Learnin' & Experimentin'

This is what I did on a Friday night. Eek gads, I need to get a life..lol. At least I'm being productive. I'm actually one artwork ahead of my 52 in 26 week challenge. While I'm doing pretty good in the creating department, it seems that the Etsy shop has come to a screeching halt. That's kinda why I'm working in some cooler colors. If it's going to take me a few months to sell my items, I might as well make them for this winter..LOL

This piece is appropriate titled:
Winter Flower
It's 6x6 on wood. I don't have it up on etsy just yet because I just coated it with varnish and it's not completely dry yet. It's very humid here lately. That probably will change today as we are expected to get a handful of nasty storms again.

This morning I had a big wake up call and realized once again how out of shape I'm in. I also realized how totally uncoordinated I am. DS had a tournament kickball game and was scheduled to play at 10:00 only not enough kids showed up for either team to play so guess what?? They had the parents play against all the kids. I was place at second base. The first ball that came to me went whammm right through my legs. LOL The whole thing was a blast though, the kids were loving the fact they were creaming us parents. I did get the hang of it by the end of the game. Isn't that just murphy's law? By the time I fell back in the saddle, the hour was over and the game was finished. It was a lot of fun though, glad the kids didn't show up..lol..otherwise we'd wouldn't have had the opportunity to make fools of ourselves!

Here's another piece I finished in the above photo:
Midnight Nest Egg. I just love the colors of aqua and black together. This piece reminds me of a magical mystical treasure, hiding in the forest waiting to be found. Kinda like that elusive grand idea or thought we have at one time or another....we know it's there, we know we can put our hands on it, if only we can just discover the hiding place in our minds and in our lives.


What's this you say?? Well, I might of mentioned before that I bought a cool new toy for my computer and art, and with it came bundled a version of corel and adobe photoshop. Which I know nothing about and find it very hard to work, but I'm plugging away experimenting so allow me a moment to brag on myself :)

I took this envelope photo.

And this lovely couple....

And actually layered them together!! Layered--did you hear me, layer?? No easy task for me! Now here's the problem. I really would have like to left it intact but I should have cropped the photo first because it had the white border around it. Crop?? I could not figure out how to crop it in Adobe. I know there has to be a way, but I could not figure it out for the life of me. If anyone can tell me how to crop, that would be much appreciated for future reference. I have no idea what button or tool to use to do that. I'd actually like to know how to cut certain elements out of another piece and add them on now. I guess that will be next weeks lesson.

Well, since I couldn't figure it out in photoshop, I went back to my trusty old standby, Picassa and cropped it, AND turned one into black and white. Picassa is amazing for a free program. If you haven't tried it and are lacking in a good photo editing program, run to googles picassa and download today!!

So there you go. I'm pretty proud of myself.

Learnin' new things. That's what life's all about:)