Create Photo Art the Easy Way

You don't have to be a graphic artist or even a great photographer to create unique photo art with some of the online digital tools available today.

Admittedly, I'm an amateur who likes playing with crafty-looking add-ons and altering basic photographs to change the style. I like to layer backgrounds and add overlays. I'm particularly fond of making my photographs look like ephemera.

Last week, I took this photograph out the window of my ninth-floor office during a light snow. It's not a high-quality photo, as the light was poor and I was using my iPhone 5. But, I liked the photo and posted it on Facebook. Then I decided to play around with it.

While there are many free digital photo-editing tools online, I generally use PicMonkey. It's easy and it feeds my need for cheesy, crafting-looking creations. There is a free version that offers many nice editing tools and a premium version that has many additional options. I pay for the premium version. It's worth the cost for me because I use it a lot.

The first image above could be featured in a small frame as a holiday accent or used as the front of a handmade holiday card.

Other styles of the same image open up many possibilities for the use of just this one photograph.

As you can see, photo editing allows you to make something interesting from a mediocre quality photo. The combinations of backgrounds, overlays, text fonts, frames and cutouts make the possibilities endless.

Explore some of these highly rated photo editing programs to find one that suits your needs best.

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

Inspiration Spotlight

Hosing Around

Life got pretty crazy over the past eight months and not only have I struggled to find the time for general posting on my blog, I've neglected my planned Monday feature, Re:, entirely. 

Re: is a little feature I started to extol the virtues of the six R's--reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim, repurpose and respect--and offer tips for an earth-friendly lifestyle. 

I'm a huge fan of upcycling or repurposing anything possible and am thrilled to see so many great blog posts featuring new uses for existing items. For the next few weeks, I plan to feature on Re: some of the innovative upcycle projects and upcyclers I've come across who are saving money and a piece of the planet by transforming has-beens into new treasures.

Spring Recy-cleaning

When I left for work on the first day of Spring, the wind chill was zero. The daytime high was 20 degrees below normal. Here in the frozen tundra called the Midwest, spring hasn't sprung, the sun seems to be on permanent hiatus and I can't remember the last time I was actually warm.

My daydreams have turned to yard clean-up, followed by hands-in-the-soil gardening.

Every spring, I look forward to throwing open the door to my potting shed and pulling out my vintage garden ornaments:  the red glider, the 1950s Schwinn, the little red trike and the mid-century scooter.

That is, I look forward to getting past that first heart-in-the-throat, knee-weakening moment of first opening the door, as every year I imagine a giant wolf spider somehow surviving the brutal winter and leaping out onto my face. How's that for arachnophobia?

I can't wait for the garden to transform from this:

to this:

When I clean out my potting shed this spring, I know I have at least two hoses that are past their prime. Holes and leaks galore. 

If they were hanging outside today, this is what they'd look like:

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Hoping to find an earth-friendly alternative to tossing the hoses into the trash can, I did an internet search. A plethora, I tell you. Lots of creative and practical ideas for repurposing a garden hose. 

Here are some of my favorites:

THE PRETTY

Samantha at Two Hearts Together gives a quick tutorial on how to make a lovely wreath from an old garden hose. She incorporates other garden recyclables such as the little pail and shovel head to help create a delightful focal point for door, gate or fence.

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THE PRACTICAL

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Instructables gives a full set of instructions on how to make this cool chair out of garden or other hose.

See how to use garden hose to organize your garage at The Family Handyman.

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This recycled garden hose project is cool in more than one way. It uses a garden hose and a recycled two-liter plastic bottle with holes punched in it. Throw it over a tree branch as a sprinkler for the kids to run through on a hot day (which seems like an eternity away).

If, after taking stock of your garden hoses this spring, you find some have sprung a leak, don't be too quick to toss them in the trash. Use them to have a little fun, create a piece of art or organize your storage space.

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

Creative Bloggers Party and Hop
It's Party Time!
Time to Shine
Outdoor Wednesday
Whatever You Want Wednesday
Home and Garden Thursday
Pin Me

Sci Fi Sunday at the Pod Farm

The first weekend in October is the annual North Hills Pottery Tour here. A number of artists at four locations north of the city display their wonderful creations, serve up some great homemade soups, pizza, desserts and wine against a backdrop of local music and the gorgeous colors of autumn in the countryside.

We take part in this event nearly every year. The range of pottery styles on this tour is as diverse and colorful as the autumn landscape. The tour atmosphere is delightful, the artists accessible and friendly and the drive beautiful.

One of the more whimsical pottery collections draws guests' imaginations into the world of aliens and pod people.

Hope you enjoy this photographic tour of the Pod Farm.

Emerging from the Land of Pod, the view is distinctly more earthly. But just as wondrous.

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

Our World Tuesday
What's It Wednesday
Outdoor Wednesday

Eco Art: Creativity with a Message

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle

Reclaim

Repurpose

Respect

Through one of my favorite web sites, www.earth911.com, I came across this intriguing, yet sobering, project,  Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait.

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Seattle-based photographer/artist Chris Jordan describes his collection of art this way:

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

The above work of art pays homage to Georges Seurat's famous painting, but depicts 400,000 plastic bottle caps, equal to the average number of plastic bottles consumed by Americans every day.

Visit www.chrisjordan.com to zoom in and see the bottle cap detail of this remarkable work of art. Among Jordan's other works you can see are 260,000 car keys, equal to the number of gallons of gasoline burned in U.S. cars every minute and 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours wasted every minute in the United States from inefficient residential electricity usage.

Jordan is right: his art gives raw statistics new meaning. I know I won't be able to view plastic bottles in the same way from this day forward.

I hope you'll take a minute to look at Jordan's remarkable work and to reflect on the sobering story it tells. 

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

Creative Bloggers' Party and Hop

Mulberry Stains to Abstract Art; National Photo Month, Day 22

Walking with a colleague recently, we came across some serious mulberry stains on the sidewalk.

"Looks a bit like abstract art," he said.

Sure did. I snapped the photo above for the heck of it. It could definitely pass for abstract art in its original, unedited form. The splashes of bird doo-doo add some interest, don't you think?

So, here's what it looks like after I doctored it up in PicMonkey.

Abstract art isn't really my taste, but I can imagine this hanging on someone else's wall.

Make it a great day!

Linking to:

The Bunny Hop at Bunny Jean's Decor and More
What's It Wednesday at Ivy and Elephants