inspiration photos

April 22, 2019 zedster66 Comments 6 comments

The photos of the felt piece I was going to blog about today didn’t turn out, so I thought I’d share some photos I took recently for inspiration. I was up early enough to enjoy some morning sunshine in the back garden, so took lots of photos of anything which caught my attention. The first thing was these little wild geranium flowers which grow everywhere in Spring:

They look nice, but they are really invasive and have a pretty unpleasant smell. I know lots of people hate Dandelions, but I’ve always really liked them. I had no idea the centres looked like this until I got a camera with Supermacro settings:

The next thing was this little glass cabochon. I used it as a weight on a stencil a few weeks ago and it got flecks of spray paint on it:

I’m not sure what this plant is or even if it’s something I bought or something which found its own way here, but it’s another thing whose detail is lost (to me, anyway!) without the Supermacro camera setting:

I’ve taken photos like this before, and I’m pretty sure I’ve shared them on here. This is a leaf from a teasel plant. I love the way it looks when it starts to die/decay:

I love the texture of Sage leaves, especially when they are young:

I’m not sure what is clinging to the ‘hairs’, but here’s a cropped close up:

If any botanists know, please enlighten me! The cat who has adopted us joined me in the garden, she enjoyed rolling around in the dust. She has nice patterns and markings anyway, but the sun seemed to make them more obvious. Even though this is really soft, it reminds me of a hedgehog:

I took this photo because I really like the soft hair behind her ears, but when I looked closer at the photo, I noticed that on just one small part of her head she has lots of different types of hair/hairs:

I only took this photo because I think the cat’s chin is really cute:

But when I looked closer, the fur seemed to be in a kind of pattern, kind of like the pattern of Sunflower seeds or a Dandelion seed-head. I’m not imagining it, am I?

I took these last photos a few weeks ago at the park near the well being centre. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve shared photos of these trees here too, they’re at the entrance and always make me want to photograph them. I thought it was interesting the way the clouds matched up with the trees.

This tree has a really unusual trunk, it seems really fibrous:

There’s a tree behind it which has really interesting seed pods, at least that’s what I think they are! I thought this might be something which Ruth might find inspiration in:

I don’t often sit down and plan a project directly from the inspiration photos I take, but I’m pretty sure the textures, colours and patterns influence my work anyway. Do you take or collect inspiration photos? What do you do with them? Please feel free to use any of these photos for direct or indirect inspiration.

Inspiration

September 2, 2018 zedster66 Comments 9 comments

I was running out of ideas for a blog post since I haven’t had a chance to make or do anything this week, and Ruth suggested an Inspiration post. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, but actually had a couple of dry and even briefly sunny days so I went out in the garden to get some inspiration. I was hoping for a variety of colours and textures, but after a 3 1/2 month long heatwave, brown is the dominant colour in the garden! The first thing which caught my eye was a large teasel plant. The leaves at the base were really interesting:

This one has a spider on it too:

I got a photo of a whole seed head:

And a close up of the spiky edge:

One plant which does have some nice new growth is a large sedum I have. I rescued this from a house at the end of the street about 20 years ago when the previous owners moved out!

This has more interesting colours, the whole top will flower then turn deep red:

I don’t even remember this Centaurea (cornflower) flowering, but it has a really interesting seed-head. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it reminds me of owl feathers

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This is a common ‘weed’ in the UK, a Plantain (plantago). The little seeds look like oats:

I don’t know if you remember Ruth’s post about Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium) recently, but I had quite a few really big ones in my garden, we call them Rosebay Willowherb here. Though I’ve just been looking it up on Wikipedia, and I might have actually had a related plant, the Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum). Either way, both plants have really great seed pods, and seeds, here are some from mine:

The last plant I managed to get some nice photos of is my small Sage shrub. It has really texturey leaves, quite hairy too when they’re young, and they turn interesting colours if they die too: