Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration - Summer Ends

Today's daily Dose of Inspiration

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

Sorry for all the bug pictures, but when you spend a summer with two boys, you photograph a lot of bugs. Perhaps I should change the title to "Today's Daily Dose of Bugs"!

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

Today's Daily Dose of inspiration

Today's Daily Inspiration

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

Hello handful of readers! Sorry I've been MIA, but I've been trying to get the most out of the last few weeks of summer, and then I fractured my finger playing with the dog. Bad news, it's on my right hand and I'm right handed. Good news is that it's my middle finger, so I can still make stuff (though it does take a bit longer) and I can give people the finger without them even knowing it.

Next week is the last week of summer and we'll be in heavy preparations for back to school and we'll trying to squeak out at much last minute summer fun as we can. So I'll mostly be posting daily inspiration photos. I've taken tons of photos this summer and haven't posted too many, so I'll take this week to post as many as I can. Today's photos are brief summary of our summer.

Once the kiddos are back in school, I should have some time to be a bit more wordy in my posts. Until then, enjoy the photos and if any of them inspire you to create something, please send a link or photo to me so I can share it with everyone. Don't forget you can also check out my flickr groups for inspiration:

Daily Art inspiration
Inspiration Revealed
Macro 365
Nature Inspired Art
My Kid's Art

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

Well as you can see, I didn't get any of those posts I was working done yet. I'm feeling much better, but I have a lot of catching up to do in all facets of life. I figure I'll get them posted when I can. In the meantime, while I scramble around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to get caught up with life, here's a little visual inspiration. Trey had a friend over and he brought his rubber band ball. Of course I had to borrow it to take some pics. We've also started our own, but it's not as impressive just yet. Enjoy!



A little size reference:








Words that come to mind when looking at these photos:

• tension
• twisted
• tangled
• bright colors
• texture
• mess
• chaos
• determination
• perseverance
  
• growth
• stretched
• random
  

I took a cue from a previous post and I've removed the color so you can really see the texture of the ball without being distracted by the color.

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

Feeling a bit under the weather today. Out of the blue I woke up with a sore throat and my chest feels like I'm getting a cold and while my sinuses are generally stuffy, they a bit a stuffier today. Sooo, while I had a very busy weekend with lots of photos to share, and I'm working on about 5 posts, I think I'll just leave you with a photo inspiration today and rest. Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel better and have a most amazing post to share!

The hubs finally cut down our crazy 7 foot tall rose bush a couple of weeks ago (I've been trying to get him to do it for 3 years now), so we've had no roses this summer. Finally this week one branch started to blossom. I missed the roses and I'm glad they're back in a less "Taking over my backyard" kind of way.

This rose is for you! May it inspire happiness, joy and an amazing creation!


**Quick note**

I've added several new widgets to my sidebar.

The first, title "Featured Series" allows you to look at all of the postings under some of my featured series. So if you'd like to browse through all of my " Daily Inspirations Photos", you can without having to search for them or having to read through all my posts. Just trying to make it easier for you to find inspiration! You can find the widget just below Kyle's Creations on the sidebar!

I've added 2 new Craft Cult "Pocket Shop" widgets. One for each of my shops as well. I was lucky enough that they chose my shop as an example for the faux bois widget, so I thought it only fair that I mention the widget in a post. You can your own by clicking the photo example below:













I also added a map that shows what part of the world all my visitors are coming from. As I checked the stats, I happily noticed a rather large number of international visitors, so I thought it would be fun to see everyone on a map. You can click the widget to see a larger map. The only drawback is that it doesn't tell you the location of each dot. My geography isn't the best, so I would have liked that feature, but it is a free widget so I can't complain. If anyone knows of a free map widget that can do that, let me know.

It looks like there have been visitors from every continent except Antarctica! So glad to have you all visit my little blog. I'd love to do a new series about what inspires people around the globe. If you're interested, please let me know in the comments or e-mail me at blockpartypress@yahoo.com.















I hope you enjoy the new additions!

Today's Daily Inspiration

A little ice for a hot day!

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

I've always been fascinated with the way animals and especially bugs use mimicry and camouflage. I'm trying to think of a way to incorporate that in my work somehow. Any ideas?

Today's Daily Dose of Inspiration

A beautiful spider and it's incredible web.







UPDATE

Here's a quick drawing I threw together inspired by these photos. I call it "I Eat Boyfriends for Breakfast"



Feel free to share any creations you've made that have been inspired by this blog in the comments. I'd love to post my reader's creations too!

Through My Eyes - Tiny Tomatoes

I didn't have time make a garden this year, but My Mother-in-Law has a tiny container garden and these little tomatoes just caught me eye. I loved the way they were grouped together and I like the brown brick as a backdrop with punches of color from the string she used to tie them up. Hopefully I'll make it back over there to get a picture of them once they've turned red.

Through My Eyes - Football Practice

My oldest son has fallen in love with football. I'm not a huge football fan (I'm more of a basketball girl) or a fan of watching my kid get pummeled but he really wanted to do it, so being the awesome parents we are, we couldn't say no. So now 6 days a week for 2 hours we sit in a field watching football practice. In an effort to show you that you can find inspiration just about anywhere, here are some pics taken during football practice of things that inspired me!

Putt-Putt Part 2 - Be Inspired to Lomo

After I loaded up the Putt-putt pics I started thinking how old fashioned they looked, so I decided to "lomofy" (yes, I made that up) them with Dumpr's Lomo effects.

Lomography is photos taken with LOMO cameras. Lomo's are Russian cameras which make color-intensive and blurry lenses. It makes the photos darker and the colors more vivid and in my case makes them look a older. I loved how they turned out so I thought I'd share.



















You can Lomo your own photos here. You can even link to your Flickr account to make it even easier. Here are a couple of Flickr groups featuring the results of Dumpr's Lomo effect:

Dumpr Lomography
Faux Lomo

Here's my personal Faux Lomo Flickr set. Feel free to link to any faux lomo pics you create in the comments! Have fun lomofying :P