a virtual rest

Anyone who's ever followed any of my blogs will know that I'm not the most consistent of bloggers, with frequent big gaps in my posting regularity. But the alert amongst you may have realised that it's been unusually long since my last post in mid-February.
There's no one single reason for this. Maybe it's just a touch of virtual fatigue - I simply can't be faffed with all the blogging and tweeting and flickring and pinteresting, or following this blog or that blog and leaving comments everywhere, or editing photos and uploading for a post which always takes an age. Maybe I'm just tired of all this virtual etiquette that one seems to have to follow along with simply to get noticed and so my Etsy shop will thrive. Maybe I simply don't have time, now that Leo, my nearly two-year-old son needs that much more attention each day and I just want to make the most of these precious moments. Or maybe it's because there is too much reality to deal with here in Greece right now, when pensioners are killing themselves in a country where you simply don't do that and my husband doesn't know if he'll have a job three months down the line... (actually there is a big change coming up, but more of that in time)
It's a bit of all of the above, but right now I prefer to spend my time in the real world and when time allows to do nothing more than a relaxing bit of knitting or crochet which I've recently found a renewed passion for.
In time, I hope to be back with something fresh and new to share with you, and to reacquaint myself with my lovely circle of virtual buddies - who are among the most talented and inspiring people I know (you know who you are girls) but until I have more time on my hands to be able to dedicate to a project properly I'll be limiting myself to a few posts on Facebook and a few pins on Pinterest.
Hope to see you later in the year!

the graphics fairy

The Graphics Fairy is an amazing and seemingly endless resource of around 2,500 FREE clip art images and vintage printables, to use for craft projects, collage, scrapbooking etc! Karen, the graphics fairy herself, has generously been adding vintage image downloads every day since 2007! Above you can see a few of the images that I selected to use for this digital collage I created in Photoshop called 'Let Them Eat Cake'. Watch the animation to see how it develops...

Stage 1 First I place the image of Marie Antoinette, cropped from it's original frame, slightly off-centre.

Stage 2 I lightened the image using the curves function and start placing a few cropped images of flowers.

Stage 3 More flowers... until I feel her 'wig' is just at the right ridiculous height!

Stage 4 Some more flowers and then I put a bird on it... of course!

Stage 5 I finish off embellishing Ms Antoinette's wig, then I give her a hand holding a cup of french 'chocolat'. The swirl of steam is a glyph from Parfumerie Script Ornaments!

Stage 6 I need to give her a background. I've used the back of an old airmail envelope, from another amazing image resource site, Fuzzimo. So lucky to have found one with the red, white and blue stripes, for that extra bit of Frenchiness. The grid paper and masking tape strips are also from Fuzzimo. (ignore the scissors outline - that wasn't meant to show up yet :)

Stage 7 I build up the background layers for a bit of depth. I add a strip of (my own) pattern behind the masking tape, a vintage ticket (from my lovely friend Dawn's fantastic ticket collection) and some faded astrology symbols from my own brush collection.

Stage 8 A bit more pimping up of the background - I add some larger scrolls from the Parfumerie Script Ornaments font, some circle shapes for balance and some nice blood stains - we know where this little lady ends up!

Stage 9 She's nearing the chopping block now, so let's give the executioner a helping hand by telling him where to cut! Another bird here, a couple of butterflies there... nearly finished. Oh, and as if the hair isn't quite extreme enough, let's stick a cake on top and the Eiffel Tower sticking out at the side!

Stage 10 Marie's blindfolded and rouged, ready for the guillotine! Finally, I add a lovely flower and scroll motif with the words 'Let Them Eat Cake'. She really took the biscuit!

If there are any links I have not provided for images from The Graphics Fairy, that's because I couldn't find them again (or couldn't spend the time looking for them again - this blog post alone has taken nearly as long to complete as the collage itself!). And that is really my one and only tiny criticism of the site. The Graphics Fairy is basically a blog and truthfully the format just cannot handle the amount of stuff on there! It's very slow to load and searching is a bit of an effort, although Karen's recently added a basic search function to help matters. But we are talking about a huge one-woman effort here and I know how difficult and costly a dedicated website would be to set up! I just hope one day this becomes a reality, but until then set some time aside to have a good root around over there!

a feast for the eyes

Sigh... this has been my first post in a loooooooooong while! I simply don't seem to have time! A poor excuse I know, but Leo is more demanding than ever (mostly in a good way) but his hour in the park has now turned into two hours in the park, and he rarely lets me just sit at the computer for long before he's tugging at my leg begging to sit on my lap or wanting me to play with him. I get a break in the afternoon while he's napping, but by the time I've had my lunch, answered a few emails and done a scant bit of housework he's awake again and so starts the evening round. I'm not complaining - far from it, I cherish every moment with him - but it does mean that blogging has to take a back seat for a while.
Anyhoo... I just couldn't not post about the most gorgeous food photography I discovered this morning via a link from Creature Comforts. I am neither a foodie nor a vegetarian, but there is something so 'nourishing' for the soul to be found in great food styling. Pure Vegetarian is a beautiful blog featuring recipes from Lakshmi Wennäkoski-Bielicki, a lady with a very spiritual attitude towards food, and a special talent for photographing it. Just feast your eyes on these...

[ ALL IMAGES Lakshmi Wennäkoski-Bielicki ] 

Wonderful eh! Bet that's got your mouth watering! You can find a lot more inspiring images over on Lakshmi's blog and the above recipes by clicking on the relevant image.

secretly in love

Very happy to be part of this pretty treasury today...

[ CLICK IMAGE FOR LINKS ]