T-Shirt Quilt

Soooo here I am, the absent blogger. Time to revive. I have actually made a quilt recently. It was from old t-shirts. It required me to do a bit of lateral thinking as to how to construct it but construct it I did and the end result was successful. The quilt was constructed as a quilt as you go.

Back Again,

After an absence of …a while…I’ve up dated and refreshed my blog and will hopefully be a more regular writer.

The above photo is for Friday 19th February 2010. I took the photo in Rotorua, New Zealand back in September 2009.

Friday Photo of the Week; February 2010

Friday Photo of the Week: February 12th.

Made it back to work this week so less time on my photos…sigh. My photo for this week is one I took in New Zealand in September 2009. I stayed over at my cousin Glenda’s house for a couple of nights and one morning in the kitchen area I noticed the sun shining through the venetian blinds and the shadows they cast on a nearby chair.

I like shadows images because at times the subject the shadow falls on can change and become something else which is what I found with the chair at Glenda’s.

The image below is one of the few I took.

Friday Photo :February 5th 2010

The above photo is my Friday photo but I added the ones below to demonstrate what I have been doing over the last week.

The past week I’ve spent at home nursing a broken clavicle, the result of a fall off my pushbike. I was riding because I am wanting to get riding fit for Cycle Queensland in September of this year. As I been unable to do very much I’ve spent a lot of time in front of the computer learning how to use Photoshop Elements. The above image is one I have played with, with adding texture layers. The original image started life looking like this one below,

The photo was taken at The Glenbrook Steam Train site near Auckland. The end result is quite different and I like both versions.

So far I have played with 7 different images. One of the other images I used was a image I had converted to black and white then selectively brought back areas of colour within the picture. The original image I took near Bellechaume where JP’s brother lives. The buildings are old brickworks.

The image is a little pale, flat and lacking a bit of contrast but I liked the overall look of the old brickworks. My first attempt at playing with it was to create a black and white.

With some dodging and burning I played with the ‘lighting’ in the image to produce the above result. the dodging and burning also help bring back the overexposed sky areas.

The next time I played with this image I selectively coloured [or as it is sometimes called popping colour] some areas. Unfortunately at the time I didn’t know about dual conversion or layer stacking so the sky is overexposed.

It was this image I used to play with with adding textures.

The result is above. i wanted to add a frame to it using the frames supplied on the CD with the October issue of the UK magazine, Digital Photo. The frames are for an image around an A4 size so I had to lose some of the edges of my wide image to make it fit. The result is below.

Now all I need to learn is how to make my own frames in the size I want. I have also learnt how to create dual conversions for images, one conversion for the shadows and one for the highlights. The images are then copied and pasted together with the burnt out areas being deleted to reveal the ‘better’ look underneath. I may go back and rework this image now I know how to get the sky right and not burnt out.

Friday Photo: January 2010

Friday Photo; 30th Jan.

Cloud Blanket over Mount Tongariro and Ngauruhoe

This Friday my photo is one of my images from my trip to New Zealand. Over the last few days I have been working on converting some of my ARW [or RAW files] into black and white. To do this I have been using a dual raw conversion. A conversion is done for the shadow areas then another for the highlights. The two images are merged and through selective deletion the correct densities are chosen.

As you can see by the above image the clouds highlights are blown out and the shadows dull and flat. With the dual conversion i can obtain the correct exposure for each area then merge and delete the part i don’t want. a small adjustment using levels to fine tune each section is done before the final image is merged together.

Friday Photo; 22nd Jan

My photo for this week is one I took of my granddaughter at a school fete. I had just bought her a bundle of fairy floss and her first bite resulted in a very cute fairy floss beard.

Rachel and her Fairy Floss beard

Photo of The Week 2010

I have decided one of my goals this year is to have a Friday photo of the week [POTW]. A bit like a year Quilt but with photos instead. These photos will simply be images I like and want to share.

Friday 1st January.

