Happy Halloween to everybody

By on 10-31-2011 in art quilts, Digital Images + Collage, Mixed Media, Original photos

Watch out for the ghosts and goblins tonight. I kept these three photos aside just for tonight’s festivities. All of these photos could be used as backgrounds for a spooky digital collage or inspiration for a dark nighttime quilt.

Orange moon through white cedar tree

A summer moon taken on a hot night. The white cedar shadow gives this photo it’s Halloween flavour.

harvest moon

September gives us a different moody moon. The moon this night was a beautiful silver with a big dog ring that picked up the moon shine and through it around the scudding clouds below it.

harvest moon

This is another summer moon. A June moon which was taken on a hot evening and another shadow of a white cedar tree.

Images of my visit to the Almonte Textile Museum

By on 9-30-2011 in Mixed Media, Original photos, Places to See, Vintage

My visit to the Almonte Textile Museium during this year’s Fiberfest was a wonderful treat. Upstairs there is a wonderful display of machinery as well as wooden spools and spindles. I spent almost two hours there taking one shot after another knowing they would be beautiful. I love earth tones and the machines are rusted, the spindles and spools are made of wood that has been polished through long handling. One word describes them to me and that is magnificent.

spools

Spools and spindles are sitting in large cardboard boxes beside the machines they were used on.

spindles from old cotton mill

weigh scales

This Toledo weigh scale caught my attention as I was leaving and had to go back to take more photos. I love the colours and the inner workings of this piece of equipment.

mill scale close up

scale close up

weigh scale close up

Shuttles were displayed in a box as well. How many hands have used these tools? How I wish they could tell us their stories.

shuttles

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy…my first ATCs ever

By on 9-15-2011 in Digital Images + Collage, Mixed Media, Vintage

These are my first ATCs. The topic was the Wild West and I thought of Gene Autry right away. When I was a young girl my mother made me a cowgirl outfit for my birthday and added cowgirl boots, hat, guns and holster. I wore them to the Toronto Canadian Exhibition where Gene was starring. He spotted me and waved Hi. A great memory.

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy

Gene Autry sang “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” as well as other cowboy and Christmas songs. I can still remember him singing them.

Gene Autry, the singing cowboy

These ATCs were so much fun to make, beginning with finding vintage images to putting them together along with backgrounds in Photoshop using layers, styles and filters to make them all fit on the little 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ cards. I made the decision to sew them together to continue on using fabric for my creations.

A little girl, her doll and an umbrella …. a story using vintage images

By on 9-15-2011 in Digital Images + Collage, Mixed Media

This is my first posting for September … what a busy month! Between working on a quilt, several other small projects and putting away some of the produce in abundance this time of the year my days were very full with little time to spare.

A little girl, her doll and an umbrella

One of the projects I was working on was this little animated story about a little girl. When I first saw these vintage images I knew I had to use them. They are wonderful and the story they tell is very poignant. I used layers and shapes as well as brushes and styles in photoshop to create this little gif.

Mixed Media Card….”Adore”

By on 8-04-2011 in Mixed Media

This is my first mixed media card. I created it in Photoshop, no gluing or paper has actually been involved. The background was painted in gradients with colours chosen from the image. The butterflies are painted with a brush with a lower opacity. The image is courtesy of Dover Books through their free images they send every Friday. You can sign up for their free images here: Dover Publications The large butterfly is a photoshop shape that I beveled and embossed. The words were given an outer glow and the “adore” was also beveled. The edges of the image were filtered to give it a ragged look and I beveled them as well to make it look like it was set into a frame. I also beveled the outer border and then flattened the layers and saved it as a jpeg.

mixed media card in photoshop
I am very pleased with this first try at a card.