8th Bead Soup Blog Party Coming to a Computer near you!

My greatest challenge yet!

New Date for BSBP 8: May 10, 2014

This year my Bead Soup partner is Bev Breisinger of Country Frog Creations. She lives in the Pittsburgh area, so she was inspired to send me a little something in her team colors. 

Actually, clicking around the Web a bit, I found that not only the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, but the Steelers, and the Penguins have yellow and black as team colors. 

Oh, not those cuties, here is what she sent:

You do see the similarities, though, right!

Stay tuned, and you will be amazed by the creativity that this Blog Hop, Sponsored by Lori Anderson of Pretty Things brings out in us!

Focus on: Moments - Evening

Fish Fry Night. 

This was what I focused on this evening. Fish fry night, using fish caught and frozen last summer. It takes more than a moment, and we don't do it often, but well, Mmmm. 

Fish bits ready to flour, batter, and fry. 

Fish ready to fry, and the last of the batter. 

Fresh cut potatoes.

Mmmmm fries.

 

Fried fish.

Ready to eat. 

And, Done.

Let's see what others did with this Focus on Life prompt. I'm done. 

An InLinkz Link-up

JKD Seventh Jewelry Do Over Challenge Reveal.

Drum Roll Please!

Jeannie Dukic is a talented artist who has a seemingly never-ending supply of older jewelry pieces that she designed years ago, and never found a market for. She sends them to her Challenge participants, and we transform them.

Here is what I received from Jeannie:

It's a sweet little charm necklace, with two charms made into dangles, but not attached to anything. The pearls are a peach color (hard to capture in a photo) and the charms, and the spacers are silver. Jeannie suggested that we include an art bead or beads in our design, but I was just not feeling that. Because what I saw when I looked at those components was a charm bracelet - but not an ordinary one. 

I used memory wire, and added some royal blue dyed shell beads and it practically made its self. I loved the two long spacer beads as ends on the new bracelet. 

The only part I did not use, because I just didn't need it, was the clasp. I like the way it turns into a sort of faux stack of bracelets. The dark blue of the shell beads really compliments the glass pearls, don't you think? 

A variation on the "Loaded Charm Bracelet."

Here are the other participants, have fun hopping!! 

Jeannie K Dukic

Dagi

Judy Campbell

Veralynne Malone

Christine Murrow

Shai Williams

Lola Surwillo

Christina Hickman

Katrina Taylor

Becky Pancake

Roxanne Mendoza

Charlene Jacka

Inge von Roos

Mary Govaars

Penny Houghton

Beti Horvath

Ginger Davis-Allman

Molly Alexander

Linda Britt

Focus on Life: Moments - Best Captured in Black & White

Form and Feeling take Center Stage

This week, our prompt from Sally Russick for April's Moments theme, was to find a moment best captured in black and white. 

I knew right away I wanted to catch the newly opened daffodils as they recovered from being covered in ice the night before. Kind of poignant to see them bowing down.

I liked how important the light becomes. 

I then chose a vase that has been kicking around in my garden...looking much older than its actual age. 

Abuse, not age!

And then this old galvanized bucket, just because it looks cool.

Nice geometric effect on the bottom. 

 Looking forward to what others have done.

An InLinkz Link-up

Focus on Life:Moment of Focus

Exploring a Shallow Depth of Field.

When Sally Russick set our April Moment of Focus photo prompt, a chance to explore using our cameras to capture a picture with shallow depth of field, I warmed to the task of doing something a bit more technical with my camera, which has manual as well as automatic settings. I read Sally's hints, I even read my camera

 manual. I was set.

But, as with other times that I have tried to "go manual" with the camera's settings,   I found that what that camera is best at is doing things on automatic. With an infinite depth of field. Above is the closest I could come with some of the options on the camera.  So I got going in the Picmonkey editing site, and came up with these reasonable facsimiles of altered depth of field. Sally made a video about using Pixlr's photo editing to blur the background, but my computer does not seem to like to play those videos. And frankly, using Pixlr is beyond my capabilities. 

Focal Pixelate

Spotlight

Zoom Blur

Maybe some day I will get the hang of using depth of field to improve my photography. I kind of like that last one. And did you notice what the subject is? Daffodil buds! Spring!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Focus on Life: Moments - Morning

Here we are on an April morning. 

When I found out that this week's photo prompt was Morning, to start off our April theme of Moments, I tried to think of some different photos from the ones I usually take. You see, most of my casual photos are taken in the morning, while taking my morning walk. I can't take a camera or other picture-taking device into work,  so early morning workplace was out, and the weather has not been ideal, so recording the glory of spring was out too. 

So here is my selfie. You get to see my bed head. This is me early in the morning. Yikes!

Typical morning activities are walking with Beebop, and her blurry friend, Pippin, and picking up the newspaper and yesterday's mail. The animals don't care what I look like. I'm usually a bit more put together by the time I leave for work. 

Let's see what Morning Moments everyone has documented.

An InLinkz Link-up