Just playing around...

Followed a tutorial from the Photoshop Elements Techniques site for making a background "stamp" using brushes.  The tut had lots of different brushes so I just used what I have and came up with this...

#28 Colours

...or for my American friends "Colors"...!

Kim Klassen's Beyond Layers class this week featured a colour storyboard which gave me the inspiration for this image.  It was taken in our backyard - don't know the name of the flower but it was a Spring bloomer.  I adjusted the Hue/Saturation, added one of Kim's textures - Simple Things - and masked out some of the flowers to show where the colour swatches at the bottom had come from.

Earlier in the year, we had the assignment of posting an image featuring one particular colour each day - blue, green, pink, red and yellow - then on Saturday we were to post a "rainbow" one.  This is what I came up with for that - full of colour too so thought I would share it with you folks, if you haven't already seen it on my Beyond Layers page.

#27 Remember

This was a hard one for me.  Continuing last week's story, I thought I would post a photo of my sister's hula troupe from last week's recital.  They called me into the dressing room to take their picture before they went onstage - lots of jitters going on, I can tell you.  This is the best shot I got (with a little group shot photomerging...) and I put them all onto a beach on the island of Oahu that Diane (my sister - that's her, second from left with her son's girlfriend behind her) and I visited on our sentimental journey last year.

It was a difficult one because there were so many categories this shot would have fit:  Activities, Colours, Duty, Love, Maturity, Treasure, Vacation - but decided the one that fit the best was Remember as our dancing the hula again has brought back so many happy memories of our younger years in Hawaii.

#26 Eating

Oh my goodness!  Here we are at week 26 - half way through 2012...  Where is the time going?

Sorry I'm late this week but have had a nice break in Toronto with my big sister, to watch her in a hula recital.  Yes, she's taking hula lessons, well actually re-taking them.  She and I, along with the rest of our family, lived in Hawaii from 1951 to 1957 and took hula lessons practically from the day we arrived until we left.  Our grand finale was performing at Kapiolani Park and we loved it. 

Last year, as a birthday present to her, I took us back - she for the first time in 54 years - for a sentimental journey to our past.  We did everything in as big a way as we could afford and the biggest splurge was getting Super Ambassador tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  We were given our own personal guide for the whole day, front row seats at all performances as well as at the luau and the spectacular "Ha - Breath of Life" evening show.  A real treat and well worth paying extra.

At the luau, we tasted our first taro bread rolls.  Poi (pronounced as "boy") is made from the taro root and was a staple of the Hawaiian people for centuries - a starchy root that looks like a sweet potato but is slightly purple in colour.  You can see what happens when taro is baked into something like a roll.

Sitting immediately alongside the stage for the hula show that accompanied the luau, here I am about to sample my first (and last of the trip) taro roll - very much like a regular bread roll.  (Not my best side, I'll be the first to admit!!)

Oh, and BTW, the "tattoo" is a henna one (temporary) that we had done in the Fijian village.

#25 Inviting

This picture was taken some years ago, when we were living in England, in a park near where we lived.  The couple in it seem to be having the most restful afternoon and it just made me think how "inviting" a mood it invoked. 

I've just found several CDs of slides from our time in England so thought I could put one or two of them to good use here.  The only thing I did to it was to crop a tiny bit.

#24 - Outdoors

While in the Maritime provinces of Canada on holiday, a year or so ago, we decided that our favourite province was Prince Edward Island.  An island of contrasts, with beaches and lovely towns, farmland and wonderful provincial parks.  This shot was taken at Greenwich, Prince Edward Island Provincial Park, a finger of land between the Gulf of St Lawrence and St Peter's Bay, on the north coast of the island.  It was a drizzly day with very few other visitors and I liked this view of the beach as we crested dunes running the length of the shoreline.  In PSE 10, I added an Orton effect after using a Detail filter in Topaz Adjust 5.

How much more outdoors than this can you get?!

23 Excitement

Would you look at me - my last four posts have had people in them!  I'm very hesitant to shoot people (with a camera!) and especially when they see me aiming at them, then stop and pose...  In 99% of cases, that's not what I wanted.

Anyway, this week I was in town and lo and behold our main street was closed off with fire trucks, ambulances and all the peripheral vehicles that accompany them.  The firemen were gearing up in their smoke-prevention suits and then entered an apartment over one of the stores.  (There was never any smoke in evidence so I'm hoping it was just a false alarm.)  However, it did cause a bit of excitement in our sleepy little town and I think the collage of shots I got convey that feeling.  I added a "fiery" background just for added punch but as I say there was no fire, nor smoke, anywhere - thankfully!