Feeling crafty

Yes! The girls were packed and waiting when I turned up on their doorstep and became quite impatient when Colin and I sat down with a coffee to chat with their mother!
Once we were on our way we called in to do a little shopping and I gave each of them three dollars to spend in the "cheap shop". It took ages to choose something! That made walking around the grocery shop far more tolerable for them! Unfortunately for me Woolworths had run out of their cheap bread so we had a second grocery stop this time at Aldi. Colin stayed in the car with the children while I went in. That way I was able to leave the car running and the air conditioning on! I gave a sigh of relief when I encountered several displays of Easter chocolates! It would have been difficult dragging the children away from them!
I did weaken at the sight of an Easter activity book for $2.99 and into the trolley two of them went!
Once we were home the girls were eager to get onto the activities.
Little baskets and models were made from the push out card shapes but when it came to the tracing I made thick card shapes from the designs and the children drew around them before cutting out the shapes from coloured copy paper.

Kayla is cutting and sticking the paper shapes she has drawn and cut out.
I was amazed at how long the children worked on these paper projects. They are quite difficult and involve a bit of curling and folding too but I only had to show them once and they were able to do it for themselves.
Here is what the girls are making.

Chantelle holds her paper daffodil for the camera. We had to stick a thin strip of firm card along the back of the stem because the flower was a bit heavy for it. The circle of paper is enough to make the daffodil stand upright.
Going to bed is not easy! It is half an hour since they were tucked in and goodnights were said and they are still keeping each other awake! They don't normally share a room but when away from home they are happier together! But for the fights over the bed clothes! I will go and settle them. They have another exciting day ahead of them for tomorrow.
AJ

Playing with a free program

I am an avid reader of a blog called Digital Photography School and thanks to a link provided by one of the respondents to an article I downloaded a free photo editing program called Photoscape. What a find! There are so many useful little features in this program that most people would be able to edit their photos using this program alone! It can colour correct, light correct and give some super effects too.
I am going to show a few things that can be done with this program.

This is a photo that has not been manipulated. Now lets see what can be done with a few quick clicks.

How about a reflection? Admitedly the reflection happens at the very bottom of the picture - but a bit of cropping helps the effect! (I cropped just at the trainer wheel)

This is a fun pic - this is another filter called Coloured pencil and it gives an excellent coloured drawing. If you wanted this to be just a graphite - black and white - drawing you would only need to tell the program to remove the colour and "bingo"!

Finally with the bike wheel, an effect that is called "newsprint" - the pictures in a newspaper are made up of dots. to this has been added a black inner line around the edge and a coloured border edge - white.
Now for a bit of fun with a picture of pelicans.

Not too much has been done with this photo that is clear (other than the "call-outs") but white balance and levels have been used that made a good difference to a dull picture.
After that text was added - "The Chorus line" - and I was able to move it and turn it to put it where I wanted it.
Next I chose to put a couple of "call-outs" and there were so many different shapes to chose from that I took a while to find two that I would stay with!
Next I rounded the corners and decided that I had done enough to one photo! Its easy to go too far!
I do recommend you try this fun program - it comes with links back to the video tutorials so you will never be stuck for ideas of what to do with your photos.
Have fun - I know I will!
AJ