A Breath of Nature in the Big City

Just a few minutes from my house, there is a lovely park that I like to take Rufus for a walk through,  in early morning.  It was built on the grounds of an old race track and it is truly a piece of nature tucked into the city.  I'm always amazed at how quiet it is and I love pretending I'm up in the country going for a walk at my cottage because, quite often, all the sounds I hear are the birds chirping and the frogs calling.  Hard to believe, with the city skyline peaking above the tree tops.

I brought my camera with me this morning because I was hoping to catch a shot of a white heron that makes his home in one of the hidden ponds in this park.  He wasn't there today.  Often I will see him, preening his feathers one of three beautiful little ponds, surrounded by bull rushes, and quite literally, 20 feet away from a major city thoroughfare.

Other birds were there today, though, and the most amazing thing to me is this sits a few minutes outside of the downtown core. There is a wonderful boardwalk that lies between the bull rushes and as my feet hit the wooden boards I sometimes can't believe I'm just east of the city and a few hundred feet from the lakeshore.

I grabbed a shot of the ornamental grasses beginning to grow, at one of the entries to the park.  It's hard to believe that this is the same spot I grabbed an instagram this past fall(bottom picture).  Gotta love nature!

Have a great day!

ps.  This was quickly thrown together with the new picmonkey collage feature ... YEAH !!... it's finally here!!!

DIY - Photo Wreath for Mother's Day

I find it hard to celebrate Mother's Day without my mom.   I can remember the first Mother's Day after I had Helana, she was just a couple months old and I was so excited.  Not because it was my first Mother's Day but because I could celebrate my mom both as a mother and as a grandmother.  She was so excited to finally be a grandma, and I finally over that last year, learned to appreciate what it takes to be a mom.  So this year, my fifth mother's day without her, I decided to do a little project that included a little bit of my mom. 

She loved linen and burlap.  I thought about burlap for this but I had all this linen and frankly I figured strips of burlap were going to make a big mess I just didn't feel like cleaning up.  I had a wreath left over from my valentine love note wreath so I thought I would do a version of that for Mother's Day.  Like the love notes - you could customize this wreath each year by adding and replacing photographs.  I just grabbed a bunch of photos from my photoshop folders - but the trick was to easily resize them to make a banner.

I used picmonkey to play around with 10 photos and added artistic frames to some and sepia tones to others.  Then I loaded those pictures into Picassa and made a grid collage with a 5:3 widescreen photo frame.  Each picture measures 2 inches wide and 1 1/4 inches deep.

I started out with an 12 inch diameter styrofoam wreath.

I wrapped the wreath in linen strips that I made from a recycled linen slipcover.

I added a little bit of twine to approximately 1/8 of the wreath or about 5 inches.

A separate piece of paper twine is the basis of the photo banner (27 inches long including ties at each end)

Once I decided on the length, I was able to lay out the photo arrangement.

Details : twine/glue gun/flower corsage

A little dovetail in each photo seemed to fit the banner and once arranged, I glue gunned the pictures in place.

The flowers are made from strips of linen (cream one made from thick, cotton ribbon)

You can find many diy's of rolled fabric flower making on-line including here. (my sparkle)

 I think my mom would have loved this wreath.  She would be so proud of her granddaughters and just amazed how much they have grown up over the past 5 years.

From Picnik to PicMonkey

Picnik is leaving in a few days and I have been stressed out wondering how I would quickly fix up pictures and create collages.  On Friday I found out via Hello Hue that some of the picnic people have started up PicMonkey.  So I began to play around with it.  It is also a dream for newbies like me.  It looks like collage is on its way for this program and that will make it almost perfect.

Helana took this picture of Ali with a new hair band.  Look at all the neat things you can do to the pictures.  The girls are really excited to play around with pics for their tumblrs. 

It let me take this birthday picture of Helana and jazz it up a little.  Very "Florida Keysie"

And a polaroid version of a picture taken by the girls, while Scott had me out on the Jet Ski screaming for dear life.  I just love Ali's expression.  Ah ... sisterly love.

I ended up playing with a few project photographs for a new blog banner.  Not quite there yet but I can't go back.  Maybe that's a good thing.

All these cool effects have me thinking of a mother's day project...hmmm...