Hunt goes from ridiculous to sublime

Keeping my eyes peeled and camera to hand for Rinda’s summer scavenger hunt items as they can appear at any moment

Whenever I see a lost shoe I feel sorry for the Mum who has to find the money for a new pair. I put this one on my garden wall and it went in a few hours – I hope to the person who ‘lost’ it

and we have had some stunning sunsets recently

unfortunately we have had too much cloud cover to catch site of the massive moon in the skies at the moment.

Look Up Look Down @ Linlithgow Palace

A lovely family trip to Linlithgow Palace, near Edinburgh, for my Dad’s birthday and plenty of opportunities for photos looking  up and down as we walked around the loch and around the ruined building.  I had so many I could use but in the end went for 2 that show unexpected detail

The up is standing in a massive fireplace looking straight up the chimney.

The down is some of the lovely range of grasses in a meadow on the walk.

And I loved the play of colours in a field of barley that we passed – I think I need to turn this into an abstract piece in PSE

Hypnotised by summer of colour

Lime and purple were chosen for summer of colour this week – a pair I do use in combination, and also with orange for the full secondary colours triad.

Looking at the two colours on my Photoshop elements screen I felt they were drawing my eyes into the screen and started thinking about hypnotic concentric circles.  I created some

Then I copied and collaged some, prompted by the tangle pattern hypnotic

And then for my final A4 size poster I used the 4 collages together

‘squaring the circle’ = to find a good solution to a problem when that seems impossible, especially because the people involved have very different needs or opinions

Squaring the circle is a skill I’ve been known for throughout my working life and seemed appropriate when using square collage of concentric circles.

Looking forward to seeing what others do with this colour combo and which combo is chosen for next week.

Q:what do a stegosaurus and coffee have in common?

A: they are both items on Rinda’s Summer Scavenger Hunt, of course

A nice mix of ‘going to find it’ and ‘happening upon it’ this week.

Frist to the national museum

then remembering this was an item while out watching the gala (and yes I know there is a typo)

and finally remembering to take a photo on one of my nearly daily visits for a caffeine hit

in between spending a lot of time gazing at the sky trying to discern shapes in the clouds – luckily I haven’t fallen over on into anything yet!

Look Up Look Down at Tenacious Weeds

Yes there are lots of lovely flowers in my garden and in the park but this week I was drawn to the bright yellow of the weeds clinging to every nook and cranny they could find along my river walk, on the wall and the riverbank

Hot words in summer of colour

What an amazing array of art in response to the first summer of colour pair last week – I enjoyed visiting many blogs and seeing work using different mediums and techniques. I’ll definitely be visiting all on the linky again this week.

Our colour pair this week continues the bright theme but on the other side of the wheel

I played with the wave distortion filter in Photoshop Elements creating patterns and put some together as a collage

Then I used one of them as a background for some play with words

reflecting on the extent to which we all use words that are very specific to a particular context and how easy it is to forget that this language in a mystery to others.

I’ve used series of words from different parts of my life as well as emoticons and text or internet speak

The specific sets of words on the diagonals are

* Maori words used regularly by New Zealanders

*slang from North East Scotland

* terms in Photoshop elements

*organisations I work for and with

*fiscal terms commonly in the news

* blogger terms

* from my days as a political scientist

*barista coffee lingo

* StarTrek talk

* crochet terms

and of course babelfish is a HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy reference.

PhotoArt Friday is back–dreamily

Bonnie has opened her gallery again after a well deserved break.  Her first challenge was to create a digital photoart piece on the theme of dreamy or ethereal.

These words evoked ideas of things that you can only just see and I created two very different pieces, on different occasions.

First some barely there flowers, seen through glass – I love the soft colours

and then, a few days later I captured a wonderful sunset, in itself a fleeting wonder, and decided to use it for another ethereal piece, using the chalkboard techniques which are so popular in digi scrapping circles at the moment

Lovely to be back in Bonnie’s gallery and looking forward to seeing what others have produced.

I spy items beginning with F

A nice steady start to this summer’s scavenger hunt with another 2 items captured close to home – coincidently both beginning with ‘f’ – fisherman and fence.

The first I happened upon

and the second I took while on a lovely walk on a sunny day (above those clouds the sky was all blue)

I’m enjoying seeing other scavenger hunt items pop up across blogland – part of the fun is seeing the different images for a basic item like a fence – thanks Rinda

Look Up Look down at local fauna

Hearing and seeing lots of birds around at the moment, and noticing the evidence of things around my plants – aphids, slugs and snails. Captured a young crow balancing on the top of my garden shed and a snail wandering along the side of the path

24 weeks of recording this double snapshot of life and still enjoying thinking about what I will do and seeing what others have done.

Summer of Colour–citron green and turquoise

for the past 2 years of summer of colour,  Kristin chose our weekly colour palette but this year she is providing a series of 2 colour pair options and we vote each week.  The first winner was citron green and turquoise

– nice bright colours, if not in my preferred segment of the colour wheel.

I’m delighted to have started on this challenge again and had a lovely morning playing in PSE on pixel magic

This was my starting point

I played with it and loved 5 of the variants

My two favourites, which I’ll print up are

and

both of which I think have fabulous depth and I feel as if I’m going to fall into them if I look for too long.

I’ve been enjoying precision typesetting (courtesy of Cathy Z) recently and so I used these patterns for a subway poster esque final piece

wow that was lots of fun and creatively satisfying – looking forward to what others have created with these 2 colours and the wide range of medium that people use.

creating blooms

I’ve been re-excited by crochet recently and have been enjoying handling cotton yarns, playing with colours and crafting away from my computer.

One of the things I’ve been playing with is flowers and my stash of cotton yarns.  I’ve added a safetypin to the back of one and pinned it to my ‘summer jacket’ (oh so needed in UK but I know a mystery to those of you living in warmer climes).

I’ve played with 3 variants on the original pattern – so easy to play as each takes minutes to make. 

But totally addictive and now I have more flowers than I know what to do with.  Yes they all look lovely sitting in a bowl but I’m sure they could be better used out in the world.

So, if you would like one of these please say so in the comments, I’ll even sew on a safetypin if you want.

Scavenger Hunt 2013–we are on our way

On Saturday I eagerly read Rinda’s list for this summer’s scavenger hunt and smiled at the first item – an outdoor market – as I was heading off to one of them imminently.  Lovely to have an easy start to the hunt.

I love that the list has a mix of items that I know where I’ll find them and ones where I have to keep my eyes open for an appearance.  If you are thinking of joining then its not too late – we have until mid September – grab the list and directions here.

This year I decided to create a template so that I could record a sentence about finding the item because looking through the results from previous years I was smiling at the story behind several but only because they are in my memory.  

Look Up Look Down in anticipation

the first signs of the festivals that engulf Edinburgh in August – the seating for the Tattoo being erected on the Castel forecourt and collected my copy of the hot of the presses fringe programme. 

Light and shade on the beach

Last week the air was warmer but it was still overcast which meant that there was some interesting light on the beach and with the tide at its low point I was seeing fabulous silhouette figures walking on the water edge against the sea and sky.

I put some together in a collage

I’m really liking long narrow images at the moment – and I love the ‘dog alone’ image (which I created by carefully cropping out the dogwalker).

In the month of May

A crafting month and finally signs of seasonal change in the garden and on the river – I do love to see the chicks appear.  I’ve already shared lots of gosling photos so here are the others

trying to photograph them on the water demonstrates how well they are camouflaged

Thanks to Julie for creating a community of monthly counters.