My first image for the first Friday of January is one I took at Virginia Lakes Reserve at Whanganui [Wanganui] in New Zealand while visiting in September 2009. The art piece is called, Compressione Curiosa by artist Fiona Mackinnon.

Friday 8th January.

This photo I took in my back yard after a spell of rain. I like the illusions of ‘other worlds’ that reflections conjure up.

Friday 15th January.

This image is another I took at Victoria Lakes Reserve. I took several photos of the swan and like the coyness of the swan in this image.

2010 , the start of a new year.

Now I haven’t written here for a long time but then not many follow my blog so no problem. This is my space to just muse.

This box I decorated before Christmas but I’ll come back to it later in this post.

This year I have decided to get back on the fitness wagon. My goal is to do Cycle Queensland in September which is a nine day cycling tour around some part of Queensland. The countryside we will be cycling around is from Yeppoon to Rockhampton, Mount Morgan, Biloela, Monto, Eidsvold, Mount Perry, Gin GIn and finishing in Bundaberg. The days cycling ranges from 53km to 104km.

Anyhow in an effort to get my fitness level up I have begun to walk and cycle again. I had a great start and have been sticking little stars on the calendar for each day I’ve exercised [7 days in a row!]. I’ve been doing 5.5 kms walks and one bike ride of 14kms. All was going well until I decided to jog on my walk on Monday afternoon. Wrong!! It flared up an injury I did to it in September 2009 so the last few days I have been nursing a fat knee back to normality. To help reduce the swelling/ fluid sitting in a pocket above my patella I have been  icing it and using an old horse remedy [well I am a bit of an old nag] recommended to me by one of my work colleagues. The gist of it is to pack a hand full of washing soda onto a pad then wrap your knee in it and leave it on overnight. The washing soda draws out the fluid and in the process reduces the swelling. Does it work? Yes it does but it needs to be repeated over a few nights.

I will not be attempting to jog again ,not for a while anyway, instead I will concentrate on walking and cycling.

Now enough raving about my knee back to the image at the start of this post, here’s close up image to remind you what it was…

At work we have a Secret Santa exchange, gift to the value of $20, my recipient wanted Christmas Decorations so I bought plain baubles and tizzied them up. After finishing them I wanted to put them into a box and took one of the label boxes from work, which normally get tossed after the labels come out, and decorated it with my collection of hand made papers [which I made some time ago for some collage art]. The gist of this is once I had finished the box I couldn’t part with it and ended up nipping down to cheapie shop and buying a box for the Secret Santa baubles instead.

This the box with the lid bit open.

The lid open and some of my xmas decorations inside.

The top of the box.

Another close up of the lid.The paper I use is art tissue which I have stained [coloured] and then printed designs on the top. The paper is torn into bits and glued down with PVA glue. The box had a base coat of red tissue paper [ see inside of box image] then layered with my hand made papers. The dimension of the box is the size of an A4 sheet of paper.

I enjoy this type of  collage art and the end object becomes a decorative and useful object plus I have recycled something which would have been tossed out.

Now I guess that’s enough for the moment time for a cuppa and breakfast.

Selective Colouring

I've just spent the weekend playing with Photoshop. This time selectively colouring my photos. To do this you first change the image to black and white and then using layers bring back the colour you want in your photo. It's addictive and fun. There are plenty of tutorials you can find on the Internet to learn how to achieve the effects.

The first photo is of Priska. She's a beautiful dog and belongs to a family member. I've put both images in, a before and after.

After working on the image this was the result.

 

The image has been darken and saturated to give Priska's coat a deeper colour.

 

 

 

 

Another type of image which takes well to this type of colouring is flowers.

This image was taken at Le Grand Roc as we waited for the tour into the caves to open.

After selective colouring this is the result.

 

The blossoms stand out against the black and white of the rest of the image.

It is a fun way to spend a wet rainy day.

 

 

 

To have a look at more images like this check out my albums on webshots. These images are in the album called Selective Colouring

www.webshots.com/user/mazaquilt