Merry go round - Photo of interest

It's the last Friday of the month, so join us on our merry go round for a quick spin.  The merry go round is where a group of 11 artists/craftwomen link together around the world and tell you a little about their art and craft, through blogging on the same topic.


This month's topic is to choose a photo that interests us - either taken personally or by someone else and explain what attracts us to it.

The photo I've chosen was emailed to me this week by a friend, Janet and to me, it symbolizes "Hope". Here's the photo:

The story that came with the photo was that in January of this year, the weather was so cold in St. Louis, Missouri that bald eagles could not access fish in the river. This was because the temperature of the water was so cold that the fish had all gone to the bottom of the river and it was too deep for the birds to catch them.  The eages were seen flying over homes, looking for food to eat.

Some local residents decided to help them out so that they would survive the cold spell and so started feeding the eagles with fish.

When they started, there were just a handful of eagles, but more and more came and enjoyed their free meal.

The photo is so full of hope for me as it wasn't long ago that the Bald Eagle was an endangered species in the US.  It was 1967 that the Bald Eagle was officially named an endangered species in the whole of the US. In 2007 it finally came off the endangered species list.   If we hadn't done something then - and continued caring, like these locals did in January, no photo like this would have been possible.

I hope you'll take the time to see what photos other members of the merry go round selected by clicking on the links below.  Next month for our merry go round we'll be using these photos as inspiration to create something.   We all live in different places around the world, so time differences may impact when we all get our blog post up.

Samantha at Vintage is for lovers - http://www.vintageisforlovers.com/
Jen at Painted Fish Studio - http://paintedfishstudio.com/
Bethany at Dirksen Dabbles - http://www.dirksendabbles.com/
Laura at Blue Terracotta -  http://blueterracotta.com/
Monika at Red2White - http://red2white.wordpress.com/
Mitsy at ArtMind - http://artmind-etcetera.blogspot.com
Kim at Vilt a la Kim - http://viltalakim.com/blog/
Sara at Crafts of Texture - http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com
Mariana at Florcita - http://florcita.eu/wordpress/
Agathe at Le Bar du Vent - http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com
Ruth at Birdland Creations - http://insidetheartisan.blogspot.com

Or else you can click on the blog hop below.  If you are a merry go round participant, please add your link if it's not already included. You can then copy the code and put it on your blog post too.

The pigeon who didn't want curly hair!

Did your mother tell you that if you didn't eat your crusts from your sandwiches, you wouldn't get curly hair?  Mine did, but it didn't work!  I still have straight hair!

I think this pigeon wants to keep his feathers straight - so is working hard at avoiding the crust! What do you think? 

Thanks Jennifer, for sending on the photo to me!!!

How to add speech bubbles to photos

If you regularly read my blog, you may have seen my photo on Monday of the love birds Humphrey and Trisha, with their little speech bubbles:

There are a variety of web applications that are free and quick and easy and give some flexibility for adding little quotes....but the one I like best is called SuperLame Word balloon engine.

Basically you pull up your photo on their website and then get a few choices to play with:

• You can use bold or regular font
• You can choose the shape of the bubble so it's like a cloud, a square, a rounded square, a "burst" or an oval
• You can choose to outline/border the bubble
• You can drag it to position it wherever you want it and whatever size you want it
• You can drag where you want the "tail" of the bubble. The shape of the tail - bubbles or point depends on the shape of your bubble

The comic balloon isn't limited to the size of your photo either - it can go beyond the borders of the photo and then the application defines new borders.


It's all very easy - takes less than a minute. You then save the photo and use it as you wish!

If you want, you can then print your photo, make stickers, put it on a tee shirt....

They also have a facebook app so you can add comments to your friend's facebook photos.

So give a try : http://www.superlame.com - and show us what you do! It's a fun, free, easy, funny app!

Using Flickr photos freely in your blog

No, the above photo isn't my latest sales plan!!! - but it is an example of a great "jewelry" photo from Flickr, by Lepiaf

I was talking to a friend of mine today about using other peoples' photos in your blog. I explained to her about the creative commons search on Flickr, and while I could explain it here - instead I'll just link you to the wonderful explanation by Skelliewag. It is great.

Skelliewag - the complete guide to finding and using incredible flickr images

You'll find lots of other information on his blog too. Definitely one to read regularly.

Previous post about Flickr