Category Archives: photos

Dried fungus

This little guy (couple of cm )was found in amongst a pot plant that I was photographing the other day.  It is all dried up but I loved the texture.  The black background is black velvet – gosh is that tricky to get properly spotless.  I have never tried stacking photography and I think would have looked much better using that method. Nothing is properly in focus so I will give it another go.

dried fungus on black cbackground

Photos of pot plants.

Happy New Year.  I have not picked up my camera in quite a few months so I thought I had better use it again before I forget how to.  It is too cold for me outside just now as my arthritic hands just won’t work at all when cold.  Even my craft room is only 14°C  so not great.  Over on A Year With My Camera (AYWMC) I joined the  ‘Plants and flowers’ group once I had completed the course, and January’s topic is: potted plants indoors or outdoors so I took a few photos.  Both batteries for my camera had run out of juice so while I waited for them to charge I used my phone to do an overhead shot of an oxalis. Cropped, a filter and vignette added – I do like the effect but maybe a bit OTT.

Oxalis palmifrons with filter, taken from above
Oxalis palmifrons

Once my batteries were charged I used my mirrorless camera to take a couple of shots against a black background.

Oxalis palmifrons side lit foliage
Oxalis palmifrons
Aeonium Voodoo on a black background
Aeonium Voodoo

A few floral photos

I love spending time in the garden taking photos of various plants but would like to get a bit more arty than the usual ones that I take.  Here are a few floral photos that I have attempted. Some were from an online course that I took (https://ayearwithmycamera.com/)  and some are just me mucking around learning what I can do with my Sony Mirrorless camera or  Xenvo lens for my android camera.  The last shot is Saughton pavilion.

Photo memory frame birthday card

chris2010sml
I was playing around with tissue paper for part of this card and it really helps give it some texture, while it is still wet you can squidge it about to get as much or as little texture as you like.  I stamped the diamond background onto ivory card, coloured it with distress ink, then covered it with mod podge, laid the tissue paper over it and covered it all in mod podge. The pattern and colour of the diamond background comes through the tissue but is quite subtle. For a darker effect I stamped the family photograph onto tissue paper then stuck this to the background paper and covered with more mod podge. Once everything had dried I sprinkled it with gold embossing powder and carefully melted it from behind. I stamped a further image of the photograph, cut it to size and fitted it into a memory frame behind a Tim Holtz fragment. Now normally I would attach embellishments with a brad in between the layers so that you don’t see the splayed part of the brad, but this time I pushed the brad in last so it went all the way through the front of the card. This just means that the embellishments and be taken off and used on another project or Chris can take the stamped image from the frame and put in one of his own small photos to be used as a key ring (or other such thing).

Inks: Black document ink, Distress inks; Forest moss and Shabby shutters
Card: Ivory card, tissue paper, black card
Stamps: Elusive images Diamond art, Invokearts Art tickets, Stampers anonymous Mini muse
Other: mod podge, gold embossing powder, Memory frame and fragment, Tim Holtz cogs, brad and spinners, crackle glaze, Cosmo cricket white rub-ons