamer" is my rendition of Munch's character.

It is deliberately greyscale to suit the mood.

Technorati Tags: digital collage,Wednesday challenge

Never enough!

I have mentioned my friends, Claire and Kirk, before and how I love the sunsets viewed from their property in north eastern Victoria. I visited them again recently and didn't bother to take my camera from the car as I thought I had enough sunset shots from their place. How wrong I was.

Kirk and I were talking, when I looked out the window and flew out of my seat shouting, "oh my god!" The sky outside was the most amazing streaks of pink and gold. Of course I couldn't immediately find the camera in the bottom of a suitcase in the car, and by the time I did, the best of it had gone. Here's some of what I did manage to capture -

 

I don't actually know if these are the best shots, 'cos i still haven't got full colour. Long sigh......

Anyway my new laptop should arrive on Wednesday and then I just have to figure out how to connect it to the internet via a wireless network.

On the way home from their place the following day, I saw a rainbow such as I have never seen before. It wasn't so much in the sky, as entirely in front of a row of hills, so that the hills themselves were painted different colours. Of course I couldn't find anywhere to pull over so I couldn't capture it. However,it has inspired me to try some digital imaging to try to recapture something of what I saw. This will be one of my first projects when my new computer arrives.

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project

Did you know about this? Until yesterday I didn't. Aussie mathematicians Christine and Margaret Wertheim, who run the Institute of Figuring, in New York (I think), have started this project. Apparently hyperbolic crochet is the best way to represent the growth of a coral reef. So to raise awareness of how coral reefs are endangered and to celebate women's handcrafts, they have run workshops and invited people to add their own little bit of reef to the original project. 

 Check it out here

There are also a number of side projects.

On the main page  there is a link to the Sydney group who are exhibiting in August.

Collaborative projects with yarn are certainly taking off. Have you seen Dneese's guerilla knitting projects?  How cool is that!!!

Technorati Tags: hand crafts,collaborative projects,guerilla knitting

HATS

 

This is  my first entry in a Wednesday Challenge in The Three Muses. I was particularly attracted to this challenge because one of my favourite pics from my trip to Turkey was the photo I took in the hat shop.

I chose a new project with a transparent background. I then created a new layer, opened the hat photo, selected the part I wanted, cut it and pasted it to the new layer. Then I resized it to cover the entire background.

Next I created another layer and then opened the picture of my friend wearing one of the hats. I used the elliptical marquee to select what I wanted and then cut and pasted to the new layer. I resized it and moved it where I wanted it. Then I used the eraser tool to take away the edges and create a torn look to the image.

I then went into the layer styles and played around with blending until I found an opacity level I was  happy with. At this point I also selected the notepaper filter to  give the image the faded sepia look.

Now my dodgy computer decided to lose most of the colour, but I valiantly soldiered on! I merged the top layer down.

Creating another layer I used the eyedropper to select one of the hat colours (not being able to distinguish the actual colour!) and then chose the text tool and the warp/arch mode. I wrote the first word, and chose +50 bend   and -30 horizontal. I then resized and moved the text. I repeated this whole process (with -50 and +30) for the word on the other side. Last, but not least, I flattened all the layers to reduce the size of the file and saved it as a jpeg.

The title comes from the fact that my friend was beside herself with delight when we discovered this shop behind the Blue Mosque and tried on almost every hat in the shop before deciding on one to buy.

I am very curious to see how it actually turned out if ever the colour comes back on the screen/or when my new computer arrives!  In the meantime I think I am going to experiment with replacing colour and applying filters and see what happens of it. I might get some interesting art. Then again it may end up as rubbish. I guess which it is will be in the eye of the beholder!

Technorati Tags: digital art