Don't you hate it when things don't look the same?

My boy Ken bought me the Updated version of Photoshop Elements (#11) when he realized I was 5 versions behind. He was updating my computer to prevent Elements from closing unexpectedly. There is a learning curve with the new program. Everything looks different! This is my first effort.

Mr. B often talks about "when my ship comes in." Well, when mine comes in I plan to buy ink and print my new digital compositions.  Hopefully it will be a real ship and not a row boat!

I am really loving creating these beautiful blended backgrounds.

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The Process of Making a Digital Montage

This Montage started with a picture of a purple hydrangea bloom. See the second picture below. I choose a background to put the cropped picture on. See the third picture below. The background is made from a photo I took of a stream in winter. Then I kept making changes, all in Photoshop Elements.

I like to keep several versions of a work as I go along. Just make a duplicate and continue to make changes to the duplicate. I work in layers. For the final product the layers are merged. Sometimes I put the work on a colored background to give the effect of a mat.

By keeping versions of the work in layers, it is possible to go back and make changes. Any layer can be deleted or added to. Any of the versions can be changed and made into something entirely different.

Original Picture

Second Step. Picture is cropped and put on a background.

My knowledge has come mostly from experimentation. I do have a book that explains Photoshop Elements. After studying that book, I just dug in and started. My first Montage I posted here. My work has improved and changed since that first Montage.

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She's Back !

Somehow I drifted away from bolgging. But here I am. Still making digital art. Suffering from Cabin Fever or "Tired of Winter Syndrome." Today was seventeen degrees and windy. I was supposed to go snowshoeing but decided I am not hearty enough. Give me a warmer day and I'll get out there!

                              Without further ado .......... "Rose Montage"

by Nancy Olivia Hoffmann

                             

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Overdoing it - Who, Me?

I'm joining Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

Having learned  (but not permanently) my lesson about overdoing it in the garden, I had a day of overdoing it in the house. At least I am consistent!

After a full day, I decided to wash the kitchen windows, inside and out, and the woodwork plus the screens. At one point that required me to sit on the windowsill and put my feet in the kitchen sink. As I was wiping glass with my feet in the sink, my daughter-in-law called. While I was talking to her, and still wiping, I glanced behind me to the outside to see my daughter standing there looking up at me as if I were crazy! Well, I wasn't going to miss talking to my daughter-in-law just because I was sitting on the windowsill with my feet in the kitchen sink!

It was worth the effort because the kitchen seemed so much cleaner and brighter. Everyone in the family commented on it.

Thank you all for your favorable comments on my photo montages. Since I work alone at home, it is nice to get feedback. This montage features a cosmos and a butterfly photoed in my yard. Of course I changed the color from yellow to orange. You can see the flower repeated in the top left and the bottom right. In the top right you can faintly see a peony which is repeated in the bottom. The background is a single photo of a cluster of white astilbe blooms over a color layer, covered by a texture layer. This is done in Photoshop Elements 6.

Legal Seafoods in Framingham, MA was the site of our Father's Day dinner. Our son, daughter and son-in-law treated us. Mr. B had raw oysters but I was not brave enough to try one. Why are they called "naked cowboys"? Anyone know?

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Overdoing in the Garden

Have you ever worked so many hours in the garden you can barely stand up the next day? It seems I never learn and I keep working as I think, "I'll quit when when I finish this, and this, and this." And then it is too late and I'm nearly crippled. At least I can still recover in a day. But I know it would be better to garden two hours at the time.

To make my Saturday gardening adventure even more severe, I had pulled weeds for two hours with other garden club members just the day before. Our Garden Club of Windham maintains many public spaces and the largest is the Garden on the Bridge where we were working. I truly believe in the mission of the club to beautify our area, so I help by weeding, trimming, planting and picking up lots of trash. Willimantic has so much going for it. Many new restaurants and other businesses have opened on Main Street in the past year. Making the area prettier and cleaner can help in this rebirth the town is experiencing.

