Dragonfly

Found this great old image and had to use her in this digital collage. I added dragonfly images and many layers of art paper and artisitc filters to create a gauzy effect.

Soft Light Falling

This is a digital collage I made using a photo I took last weekend at a lovely pond that was swollen with rain and and fulled with moss. The photo had a soft somewhat eerie light to it. I added this image and some text for a vintage mood. This is for the Digital Whisper challenge (Soft).

Faerie Dream

This is my entry for the Mixed Media Monday challenge where the theme this week is "eggs". I made these (paper napkin eggs) last year and decided to use them in a digital collage composed of photos from my backyard (birdhouse, and a beautiful nest that we found abandoned, and a faerie garden sculpture). A bit magical in color and content!

The eggs are really fun and easy to make. I used large eggs and pricked the top and bottom with an embroidery needle to make two holes to blow the contents of the eggs out into a bowl. (Be sure to make an omelet or a great scramble afterwards)! Run water through the egg to clean completely and then let them dry. Now for the fun, I simply brushed my Golden Gel medium over the entire egg and started to apply torn bits of decorative paper napkins (there are tons of beautiful designs out there) or tissue paper (remove all other plys from the colored layer) and press firmly ; the glue makes the tissue shrink and adhere perfectly. You get a wonderful swirled marbelized effect. Cover the whole egg (the holes will disappear). I have kept mine out all year (away from direct sunlight ) and they have stayed beautiful.

Ravensong

You know who you are

bird of darkness.

Your soul goes deep

through myth and time.

You know your song

it tells a tale of woe.

Knowing full well

all who encounter you

rise with the night.

This is my entry for the Darkness Inspiration challenge (The Dark Birds- Raven and Crow). Multi-layer digital collage with Dover images, background (scrapbookgraphics), artist papers and artistic filters in Photoshop.

Artisan

Woke up real early this morning and made this entry for the 4x4 Friday challenge. This digital collage is made from personal photos taken in New York and San Rafael, (Italian Street Painting festival) and a magazine image. I wanted to capture the spirit of the street artisan with all of the movement, color and sort of chaos that represents urban art. He be jammin'.

The Water Bearer

Over the past couple of weekends we have taken some really nice Sunday drives and I have had the opportunity to take a lot of digital photos. One stop was at a wonderful winery in Sonoma County and I took a picture of the side of a beautiful old building ( well, a new building) that looks like old Tuscany, complete with shutters, statues and vines. I used this photo as the background for this piece and added an old vintage image that seemed to look a part of this scene. I also added some vases, stone medallions and a bit of greenery. I really liked how the reflection in the window from the surrounding grounds was picked up naturally.

Darjeeling

This is my entry for The Three Muses challenge this week where the theme is "A Cup of Tea".
I must confess I am a total 'coffee' person, but I do love the idea of the ceremony/ritual that surrounds tea. Tea comes from exotic, mysterious, artful places. It takes time to prepare, savor and complete a tea ceremony- which has enjoyed a huge revival in the past 5 years. So many wonderful blends are available now and I have bought a lot of pretty packages filled with wondrous descriptions of ingredients....but alas I have drank very little.
I bought a beautiful clear teapot where you drop this strange looking dried up pod into the pot, add boiling water and voila- a beautiful pot of herbal tea and I have lots of cute tea sets from Chinatown (that look great but are seldom used). But, with all of this attraction to tea ( and its acoutrements) I still return to coffee; hot, hi-octaine and fast to get me going!
I created this digital collage (with all of that pretty packaging in mind) from a photo of one of my own inherited teacups along with labels and photos of spices that I own- I'm thinking Darjeeling spiced Chai while I relax amidst the verdant beauty of an Indian garden courtyard.......sounds great huh!