Photo du Jour - Footprints in the Sand

And a feather.  :o)

Aerial Photo

When my husband saw this picture, he said it looked like an aerial photograph of an inlet.  Actually, I was standing on the ground and took a picture of a puddle that formed as the tide was coming in.  Which do you see when you look at this image?

July 4th At the Beach

Yesterday morning I decided on an early walk at the beach. This was a new stretch of beach for me - right in the town of Atlantic Beach. I went around 7:00 a.m. to beat the heat. Lots of folks were already there, getting set up for a day at the beach.

Other people were out walking.

There was a good surf and some cool waves.

Lots of kids were already in the water.

These umbrellas were further down the beach, waiting for occupants.

A dad and his son.

My best wave picture of the day.

I enjoyed my walk, felt righteous about getting some exercise, and was back home before the holiday crowds took over the town.

Beach Art - Playing in the Sand

Here's a photo I took of a boring bit of beach grass. After applying some filters in Photoshop, I had a more colorful image:

The next two filters I used were "emboss" and "posterize." I was surprised at the amount of color that generated!

Then I moved on to a picture of sand.

I used a Photoshop filter called Fresco, and got the following:

Last Friday I had done a blog called "What's Wrong with this Picture??" and one of the comments I had made in that post was: I never know when I might need an interesting image, like maybe a metal cover that says "Water." Well, I didn't think it would be this soon! Here's the cover:

And here's how I used it:

Fresh water at the beach? Hmm....

An Art Quilt That Keeps On Giving

In 2001, I made an art quilt I named Dunescape. Dunescape is 43" x 53" in size.

I entered this quilt in our local Crystal Coast Quilters Guild annual show, and it won Viewer's Choice that year. It now hangs on the wall in our bedroom, and it's the first thing I see every morning.

In March 2008, I started two online shops at Etsy. (There are links to my shops on the right side of this page.) Paper Press contains notecards made from my artwork, including my art quilts. Dunescape is featured in one of the notecards, full-sized (without the border), and in another card that features a detail of the quilt. Since I cropped the picture of the art quilt to get the detail image, I decided to "crop" the name of the quilt too, and the name went from "Dunescape" to "Dunes." I also included Dunes in a notecard set, By the Sea, with four other beach-related images.

My second Etsy shop features my art quilts, and a wide variety of colorful ACEOs (Art Cards, Editions & Originals) and prints with images from my fiber art, paintings, and photographs. Dunes is an ACEO in that shop.

One might think that would be enough exposure for the poor quilt, but I just drafted it for a Reader Challenge at one of my favorite magazines, Cloth, Paper, Scissors. The theme for the contest is "Life's a Beach"! How could I pass that up?

For the Reader Challenge, I had to actually create a new piece of work to submit. Since there are size limits for the challenge, I decided to make a small art quilt and mount it on a painted 8"x10" gallery-wrapped canvas. I started this project by printing out Dunes onto a piece of cotton fabric, using my inkjet printer. I made a quilt sandwich and added new nubby fabrics in the sand and dunes areas. After the piece was quilted, I mounted it on the painted canvas. Then I embellished it with lace, yarn, guinea fowl feathers and reindeer moss. Here's a picture of the final project. (Click on the image to see an enlarged version.)


If you compare it to the photos above, you'll see that the main differences are in the embellishments.

Now maybe Dunescape itself can take a break and just rest on my bedroom wall for a while!