Withered

So now we have snow. Although it's now lighter and not pitch-black in the evening, I'm not feeling overly delighted about. I guess I might be happy about it if I didn't know that it'll be there now for the next six months. Yes, it might melt away for a while, but it'll be back, and the melting away is almost worse - although I don't love it, I don't dislike snow as such, but I do dislike slushy roads, slippery roads, icy roads and streets.  Also this means we'll be ploughing and shovelling snow for months and months. Better Half already did the first take yesterday afternoon, and today it was my turn to start. Again, it's not too bad, I actually like it, when it's not too heavy and wet and there's not too much of it, but it's the fact that you have to clear the snow, whether or not you have the time or inclination, if you are to move at all…

I'm off work for almost a week now. Might perhaps get a challenge or two done? Today I cleared one: day 60 at BL. Before I got so far, however, I did some serious pruning in my photo archives from this and last year, and got rid of about a thousand photos, and am feeling awfully accomplished. I got myself Lightroom last month, and don't regret it - it made doing away with the photos so much easier, although I'm only just beginning to learn to use the program.

Anyway, day 60 challenge at Beyond Layers was to use some scripted textures and follow another recipe by Kim. I was not overly enthusiastic about using the scripts on top of the images as such, but I thought I could do something with them if I found the right image. (Read: a photo with enough white space, not green, like most of my non-winter pictures…) So I dug up a picture of leaves that I took about a month ago when rummaging in our old house. The leaves have effectively mummified - they have been standing on the window-sill of our old abandoned house since before we moved away from there, and that was ten years ago. I did slight modification in Lightroom and then followed Kim's recipe as such, until the scripted textures. The first scripted one, Sonnet 2, I blurred at 25 px Gaussian blur, to get only the tone from it, no text. Then I added Sonnet Magic at blend mode screen but turned down the opacity to 68% and masked out most of the script. I didn't add any photo filters, although that was part of the recipe, since I found that would have taken away all depth from my photo.

Withered

Resources:
- texture Sienna, Sonnet 2 & Sonnet Magic by Kim Klassen

Now to see if there'e enough for the birds to eat, when their last feeding rush for the evening starts. They have been crowding our feeding post ever since we started feeding them almost two weeks ago, and I have a feeling I need to do a refill, although I filled everything up to the brim in the morning.

Snow, Birthday & Tricks

We woke up this morning to see the first snow, and it seems it's not going to go away either. Not really surprising in the sense that it's been frosty all the weekend, but still. It's cloudy now, the temperature is at zero °C, and the weather forecasts for the rest of the week promise even colder weather, with daytime temperatures around -4°. It's about time we had the winter tyres changed for my car today, Better Half has had them for a week already. Wouldn't really have wanted the winter to start already, there would have been work to do on our yard, if not exactly in the garden anymore. But luckily we were so hard-working a week ago and prepared most of the garden for winter, and it was only on Saturday that we raked the last leaves.

Our kids Justiina and Marleena turn one year today. Happiest birthday, girls! I guess they enjoy the weather - when they first got out of doors, there was plenty enough of snow around, and they had months of it before they even saw the first glimpses of bare soil, let alone grass. Anyway, they certainly have changed from what they were a year ago. Here's one of the first pictures of the girls: Nuppu, Marleena and Justiina having a meal a year ago.

Credits:
- template by myself (link upcoming)
- texture Sweet Tart by Kim Klassen
- papers from kit Pour Loane by Margote
- font Daniel by Daniel Midgley
- font Channel by Måns Grebäck

But to get to the original topic of this post, on day 30 of Beyond Layers Kim shared a few tips with us. The first one of them was how to create animated gifs. Now I have to state that I'm not a great friend of animated gifs in general. I think there are far too many of them blinking around the net. Sometime ages ago I had also created quite a few of them, so I wasn't too enthusiastic about it to start with. But Kim's got this wonderful way of throwing in something new that you'd never known or realized. Since Better Half uses Photoshop at work and especially when making all the various club magazines in the so-called free time, I've also been using it for years, starting even before we bought Elements 2, but I'm constantly learning new things.  That's exactly how it was this time, too. Watching the video, I was suddenly inspired to dig these two series of photos I took of Misaki and Foxy in March 2011 and make animations of each.

Here's Misaki, placed firmly on snow and observing the road, making her presence known to anybody who happens to be within earshot by howling regularly.

This turned out to be quite funny. As if she climbed up from a hole or something, Foxy appears out of nothing behind Misaki, walks around her, goes down to the path, shakes herself and disappears again.

