I've been copying all my butterfly pictures

Actually, I've been going through all my directories in my photo collection, copying the butterfly pictures and making a new (additional) directory with just butterfly pix. Unfortunately, there is no "keyword" for sorting my collection - I just have to actually look in the directories and find the butterflies. Of couse, I do have a fairly good memory for dates and have found quite a few butterflies quite easily. While searching my 2007 collection, I ran across this incredible moth photo. It's called a "hummingbird moth." and I photographed this one at the Heritage Handcraft farm outside of Waco last year in July. I had seen them before, but they are so fast I never caught an image before! This one actually stayed around in this flowerbed for quite a while, and I got several pictures.

The most "challenging" challenge -

The most "challenging" challenge so far has been the monthly Artist challenge - we were to take inspiration from Claude Monet (one of my favorite painters!) and see where it led us.

I had to go check out all the artistic effects that Paint Shop Pro can do - and I finally settled on ENAMEL - it makes it look like a painting. I knew the picture I wanted right away, from our visit to the Lewis Ginter Botanic Gardens in Richmond VA. After I created the artistic effect I wanted I just had to frame it! smile

CREDITS - paper http://www.carjazziscraps.com/

ribbons & nameplate (edited by me) http://www.theteapotlady.blogspot.com/

All collected from DSO Color Challenge for August - see sidebar for address information for DSO

My "scraplift" challenge at Color Line Design

This is the layout that I created for the "scraplift" challenge - there was a layout with 3 hanging fromes in the middle of the page. CREDIT: Joni Gray - Lazy Summer (part of this kit was created for DSO - Color Challenge in August that I participated in!)

I have been very busy

October is flying by in a whirl ... I have so much going on right now, preparing for classes & projects in my papercrafting business, and also getting ready for a week long trip to Denver to see Mike's family and attend the wedding of his last unmarried nephew on Saturday Nov 15.

Working with a DEADLINE keeps me hopping but I still have time for some freebie searching.

I joined a new forum yesterday - Color Line Design http://colorlinedesign.com/

They have some fabulous challenges every month - really makes you work and think! I have completed two challenges, the photography challenge and the scraplift challenge for October. I've loaded up three pages in my gallery there (poki04 - just like my e-mail name) and I'm waiting to be allowed to upload my third example. (You can only do 5 per day, and I loaded the first two, didn't like how they looked and deleted them, so I reached my quota for yesterday, and haven't been allowed to upload today yet! Don't know what time zone I'm dealing with!)

Photography challenge layouts - focus on subject from a direction other than horizontal!

Photo was taken from the next to top platform in the Currituck Beach Lighthouse, Corolla, NC. I knew that this was the perfect photo for this challenge!

CREDITS - GingerScraps Beach Glass

My latest photo shoot

On Thursday last week I drove out to visit my friends Pam & Lloyd in San Saba county. They always graciously share their butterfly garden with me ... they have loads of flowers and butterflies almost year round! I am always amazed when I get out there (I don't go often since a round trip is about 200 miles for me!) But I didn't want to miss the Monarch migration this year ...

The flowers were gorgeous as they always are. These passion flowers have completely taken over the fence around the garden!

Butterflies I saw: Monarchs and Queens

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, both male

and female

and loads of others too! I did see and identify one other swallowtail but my picture is blurred and cannot be corrected (the butterfly was moving - imagine that!)

LO with hummingbird picture

I was finally able to find just what I wanted to complete the layout I was doing with my hummingbird picture.

CREDITS: paper - PiggyScraps; fence & leaves - wimpychomperscreations.blogspot.com; flower strip - KJOI studios designer contest week 4 contestant 21845 (I changed the color)

Our trip to San Antonio

We had a great time in San Antonio over the weekend - on Sunday afternoon we went to the San Antonio Botanic Gardens, both Mike and poki just clicking away on their cameras. I was excited to see a hummingbird up close, and even more excited when I saw that I had actually gotten a fairly good (although over-exposed) picture. I will be doing a layout later, but wanted to show the photo.