seeing the world as poki sees it!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

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.


Friday, October 24, 2008

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









Sunday, October 12, 2008

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!)

Sunday, October 5, 2008

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)

Thursday, October 2, 2008

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.