Birds of a feather came to camp

We celebrated Easter a bit different this year.

Instead of a formal dinner with ham and sides we took the RV

over to Nokomis intercoastal and "camped."

We had cowboy coffee, wine, chips and dips and

shrimp on the barbee.......with some delish sides.

And some feathered friends flocked in for a visit.

 My BIL & SIL also brought their bird book and binoculars.

I had my Tamron 18-275 lens in case you care.

The bird book sort of helped as you will see - though it

wasn't above having a great debate.

Which was fun.

The color of bills, feet, crowns and eyes are very important

in the determination of the bird.

A great blue heron - not quite seeing the blue though.

 The hawks had some drama going on which was

interesting to watch.

Male and female protecting the nest from an evil seagull.

 Crisis averted. 

Nest was secured.

(above waaaay in the back were some pelicans circling).

 This plucky little bird is a yellow crowned night heron.

 Not quite seeing the yellow.

And does not the photo below look fake??

I can totally assure its not and I'm doing a happy dance

with this shot.

And last but not least a great egret.

Couple of greats going on - and I have to admit it was great

that they came so close as I never

moved from my chair to get this shoots.

I know.

This guy was on the hunt - and he was totally focused.

 Very very focused.....

and then

ker-splash

Did he get the fish or not????

Not.

But a fun shot all the same.

Found a collage template maker

Of course its been out there so long its free now and

while it has a variety - some of what I'm not really looking for,

 there are some collages that I can use and below is one of them.

It is Picture Collage Maker 3 and it works on Macs.

It really wasn't too bad on the learning curve - I had a couple of moments

but I worked them out. It doesn't like changes and after you make

a change manual sizing is required. 

And we all know how well I do lining things up.

 Since it was an 8x10 collage I whacked the excess down and adhered it

to an 8.5x11 Recollections cardstock.

Black.

Mostly because black makes the photos pop.

 I adhered it more to the left side to leave more room on the right

for embellishment clusters and of course

the way the photos came out - there was also room on the photo

to embellish.

Broke out my Paper Issues Swag Bag goodies and pulled

a bunch from there. They fit perfectly. 

Love how it looks and I love getting alot of pix on one page.

Creatively.

The way they landed allowed for some embellies.

And journaling.

And a title - which of course is a snowboard term.

The crew - its peeps you snowboard with - and that's my crew.

And doesn't that 5 up there make you swoon.

Oh and when you save - save as a jpg NOT a pdf.

Why I went there I dont' know but it was an easy fix.

Pastel watercolor palette.

And there it is - watercolors on watercolor paper.

Although in full disclosure - the yellow is some yellow from

the excess I squirted out when I was doing my bible

journaling page.

I muted it a tad with some gesso.

 Not knowing what to do with it I took some inspiration from

Ashli over at Purple Mailbox and whacked some up into pieces.

I did have to ponder it some on where to go from there.

 I lined the strips up and on the square ones I punched out

a butterfly and flower and used the positive and negative space.

I also decided to highlight some areas with watercolor because Ashli made 

it look really easy. And I can honestly say - her easy is very deceiving.

I tried the coral and found it looked welll....

dumb.

So I decided grey - Ashli highlights quite a using a soft grey.

Well my grey was anything but soft.

And wasn't I baffled.

 Therefore I got a mess going on and there's really no going back since

I used so much water the paper was tearing and I needed an emergency fix.

Therefore, I punched more flowers and glued them over the
rips and tears and

that sort of worked, I also decided that some

gelatoes were needed and I grabbed my onion bag for some texture.

WELL...the gelato picked up the excess from the onion bag

and that lovely teal I was using turned dark - because that's what happens

when you don't clean your onion bag.

It was exciting that the texture hid the rips and tears quite well.

 I do have to admit the darker version works and I totally embraced it,

because the alternative was to start all over again.

 I did splatter the watercolors around the page and that helped

hide some of the other sins going on.

 Tossing in some sequins helped hide quite a few sins

by putting them out there so to speak.

And it all came together rather nicely. There's a piece of

light pink toile behind the bow that's casting all sorts of shadows.

It perfectly reflects Annie's sturdy but dainty little legs doing ballerina moves.

And those tiny feet - ya just want to bite them.

Love how it turned out - I have more of that pastel paper leftover

so I'll need to think of more ways to use it.
I also have a huge pack of watercolor paper ready to go.

I used recollections 8.5x11 cardstock with some punches,
studio calico alphas and sequins

and gelato and watercolors.

Testing enamel paint in my journaling bible

And...meh...

I had two colors of Studio Calico Color Theory.

Yellow and blue and mixing them together

made a sort of green.

I seriously need to work on my smearing technique.

You'll notice two pages....well.....that was

a result of squirting out a little too much of the paint.

Did I mention they come in a tube.

I also threw in some grey because there really isn't enough going on.

I added some gesso to tone it down a bit and 

it didn't quite work out - it was so different in my head.

2 Cor 12:15

If I love you more, would you love me less.

And it appears I can't find the notes that drove me to this saying

for this verse. This refers to more of a parenting love.....

However, it can all be done to His Glory - so I shall not be

annoyed that I got this wrong.

There must be a message in here somewhere - because I

thought I was being careful with notes and everything so maybe.....
it was just something I needed to know.

I've been getting my snow on

and its especially odd since I live in a subtropical area.

But the grands don't and aren't

they all having a blast outside.

I remember when I was a kid - it was fun.

Sortof.

There were times it was tough to move when

dressed like the Michelin tire man.

For some odd reason I ended up with a snowflake die 

and its been getting a work out.

Fancy that.

Of course why not then have a flurry of flakes.

Flurry of flakes - say that 3x's fast :)

I flung the sequins around because I wanted them to have that flung look

with the flurry look so

I glued each and every one down.

One.by.one.

Thought of mod podge way later.

The Studio Calico word stamp that came in

last month's kit - that has also been getting a workout - its hard

to read though so basically you have to stamp around

to find the word you want.

Oh look, more flung and flurried snowflakes and sequins.

And the Shimelle stamp, I still need to learn how to use that one.

 A sweet little cluster off to the side.

With some mists.

 Added the February card from my Paper Issues Swag bag.

Love those little bags.

A variety of scrap paper that was laying around in my box

and I have no idea the mfg became the mats.

Another page that has snow in the title.
So now I'm going to have to find another word for snow.

Around our camp at Long Key State park

The infamous and most photographed tree on/in the water that we did

not camp by this time.

 Some sponge that was washed up on shore.

 Some friends dropped in and hung around.

 These friends liked the water better.

 They grow wild everywhere.

 Sunset.

We had a lovely time.

Did some bike riding and relaxing.

Fresh fish and shrimp on the barbee.

It was a bit nippy at night - which meant we could keep 

the windows open and lovely sunny days with a cool breeze.

And as mentioned before - unplugged.

All photos taken from the lounge chair in camp.

Doesn't get any better than that.

A couple of cards for Easter

Made these little cards for the grands and sent them little packages with

stickers and paints.
You can never have too many stickers.

I'm sure the parents will be thrilled - at least
it wasn't noise making stuff.
I need to note that for the future though.

This is really old Jillybean Soup papers and I fussy cut the peeps out
and matched the assorted number of peeps to kidlets.

I made the cards alike because I'm creative that way
and its really the only Easter papers I have.

I seriously need to work on my card making skills
why they baffle me - I don't know.