Credits for both:
- font Mawns' handwriting by Måns Grebäck

The second tip of the day was creating a triptych, which, simple as it was, again taught me two new, quicker techniques for creating storybook layouts. Had to try out both of them, and the beautiful bouquet I got a few months late for my 50th birthday from the trade union was the perfect subject. Well knowing my favourite colour, my workmate had ordered the bouquet only stating "make it orange". Well, orange it really was, and I just loved it. I took the photos on 15 October, and didn't retouch them in any way, only piled them together and added the labels and text.

Belated Birthday Bouquet

Autumn Bouquet

Credits for both:
- brush from Kinetic Splatter Brush Set by Dustin Schmieding
- font Mawns' handwriting by Måns Grebäck

Now off to take the car to the garage and buy some birthday presents for the girls.

Being Brave

Diving into Beyond Layers again. For day 29 the theme was Being Brave. Firstly, Kim challenged us to remember / write down a brave moment in our lives. Don't know about big and brave things, but thinking about this made some little things surface.

This is such a silly and clichéd thing to be telling about, but oh well. It was my first ever performance on a real stage alone, and it was a big thing for me.

I've always been singing, sung in all the small gatherings my Mum and Granny took me and Sis to, and thought nothing of it. I had also been performing with the school choir, but then one day when I was thirteen I think, my music teacher asked if I'd do a solo performance in the morning assembly. Now the morning assembly was a big thing in our school. All of the 700+ pupils and all the staff gathered together at the beginning of each school day to the central hall of the school, and there'd usually be the headmaster or one of the teachers speaking, a current issue we needed to know, or a "thought for the day", something inspirational. It was here that I was to sing, all alone, accompanied by my music teacher on piano.

Rehearsing had been so much fun, but when the particular morning came, it was such a huge thing to face. To go there, stand all alone next to the grand piano, my only support sitting behind the huge black thing. To stand there in front of all my classmates and the older kids and teachers… My, was I nervous. So nervous in fact that when the teacher played the short intro I was for a while at a total and complete loss for the words. They were in Swedish, too, which naturally didn't make remembering them any easier, since I hadn't been studying the language for that long. It took only a couple of seconds, however, before I caught up with them, and then I remembered all the verses without a problem, but those certainly were among the longest seconds of my life. But I survived, and the elation I felt afterwards has undoubtedly kept me going to the stage afterwards. Yes, I do love performing.

There have been other moments I consider perhaps "brave". Travelling to England at nineteen on train through Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, especially parting with my friends in London to go to a strange place to stay with people I'd only exchanged a couple of letters with, not knowing if they'd even be at the station to meet me or not (no mobile phones had even been thought of in those days…). Some years later, telling Mum about me and Better Half. Facing my fear of dogs, created by our Dachsie who turned unpredictable and aggressive, and taking a new puppy. (Suddenly shuddered to think, what if I hadn't… well, I certainly wouldn't be me now, with six Dandies snoring around the house while I type.) Then some of the unavoidable kind: five years ago, saying good-bye to Mum when she was in terminal care, knowing I'd probably never see her again. Supporting Dad through the worst times after, teaching him to cope. A couple of years later, travelling south to support and help Sis after Dad passed away. But these are things one does because one must.

The second part of Kim's challenge was to make a list of Five Photography Dreams. Don't know if I have any - wait, at least some, though I'm not sure how brave and bold they are.
I'd like to learn to
- take better photos of the dogs
- take nice photos indoors and in low light
- shoot more in manual mode
- develop my eye for composition
- select and keep only the best photos I take

Then to the third part of the challenge, creating a picture that somehow depicts "brave". My take is from spring 2010.

Early Bird

This Wood Pigeon arrived up here in mid-April, when there still was plenty of snow and precious little for him to feed on. It's not always a good thing to be the early bird! But he - and a few days later on another, she perhaps - found our feeding post. For a couple of weeks perhaps they visited us, and we did hear them cooing in the summer in the woods next to our house, so to our great delight they did survive.

Resources used:
- overlay mask MO8-2012-1 from Assorted Mask Overlays by Jerry Jones
- texture Cool Grunge by Kim Klassen
- texture Softly by RH West

Texture Tuesday - Something Orange

Autumn's in full swing, I'm busy working and have had little time to spare for the last-in-line hobby of playing with photos. Popped in at Kim's blog on Tuesday for the Texture Tuesday challenge to see if there was anything in there for me, and I had to laugh out loud. Something orange should definitely be easy enough for me, as orange is my favourite colour.