This new work of mine is different for me in that it has a face in it. The lady in the hat was taken from a larger picture that has some of my ancestors in it. I think it was made around 1914 in Surrency, Georgia. The pansies are from my yard as are the astilbe you can see outlined in the background. 

Join other bloggers at The Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

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Special Flowers

This is one of three pieces I entered in the Juried Vernon Art Center Show. The others were a print/collage and a fabric/weaving piece. All the flowers except the roses were photographed in my yard last summer. It is wonderful to have so many photo ops just outside my door!

Today I take my entries to the Windham Regional Art Council Show at Art Space in Willimantic. Each artist can use four linear feet.

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A Productive Year of Art

The Windham Regional Art Council's annual show is coming up in June. That makes me realize that it has been one year since I have been pursuing my art seriously and putting work in shows.

My first show here in Connecticut was at the Windham Art Council show in June of 2011. Since then I have had two solo shows, been in three juried shows, won a grand prize for a photograph, and shown in two additional shows. I sold a framed photo at the Digital Art Show sponsored by the Vernon Community Arts Center and also sold two matted photos from other shows. Not bad for one year!

I have learned so much, all by reading, research and experimenting. And I'm loving it! Now what I would really like is an agent so I can just create and let someone else market my work.

The deadline for the Windham Art Council Show is this Sunday, May 27. For the juried show at the Vernon Community Art Center, I have to deliver my work on Friday, May 25. Keep your fingers crossed that I get a piece accepted into that show. It is always good to be accepted  by a jury.

Here is one of my newest pieces. Should it be in the upcoming shows? The really fun part here is creating the backgrounds. I can experiment with photos, layers and textures! The tulip and the butterfly are from two different photos, both taken in my yard.

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New Friends - Old Friends

Spring is flying by and I don't have much to show for the days. I have had lots of lazy enjoyment and read a ton of books - pure escapist fare. I am still not feeling like doing much. Maybe I should stop worrying about that and roll with it. Normally I try to accomplish a few things every day that I can look back on at bedtime and feel good about. Is reading a book a day enough?

 Mary Jo Putney

I have a new friend. We met at the Windham Garden Club meeting and she has already been here for coffee. We hit it off instantly. She has moved here from Virginia but is originally a Connecticut girl. JP is the outgoing type of person who hugs you when she meets you.

Moving here at this stage of my life - (being old) - has made it a real challenge to meet people. Normally one connects through one's children. My answer was to join clubs and get involved. JP is doing the same thing. The problem is that when you are the newcomer everyone else has their friendships formed and groups in place. There don't seem to be a lot of new people here in Windham.

An interesting thing about JP is she is a fellow blogger. Now I can say I am friends with a blogger like many of the rest of you. Check out JP's blog, JP-aquietcorner. She is referring to me as Mona but I told her it is okay to use my real name. (An artist has to spread her name around :)

The place where I had the most friends, Cooperstown, NY, had lots of new people in town because of  the Imogene Basset Hospital. A few of us started a Newcomers Club. From the original six, the Club grew to over thirty members. Never having lived near family, I learned how important it is to create a support group of friends. Maybe because I grew up in a small town, I love seeing people I know when I go to the store or the post office. My sister on the other hand didn't like people knowing her. She wanted to be anonymous.

Mr. B and I are blessed with having "old" friends still living in Massachusetts where we used to live. We have been friends with that couple for forty years. We knew each other when we were younger, slimmer and were new parents. C and I have gone up in clothes sizes together. Fortunately I have stayed a size behind her so she gives me her lovely hand-me-downs!

Speaking of Mr. B, he has found out I refer to him as "Mr. B" and is not happy about it. Too dull he says. I think he would prefer me to call him "Stud" in my blog.

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No oomph

In my last post I explained that I have had Shingles and can't find any enthusiasm for doing anything. Happily, I can report that I am completely over the Shingles outbreak which was in my mid-section. For the first time in three weeks I can wear blue jeans instead of loose sweat pants. But I have gotten lazy. Too used to lying around and reading and being waited on.

