Finally got my act together.....

..... and finished my digital picture course. It was an online university course which required a lot of discipline to do the lessons and tasks, something I am clearly lacking as I finished a year late!

For my final assignment I wanted to do a not-your-run-of-the-mill portrait series. So I turned A into Thumbelina and created this pic of her on a bell pepper (ecologically grown by me I may add!). I also did a pic of her sitting on a wooden spoon and inside a coke bottle. About 10 hours of photoshopping went into these pics........

The First Frost

Woke up October 30 to a gorgeous sprinking of frost. My liitle hortensia with its faded blooms got a frosting.

Gotland grunge

In late summer 2008, we took a trip to the Swedish island of Gotland. This photographic memory is my attempt at a grungy pic, digitally messed with in Photoshop CS3. It was taken on Fårö, a tiny island just north of Gotland.

Close up and personal

After deciding to put some effort into developing my photography for my Joony Etsy store, I ordered some screw on macro lenses for my beloved camera. I was a little dubious as to how they would work, but have been pleasantly surprised by the result. The detail of these little earrings, cocoa melon beads on copper shows up nicely.

It's been a while.....

....... since my last blog post, but I've been busy busy busy. Being creative. These are some of my efforts which I hope to sell on Etsy.com under my shop name "joony".

Spike the hedgehog

Heard that hedgehogs are having a hard time finding food in the heatwave, so decided to do a good deed and put out some water and dried cat food for our local neighbourhood hedgehog, Spike. He seemed to appreciate it and let me get a quick photo.

Virtual card

Birthday card courtesy of Gav. Look at the greyscale pic first.

21 again....

Celebrated my birthday Friday. This is us shortly before gorging on the white choccy cake. Thanks for the greetings and prezzies folks!

A horse named despair

I like to browse the photo-sharing site Flickr now and again to see what others are snapping. This picture "A horse named despair" by cafe.noir particularly caught my eye.

Tea

Tea is becoming trendy. My personal fave of the minute is a chai latte and now that we have a Wayne's Coffee shop opening in Jönköping on May 23rd my tea tipple is going to be a lot more accessible. Otherwise the week has been overshadowed by a horrid cold. Yogi's Cinnamon Spice tea, bought at the health store has made life a little bearable as it's so spicy that it blasts the airways free for half an hour or so. They also put little quotes on the tea-tags like "Be the best person you can today" and "Happiness is taking things as they are" for those who are into philosophical ramblings.

Glass

Well, it's been a busy week I have to say. There was a
higher than average number of unmotivating lectures, some of which were the mental equivalent of watching paint dry. But Thursday evenings are often the highlight of the week, my chance to be creative. I'm working with glass just now, making glass pendants in the hope of flogging them for a bit of money. The incentive for this is that one of my classmates revealed that she had earned 8000 kr (about £600) by selling her glass jewellery from the last course. Not a bad profit when you only pay £45 for materials. So we'll give it a shot. My pendants are being fused as I write now, so pics are pending. Here's an idea of what fused glass jewellery can look like. These were made by a glass artist called Alicia MacInnes http://www.aliciamacinnes.co.uk/ and the photo is from her website.

Can a banana save the day?

Being a hard-up student, I eek out a meagre existence through several part-time jobs. One of these is working as a community home-help for the elderly, something I usually enjoy quite a lot. Yesterday, agreed to work an extra shift (found out after that I'll be paid double time as it was a bank holiday in Sweden yesterday - Whitsun Eve - yay!) To be honest, the downside of the job reared its ugly head, when some of the old folks came down with a bout sickness and diarrhoea. I'll say no more. But the day ended on a positive note when A-G, one of our "patients" gave me a banana for helping her down to the social activity in the afternoon. A sweet touch I think....

Hairy backsides

No, I don't have one. Not yet anyway. Unfortunately, when the cushions come out for my furniture on the deck, Daphne seems to think their purpose is to make her life just a little more comfortable.

I "heart" May....

Not only because it's the month of my birthday ;) Everything starts to waken to life, including me, and it's lovely to know that the entire summer stretches ahead. Took this pic a couple of weeks ago, end of Aprilish.

My very first blog post - the excitement!

The bright idea to start a blog came to me after spending 2 hours breathing in Cuprinol wood stainer fumes while oiling in the floor of my deck. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We'll see if it remains a good idea when the high wears off. Anyway, I was feeling very smug after finishing the job by 10.30 this morning and feel that this now gives me the right to laze in front of the computer screen for an hour.