Wheatfield Wild Flowers

Image of the Summer

Living in the country, this photograph sums up an early August summer day.  For once the sun was shining, the wheat in the field is just starting to turn from green to gold and a strip of wildflowers runs all the way up the hedgerow. I'm linking this to Truly Madly Kids - Image of the Summer.

Bumble Bee an Image of Summer

It's great to hear bees and bumble bees buzzing around the shrubs in the garden.  This morning my variegated privet was covered in bumble bees gathering up the pollen from the tube-like white flowers.  All this insect activity is part of the joy of being outdoors in the summer.

Over at Truly Madly Kids, Image of the Week has gone on its summer holidays to be replaced by Image of the Summer, so you will be seeing a few images over the coming weeks representing what summer means to me.

Thistles - Image of the Week #IOTW

This is my Image of the Week #IOTW the one I like best.  Thistles are terrible invasive weeds but the bees and butterflies love them and I always try to capture a few in flower before cutting them down in the hope that a few fewer seeds will mean they don't take over our hedgerows and fields and leave room for some of the other lovely wild flowers and plants.

The theme for #IOTW  at Truly Madly Kids this week was 'Flash' I tried to take some different flash shots, but wasn't really happy any, here are a few of them.  Obviously needing to do more work on this.

Bird nest in hedge, hay rake, lavender, blacksmiths drill

Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly

Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly, Lavender Green, when I am King Dilly Dilly, you shall be Queen.
This is my Image of the Week #22 #IOTW for Truly Madly Kids with the theme of Bokeh - the effect where the image is sharp and the background is blurred often with points of light.

I only have one pot of lavender, but it was looking particularly fine in the sunshine at the weekend when I captured this shot with the sun shining on the leaves of the beech hedge in the background.

Father's Day - Image of the Week #20

It's Father's Day tomorrow and Image of the Week #IOTW  at Truly, Madly Kids,  is keeping to this theme.  My Dad is no longer around and even when he was, we didn't make a big fuss of Father's Day.  A card to mark the occasion was all that was required.  My dad loved his holidays and even in the 1960s when we had very little money we always went away camping every summer.  By the way, that's me with the cool shades and the blow up beach ball in the background.

I searched around to see if I could find an image of my husband, Brian, and our two sons, this was about the best I could do.  It was taken in Dublin when we visited there, taking my mother along,  the summer after my Dad died.  In their teens, music was a real connecting point between Brian and the boys so this is quite an appropriate photograph.

Great Tit Nesting Box - Image of the Week #18

Telling a Story - is the prompt for the Image of the Week at Truly Madly Kids, here is what Penny says: "Sometimes a photograph has many things about it that make it precious. It could be the setting, it could be something in the frame, it could be the reaction on a face to something, or even something lurking in the background of a shot. These are the images that tell a story."

My story is all about a little family of Great Tits who chose to nest in the hollow framework of our tractor bale spike, as you can see it makes the perfect nest box!  We enjoyed watching the parent birds flying backwards and forwards carrying insects to feed their young.  The birds have now fledged so must have been quite large when I took these photographs.

There were better photographs than the one I have chosen for the Image of the Week, but this is the one I felt was most likely to 'tell the story'.  Here are few of the others below:

Landscape: Image of the week #17

When I saw the theme was Landscape for this week's Image of the Week at Truly Madly Kids, I knew right away which image I would use.  I was really pleased with how this turned out.

You can see the digital layout I made with the image in this post Ploughed and Harrowed in the Spring

Bluebell Woods

Photograph altered with Artistic Filter, Palette Knife
Coppercurls Designs: Paper Blenders and Botanica elements

Image of the Week #15 - Macro

Moss

Lichen

The theme for Image of the Week #IOTW at Truly Madly Kids this week is MACRO.  I love to take Macro shots, particularly of the plants and insects.  I was torn as to which of these recent images to share in the Linky but decided on the moss as the lichen is rather more difficult to distinguish.

And here are a couple of older macro photos that I particularly like.

Ploughed and Harrowed in the Spring

Our fields have been ploughed, harrowed and re-seeded for the first time in over 60 years, so I thought it only right that I recorded this event in a digital page.

PTON Art Mask for Scrapbookgraphics

Paper - PTON add on for Scrapbookgraphics

Butterflies from Outside my Window by Snickerdoodle Designs

Wood Anenome

I'm hoping to do a little more digital scrapbooking and digital art again.  I've joined the Just Art Forum and this layout is for the mini-challenge using overlays created by Robyn who runs the group.

Robyn Littlejohn - Pretty Edgy overlays
Coppercurls - Paper Blender 04
Digital Crea - Golden Sun vine element
Designs by Mozz - Nanum paper 7

Sunshine Images - Seagull in the Sun

I took this photograph in Funchal, Madeira at the top of a tower overlooking the Marina and captured the seagull against the bright sun and fluffy clouds.  I took it on my Sony Cybershot HD, no fancy camera, no complicated settings, just the right moment.

I'm entering this into the Sunshine Images Linky at Truly Madly Kids

Game of Thrones Birthday Card

You can leave your hat on!

I dare you to use any kind of head gear on your card: party hats, helmets, woolly hats, crowns, fascinators etc.

Thanks for the inspiration Daring Cardmakers!

This is a bit of a cheat of a card, a few stick on crystals, honestly, I know you can hardly see them but they are there, and some gold pen around the edge to frame this image from Game of Thrones, the favourite tv series of my eldest son, whose birthday was at the weekend.  So much for my huge efforts to locate a suitable image (including some headgear) he didn't even recognise it and only 'got' it when he opened his gift, which was a t-shirt from the same programme.  

It doesn't half make you feel old and granny-like when you have no idea about what they are watching, the t-shirt was only right because I consulted my younger son on the details!

January Blues

It's Blue Monday today according to many of the media pundits, when we are all supposed to be at our lowest ebb after Christmas.  Over at Daring Cardmakers, they are having the January Blues too, but in a much nicer way - as a prompt or dare for a card design.

January Blues

You are free to use the title however you want; it could be a "just to cheer you up" or "sorry to hear you're feeling blue" card,  a card with shades of blue as the main colour, or something else inspired by the heading.  Lets chase the January Blues away with some quality time spent getting creative!

This simple card is made with a couple of free papers from Simply Homemade magazine (not recent), a butterfly image from a pad of images I've also had so long that the front page has gone, so I know not from where it came, a ribbon from my ribbon box and a Papermaze greeting.

Elemental Inspiration for Daring Cardmakers

It's been a long time since I made a card, but I saw the Elemental Inspiration challenge come up on the Daring Cardmakers Facebook page and I just loved the inspiration piece so decided to see if I can restart my crafting mojo!

I'm not entirely pleased with this card, however it does meet the criteria for the challenge which is to include elements from the original inspiration, pop over the the site to see the original.  Here are the elements I used:

Colours
Hearts
Vintage woman image
Vertical lines

I haven't made any resolutions this year, but I would like to do a little more crafting, so this is a good place to start.