I do keep trying to return to my art and this work is an example. This is created from photos of leaves so I named it, yep - Abstract Leaf. The effort was such that I had to retire to my bed this afternoon with a good book, a coke and a bag of Lays potato chips. Heaven on earth!

That is where the title "No oomph" comes in. I don't have any! Everything seems to be just too much work! I had better find some and quick though. In May I have a solo show at the Willimantic Food Co-op where I am a volunteer working member once a week. Also there are two opportunities to show and sell photos coming up in the next two weeks. And they don't even have to be framed, just matted.

At the moment, two of my photos are on display in a show at the University of Connecticut Library.

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New Work - Spring Green and Yellow

Two weeks since I was last here!  I have had several minor illnesses but the last one not so minor. I have had shingles. It seems I had a relatively mild case but it definitely involves pain. And I'm not rid of it yet.

On the bright side, after not feeling creative for so long, I am now interested in working again. Today I did this piece I call  -  Spring Green and Yellow.

Saturday was the deadline for taking entries to the Digital Art Show sponsored by the Vernon Community Art Center. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so I summoned my energy and framed three pieces. I looked at the other entries and there was some great work being brought in. Wednesday is an opening reception I plan to attend.

Hopefully I will continue to feel better every day and my enthusiasm will return. Mr. B has taken excellent care of me. I had meals in bed and snacks delivered to my recliner and a sack full of library books. All I did was sleep, eat and read! For days!

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Chickens

I'm baaaaack! That is how I feel after changing my blog to diverse views. I didn't like not seeing my header. Maybe I could have customized it some more, but the feedback was, everyone liked the old look best. I felt confident in changing because I knew I could easily switch back. Not the case! I did what the instructions said to "restore former template" and it didn't work. Thank goodness I had backed up my template. I had to call in the big guns (my son-in-law) to reload the old template. By that time I was so freaked out I was afraid to click anything! As usual, the "help" option was no help.

Mr. B and I went to dinner at the house of new friends. The connection we made when we met was discussing chickens. They have chickens in the backyard; I grew up on a chicken farm; Mr. B worked with poultry for a large part of his career. So you can imagine much of the conversation was .... Chickens. We veered off into compost, and one guest told us about her red wiggler worms. They make great fertilizer, she says, for a small amount of kitchen scraps. They have to be kept between 60 and 70 degrees so that means in the laundry room, an extra bathroom or a warm basement. But don't worry, she assured us they don't smell!

Here are pictures of the backyard flock. We all went out and visited them before dinner. And we left that night with a dozen eggs!

I'm linking to Little Red House for Mosaic Monday. Check out the website for other lovely mosaics.

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Take Time Out for Life

Isn't it amazing how ideas come? I was looking at online tutorials about digital art. This is the result. There are tutorial online that teach everything! I can sit in my recliner and learn! Here I made the background and imported the clock after I cut it out of another picture. There is also a texture layer here. I learned how to put the texture on without affecting the color of my picture. The quote is my own - a variation on time to smell the roses.

What do you all think about my new format? Is it just too weird? I can restore to my old format. Just to be certain, I backed up my template before I made the change. The comment window is still here but you have to scroll down after you click on comment. Please leave feedback so I know if anyone likes this. I can't decide!

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Blue Hydrangea Montage

I'm enjoying making these montages with flowers. Hurry up spring. I want to see real flowers again. 

It is amazingly warm for March in Connecticut. The forsythia I brought into the house is in full bloom. Both my rose bushes survived the winter and have small leaves. 

This blue hydrangea is in my front yard. I hope it has even more blooms this summer.

This is the background I created to put the hydrangea on. 

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All Alone in the Night

This is a beautiful view of the earth at night from the International Space Station. This was posted March 5, 2012 on NASA's website. Check for the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Was anyone else amazed at how much electricity is used to light up the night?

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