Spring, No Really!

Himself brought me this Dogwood blossom that blew down in last night's storm. It cheered me up though the weather has gone back to being brr cold. This is supposed to be spring, not winter. The Redbuds are out, the Virginia bluebells, the Dogwoods, and the Iris' have their heads on. Now last year at this time, we had a horrible freeze, & all those poor things were frozen & died back. The Hostas looked bad all year, & everything looked just plain blah. Course the freeze was followed by the worst drought in about 100 years. So there ya go. But this Dogwood blossom, though fallen, brought me a bit of happiness for a while & will live on forever - digitally! Now everything isn't so bad.

With a little help from my sister

Fun Flamingo Collage started with two photographs sent up from that nice warm state of Florida by my sister, Chrystal. She is a rather all-round adventurer who teaches kayaking. She is also a very good photographer who is doing me the honor of adding her photos to my collages. I just pluck out what I need, like the flamingo & the beautiful flower, and see what comes next. Actually, the flamingo was sitting on a wooden table against the orange stucco house. She had told me about it, & I liked the color combo so much, asked her to take the pic. I got rid of the wooden table by erasing & adding other sections of the wall. I then used the smudge tool to blend in the seams. I added the flower which I had pulled from a larger pic, rotated & enlarged it. Then set it between two layers of the flamingo with out the orange background. I added shadows to both. I used a piece from Leonardo da Vinci for the graphic behind the flower, which I color burned. I grabbed the dark color from that and added the F, which I enlarged & squished a little. On the left, I snipped a piece of a Dover art deco poster, enlarged it, used a soft light on it, then added a gradient to it. The bottom is a small side bit from an ancient astronomy piece Dover has. I enlarged it, then used multiply in the layers mode. I had to mask it & brush over it, as it had a white portion to it, & I wanted the orange to show through. Finally, I added the stamp from some 1800's letters I have. I dropped the opacity down some & gave it a small shadow. And there you have it , Fun Flamingo.