Easter Collages for Mosaic Monday and Ruby Tuesday

It’s been an indoors Easter weekend! So playing a little with my decorations and various new editing features in Picasa…

Linking to Mosaic Monday and Ruby Tuesday 2

Friday My Town – Music

▲ Whether summer or winter, the best place to go in search of free outdoors concerts in my town would be the Town Square. ▼

Not the only place, though!

▲ National Day celebration (6 June) in the Town Park ▲

▲ Folk music on key fiddles and accordion ▲

▲ Midsummer celebration in the Open Air Museum Park▲

▲ Marching band on their way to an Autumn Festival▲

▲ Summer evening concert in a residential area park ▲

▲ Outdoors Lucia (St Lucy) concert in the same park (December) ▲

 

All photos © DawnTreader (2009-2011)

 

Friday My Town Shoot Out – Music

Click on the image to find out more!

Mosaic Monday: Frosty

Had to go back to October in my photo archives to find some photos with frosty colour. The past weekend has been all storm and rain.

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Reflection Patchwork

I’m still fascinated by those window reflections of water reflections
of trees and sky… (compare last week’s Watery Wednesday).
I kept playing with them in Picasa: cropping, turning
upside-down, putting together again…

♥ ♥ ♥

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House

Mosaic Monday: Colourful October

No link up yet for Mosaic Monday at Mary’s Little Red House but I’ll go ahead and post mine anyway. All the photos in this collage from our Town Park on 25 October. Magpie in the middle, in case the bird is not familiar to everyone.

The trees are some sort of Japanese cherry blossom. Decorative both in the spring and in the autumn. The leaves covering the trunks are from a different plant climbing up the trees; looks funny this time of year.

Mosaic Monday: Frozen Beauty

For more Monday Mosaics, visit Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Web

Linked to Mosaic Monday

Ruby Tuesday: Red Water Lily

Red water lily collage for Ruby Tuesday

Mosaic Monday: Dawn

I’m rarely up at dawn – which is really early here this time of year – but one night I happened to be out of bed just before 4 a.m.; only half awake, but as I glanced out of the window, these colours met my eye; and I grabbed the camera that was sitting on my kitchen table…

One of the four photos in this collage was ‘mirrored’ in Paint Shop to get a better balance in the total picture.

But even without such tricks, it is exciting to zoom in silhouettes against an early morning sky… Looking at the same views in the daylight, these photos still seem to half belong to a “dreamland” existing only in that magic moment when I took them!

/Monica/

~ ~ ~

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Wood Anemone

The Wood Anemone (Anemone Nemorosa) is probably more closely associated with Swedish spring than any other wild flower.

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Coming Out

Last week was the Grand Première of spring flowers being planted in the parks and cemeteries. It’s usually the pansies that are the first to come out… Looking a little shy and confused the first few days, wondering what happened to them… But such a welcome sight!

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Spring Flowers

Scilla, Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), Crocus and Snowdrops (Galanthus).
All found on my Sunday walk. What a joy to see Nature spring back to life!

For more Monday Mosaics, visit Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Fashion Show

See more photos from the Fashion Show at Beyond the Lone Islands.
The clothes are from the local shops and the models were all local amateurs doing this for the chance to be a fashion model for a day.

For more Monday Mosaics, visit Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Playing With Shapes

Any idea what you’re looking at?
The collage consists of three overlapping vertical pictures,
all different angles of the building below:

I think I showed one photo on my other blog a few weeks ago,
but last week for the first time I walked up close to the whole building.
It is the latest addition to modern architecture in our town, built in
2010 to serve as head office for a fast-growing fashion company.

Now I’m taking liberties and playing around with it,
twisting it beyond what the architects had in mind!

Some people complain that this building is spoiling the view
of the rest of the town, when you approach it by motorway.

Well, what would I know…
I usually approach from under the motorway!

… … …

For more Monday Mosaics, go to Mary’s Little Red House

Friday My Town – St Patrick’s Day

We do not celebrate St Patrick’s Day in Sweden. Actually I have to confess that I was not aware until recently that it was celebrated anywhere but in Ireland!

So what can I bring to the table? Clover is a common plant here too in the summers – both white and red. I’m not sure if our white clover would be considered identical with the Irish shamrock or not. In my own photo archives I only managed to find the red variety.

I know that the legend says St Patrick made use of the three-leaved shamrock to teach the Irish about the Holy Trinity. Here we consider it lucky if we happen to find a rare four-leaf clover among the three-leaved ones. Now this time of year it’s hard enough to even find a bit of green at all… But one day I happened to come upon a four-winged green butterfly sitting on the ground. Made of plastic, but even so… Surely that must be lucky! Well, perhaps not for whoever dropped it, I suppose… But for me it served as a sort of reminder that eventually spring will come…

Indoors I have an Oxalis plant which is also called Purple Shamrock.
I also have this nice jar with a pattern of red clover:

“May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,
The foresight to know where you are going,
And the insight to know when you have gone too far.”

(An Irish Blessing)

♣ ♣ ♣

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

♣ ♣ ♣

Friday My Town Shoot Out

Mosaic Monday: Black And Light

…More art from the Textile Museum’s collections…

Black and White, Shadows and Light

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House

Mosaic Monday: Green Glass

Glassware from an exhibition of 60’s/70’s Swedish Design at our Textile Museum. More pictures from the Museum can be seen at my other blog, Beyond the Lone Islands. I think these glass objects (or some of them) were designed by Erik Höglund (1932-1998).

 

When I got home from the exhibition, I took out one of my own green glass plates and held it up against the light. If memory doesn’t fail me, I bought those (I have eight of them) on a holiday trip in 1977, at one of the famous Swedish glassworks Kosta or Boda (nowadays merged into Kosta Boda). Erik Höglund worked at Boda 1953-1973. I don’t suppose my plates are his design… but maybe influenced by his ideas?

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Kaleidoscope Collage ♥ Valentine’s Day

Heartily tired of winter, I sat down one day to play with some colourful flower pictures from last summer and the Kaleidoscope in Paint Shop Pro. It’s really surprising how they turn out sometimes. So let’s try a little guessing game, shall we?

A. In the collage above, you have five kaleidoscope pictures, and four original pictures. Can you pair them together and guess for which one the original is missing?

B. Can you guess what kind of flower was the original for the Valentine’s greeting below? 

1 → 7  ♥  2 → 8  ♥  4 → 6  ♥  9 → 3

And here’s the original to the middle picture No 5:

And the original for the Valentine’s Day Kaleidoscope:

A Geranium from my balcony last summer!

♥ ♥ ♥

For more Monday Mosaics, visit Mary’s Little Red House