Tag: picture spring

Week 1 Wrap-up from Picture Spring class

Posted in Photo ProjectsTagged , , Leave a comment

When I return to the classroom, everything else seems to fall by the wayside—writing, playing/practicing piano, housework, even photography and other creative outlets. This past week, I did return to the classroom for one class a day with six students (yeah, can you imagine that?). And I have kept up with my Picture Spring class that began on Monday, and the project I started on May 1. Even my mini-album is up-to-date with prints!

My writing, though, has lapsed. Even today, when I have the house completely to myself, no interruptions or distractions, I have not written anything except my daily morning pages, and even then I wrote only two pages.

What I have been doing, though, is soaking up the Word of God, and watching the little birds—house finches—come to the bottle feeder outside my window.

untitled-3 They may not be as flashy as the cardinals that feed at the larger feeders, but these are beautiful birds, too.

untitleduntitled-2

I wish the gold finches would come back. I know they are out there. I’ve seen them!

I think, since my words are few this morning, I will just give you a collage of images from this past week’s Picture Spring prompts. As usual, I’m using the collage maker at www.befunky.com. It’s an easy to use online photo editor. (I wish they would add a print button!)

Week 1 Collage

Day 1: Beginnings—blackberries, bottom center

Day 2: Stepping Out into Spring—thirty steps, left

Day 3: Morning Rituals: beginning with the Word, center center

Day 4: The Sky’s the Limit:  clouds, right

Day 5: Ground Level: roses, top center

I still have to process Days six and 7!

Spring Has Sprung—Weekend Wrapup

Posted in Photo ProjectsTagged , , Leave a comment

Definitely spring has sprung in South Carolina. Thankfully, the worst of the pollen season has passed, although there is still a lot of pollen in the air. The May flowers are beginning to bloom. Mornings are still cool, often cool enough or light sweaters and shawls, but the afternoons are beginning to predict the summer heat to come. Days of sunshine and white clouds follow days of gray. Birds serenade me in the mornings; flashes of color streak by the living room window.  And the good old Southern humidity is beginning to rear its head.

Spring has sprung.

Picture Spring week 1

(Week 1 Picture Spring Collage, made with the Collage Maker app at www.befunky.com)

My intention photographically for May and into June is to “Picture Spring.” Later in the month, I will be following along with Tracey Clark in her signature Picture Spring course, but I wanted to get a head start—to prime the pump as it were, to jumpstart creativity again. After the business of Aaron’s wedding in April and the long weeks of bronchitis and recovery from that, I had not felt creative at all, and it was showing, not only in my photography, but also in other areas. However, setting this intention over the past weekend, getting out the camera to discover that I had ONE bar left on the battery supply icon (and my chargers were nowhere to be found. . . . ). I managed to get through most of the week on that one bar! Thankfully, the new dual battery chargers arrived on Thursday, and I am good to go now! Fully charged, and as my young politician says, “fired up”.

In addition to making the photographs, I am also printing some out and collecting them in a handmade album. Thanks to the advice from one of the wonderful ladies who work for Michaels, I made the cover from a thin piece of mat board. The pages of the signatures are kraft cardstock, and I used the coptic binding stitch to put the books together. I covered the matboard with patterned scrapboook paper that I had in my stash and embellished with die cuts from my Cricut. I am using a variety of papers and tags and lace and whatever is in my stash to embellish the pages. Each page is dated (I will not say whether I actually made the image on that day or not. . . . ). At the end of the course, I will have a record of Spring 2017.untitleduntitled-3untitled-11untitled-13untitled-14untitled-15untitled-16untitled-17untitled-18untitled-19

Thursday Thanksgiving—Picture Spring

Posted in Photo ProjectsTagged , , , 1 Comment

There are some days that are just made for giving thanks, and today is one of them. The meteorologists in our area are calling today an Alert Day because we will probably have some kind of severe weather this afternoon. Right now, it’s breezy and partly cloudy. The sun peeps out every once and a while, just to let me know it’s still there behind the light gray clouds.

I ran outside this morning for just a little bit to get some images of some of the wild things blooming. I think I am resigned to the fact that I am not a gardener. It’s not that I have brown or black thumbs; I certainly don’t kill everything I plant, but I have no sense of gardening. But I do love beautiful flower gardens. I could (almost) live in a botanical garden—if it weren’t for this thing called pollen.

Saturday, I stopped at a newly relocated, reopened garden shop and bought some tomato, pepper, and herb plants as well as some flowers to put in my planter by the bird feeders—red ones, orange, dark blue. I can look out my living room window and see them, bright and colorful, joyfully bobbing their heads in the wind.

untitled-2

I wonder how many children today can boast that they sucked the honey out of honeysuckle flowers. I know I did when I was a child, and I showed my own children how to do that as well. I wonder what the health professionals would say about doing that. What kind of diseases did I open myself up to by sipping that sweet nectar? I remember standing before those vines with my cousins Virginia, Franklin, and Janet, and my sister Elaine, picking the flowers, pinching off the ends, and sucking the nectar. I almost pulled a few this morning to do that very thing. I hope I haven’t gotten too old to enjoy simple pleasures.

untitled-15

This morning, one of my sons sent me a face book message early with good news. It is always such a joy to know that my children still want to share their news with me.

During this month, my project is to make images of spring. I will be sharing these images off and on. I am also collecting prints in a handmade journal. I will probably be posting some images of the journal and describing the techniques I used later on. I’m still in the assembling stage.

untitled-7