Since most everyone else seemed to tackle the challenge by displaying beautiful flowers and autumnal trees, I decided to take a different approach and have a look at my wardrobe, or actually some accessories. Here's my take on "something orange": my wellies, designed by Ristomatti Ratia, my bright orange raincoat and the shoulder bag I bought in Lübeck last spring. All wonderful to wear on rainy days, by the colour alone they make me feel warm and they also make the day look brighter. What's not to love?

At the Door

What I used here:
- texture Dream It by Kim Klassen
- texture Paper and Paste by Kim Klassen
- mask by Krizomel
- background paper Cold Spell 5 by myself

Autumn Gear

Resources:
- texture To Be by Kim Klassen
- gradient Autumn 12 by ElvenSword
- font Luismi Murder by Juan Casco

And here's my recipe for Autumn Gear:
- cropped image
- duplicated background, applied Gaussian Blur at 11,5 px, created layer mask, brushed out the blur from the gear, changed layer opacity to 35%
- created Hue/Saturation adjustment layer: greens saturation -35, lightness +48
- added Kim Klassen's texture To Be at blending mode soft light 100%
- duplicated texture, turned layer -90°, adjusted blending mode to colour burn 63%, then added black & white adjustment layer (preset neutral density)
- added gradient map adjustment layer Autumn 12 by Elven Sword at blending mode soft light 100%
- brushed in watermark
- wrote text, font Luismi Murder

I fully intend to go on with Beyond Layers, too, as soon as possible. Here's to hoping it'll actually be soon.

Texture Tuesday & Musings

Haven't had time to take part in any of the Texture Tuesday challenges for quite a while. Suddenly yesterday, when I had finished the Colour Week, I remembered it was Tuesday and that there'd be another challenge up at Kim's Café. This time we were simply asked to use a certain texture, Dream It.

I ended up using three textures by Kim here. The picture was taken on 9 May this year, somewhere between Glasgow and Inverness, on a lay-by where we stopped for a photographing break.

Spring in Scotland

Resources used:
- textures Dream It, Oh My & Grey Day by Kim Klassen

Then to Beyond Layers. On Day 21, the challenge Kim gave us was to reflect on how we feel about our own art. There was talk about our expectations, of wanting to create a great piece and, when we achieve one such, of being afraid we'll never achieve something like that again. It so easily stops us from even trying. Kim encouraged us to get past this, reminded we're not supposed to make perfect art but simply make art for the fun of it.

What is preventing me from creating is not blocks like this but mostly just lack of time. Well, practically always exactly that. Soon my time to do this will be very limited, so at the moment I'm just gorging on this, creating, and thoroughly enjoying the process of doing so.

As for the love of comments, who wouldn't love words of encouragement? Receiving none can certainly make one feel a failure - I've been there with my poems, years ago, although it wasn't that I needed so much to hear what people thought, I simply needed to know that somebody had at least read what I had written.

I think it still is important, and definitely why I choose to share what I do online. If I know somebody has seen my work, if I somehow get to share it, it really is a reward in itself. Isn't attention what we're all after? Because all art is communication…

I aim to record things I see and experience, to teach my eye and to please it. I'm overjoyed if someone else understands, enjoys and appreciates what I create, but that's not my primary reason for doing it. Yes, I do jump up and down and shout Hooray! whenever I get a comment, and I see nothing wrong with it, but really, encouragement from Better Half is what I need and value most, because who'd know better where I stand and what I might be trying to convey?

Texture Tuesday - The Pink eDition

This week at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday the theme was pink. Funnily enough, pink so isn't my colour. I'm an Autumn in colours and I could never ever wear it. I have, sometimes as a teenager, and it looked awful, I still shudder to think about it. But as long as I don't have to wear it, pink can be pretty. In fact, where pink is definitely beautiful are flowers.

So the picture I chose is obviously a flower. And so that I don't have to resort to pictures from last summer, I worked on this recent shot of a Women's Day rose, which I textured with Kim Klassen's "Music Lovin'" and FrostBo's "Texture 54".

In other news, it might be officially Summer Time, but last night we had quite some snowfall and this morning when we first looked out of the windows we thought it looked more Christmasy than anything else. The branches were covered with fluffy snow, which they haven't been for a long time, and everything was fresh and white. Come to think of it, I wonder why one would associate white snow to Christmas at all. Is it all because we have all been well indoctrinated into dreaming of a white Christmas? For one thing, over here we have snow for at least five if not six months a year, and at Xmas time, there is always far less snow, days are short and dark and you rarely see even the faintest shimmer of sunshine. It is only when the days turn longer in spring that the sun makes all the snow glisten and glow.

Below a quick layout I made of a few photos I took this morning, from my windows.

template by Margote - Template 64; paper from "Playing for Keeps" by Designs by Angel; snowflake brushes by env1ro