Calvinball- SB layout share

close-up of chipboard embellishment

Whenever I scrap, even if I get the page started fairly easily, there's usually some detail or part of the page that just seems to take forever to get done. If there's buttons on the page, I need to put thread in the holes; if there's sequins on the page, it takes me forever to decide just where to put them-- things like that. I always seem to think of something that takes extra-long to do, or is extra-detailed.

As an example: the idea for this layout came together really quickly; I saw a layout in the Calvinball gallery here, and knew I wanted to scraplift the page design. I even found the photos I wanted to use and chose the papers I wanted fairly quickly. Then, I had to decide how to embellish the page. I settled on chipboard swirls- like the one you see above. Only problem was, the chipboard swirls I had were silver and glittery. And that wouldn't work on my page, at all!

And what did I do? I tried to find something else in my stash of stuff that would work, but once I get fixated on something like that, nothing else looks quite 'right' to me. In the end, it took me a couple hours altogether, but: the chipboard swirls were gessoed, painted brown, then sponged with antiquing gel, all to make them fit with the vintage look of the papers I chose. 

So, here's the final completed page (click to enlarge):

About an hour for most of the page; plus about another hour all together for the chipboard. But the chipboard swirls look perfect! (well, now, they do, anyway-- lol!)

This page showcases one photo (2 copies) of a Costa's hummingbird that I took a couple weeks ago when I was hiking. I happened to see this hummingbird landing on 'his' tree-- hummingbirds pick a vantage point to land on and sort of 'survey' their territory-- so I set up shop right next to this shrub to see if I could get any decent photos of him. I managed to get a few 'okay' shots, but nothing too spectacular. An older gentleman saw what I was doing and waited for me to finish so he could get a few shots of him, too. He said he photographs hummingbirds at the Botanical Gardens and can sometimes take two or three hundred photos and only get maybe ten really good ones out of the whole bunch. So now, I don't feel quite so bad! 

 For this page, I printed the photo in color then turned it to sepia-toned and printed it again. The sepia photo shows a bit more detail of his feathers and how many (tiny, tiny, tiny) feathers he actually has-- which is crazy, considering these birds only weigh 2-3 grams total!! With a wingspan over 4 inches and a total length of 3.5 inches, they're practically all feathers! 

I'll post a few of the better photos I got of him in my next post; meanwhile, you can click HERE to see what a Costa's Hummingbird looks like close up. 

our prospective new neighbors are a hoot!! (lol!!)

So in the past few weeks we've heard some new, rather noisy neighbors around our house. They're not around very much; it seems like they're most active in the late afternoon / early evening time-frame, but I've also heard them a number of times very early in the morning-- when it's still dark out, even. I haven't complained about them, though, because really, they're more fascinating than annoying- at least to me, anyway. They sit in the oddest places, too-- we've seen them on the roof of our house, even! I have taken some photos of them, too, when I've been able to catch them in the act-- they stared, but didn't seem to mind it too much.

About now, you're probably wondering why I would do such a thing, think I'm extremely rude, and that we have really strange neighbors, right?? 

Well, you can judge for yourself... here they are:  

hahaha!! Did I have you going at all?? (probably not; I'm no good at jokes or telling stories...) It's a pair of great horned owls!! We started hearing them about a month and a half ago, just once in a while, but couldn't see them. Then, for a few days, they were around every afternoon just as it was getting dark. They would pick a vantage point on the peak or corner of one of the roofs, including ours, and do their hooting back and forth.

At first we only saw the one-- Tom saw it more often than I did, because he usually gets home from work earlier than I do, but I managed to see it/them a couple times, and even get some photos. (they're not the greatest, but hey-- at least it's photo proof that they were there!)

It was really cool to see them, and fascinating to actually watch them do their hooting... they sort of flip up their tail and puff up their chest as they do it, and it was kind of funny to see! Tom actually got a video of one with his tablet computer, I think... I'll have to see if I can edit and post it. (never done that before, so I'm not promising anything.) 

They're quite beautiful birds; very majestic looking. I read a bit about them in my trusty Roger Tory Peterson bird book, just enough to find out that the female is bigger than the male, and that they typically nest in January / February. Perhaps they were scoping out our neighborhood to see if they wanted to move in. (that would be so cool, if they did!!)

Here's a photo of the female (I think) in mid-hoot, two rooftops away from our house. They would talk to each other (and to Tom-- he had to see if he could get them to answer him, and they did) for quite a few minutes at a time, moving around from house to house. A couple times they were both very well hidden in one of the neighbor's trees, and if we hadn't seen them fly into the tree, we wouldn't have been able to see them at all. 

Here he is, right after take-off... blurry, but you can still tell that's what it is (at least I can, anyway, since I know what it is). It's pretty fascinating in an eerie sort of way to see them fly overhead, as well- their wing feathers are designed so they make little-to-know sound as they fly, so as to be better hunters. (A couple times they seemed to swoop kind of low over our heads, too, which was a bit unnerving!)

Unfortunately, we haven't heard them around for about a week or so-- maybe they didn't like our neighborhood after all-- maybe I was too much of a nosy neighbor! Or maybe that means the female is sitting on a nest; I'll be optimistic and hope for that. Either way, it was pretty neat while it lasted! (and it will make a neat scrapbook layout for the photo album.) 

random October 2014 pics...

birdwatching in the Riparian Preserve...
a little too early for migrating ducks, but not this for kildeer.

a bunny bath!! cute, isn't he??

our new creosote bush...
so we can get have 'after the rain' fragrance!

the newly (re)screened-in patio-- nice, isn't it??

 I haven't had time for much besides working (still going crazy on that front), but have taken some pics here and there... 

the view from the inside.
The cats can't hop up and sit anymore, but it's less obstructed.

bird and water- detail photos

for your enjoyment, here's a few more mallard pics, along with some close-ups of the same photos... 

isn't this just so cool?!? You can actually see the shadows of the water droplets on the feathers!! I can't take any credit for this at all... it's all the camera. 

I know 'real' photographers can get stuff that's so much better than this, too... I'm not sure yet whether I want to learn 'really' how to do that, or not. I think I'm getting better at composing a good shot in the viewfinder, but there's so much about how to compose a shot and how to use the settings on a camera that still I don't know yet, and very possibly, trying to learn all that would make me frustrated with the whole thing.

I like the 'swoosh' of the water behind his tail here and how it echoes the shape of his curled tail feathers! (Dad, do the curly tail feathers mean anything about how old or how well-fed the duck is?? I can't remember if you ever told me that, or if I ever learned it anywhere.) 

I like how the wing feathers are lifted up a bit by the whoosh of air in this photo, since his wings are pushing down against the air underneath.

It's all in the details! (I do take photos of more than just mallards, though... more different birds next time!)

like water off a duck's back-- a few moments in time

yesterday, Tom and I went out for lunch (a very good Indian restaurant that has a lunch buffet- yum!) and to run a couple errands. Since our errands had us up in the East Valley, part of our schedule included stopping at the Riparian Preserve, so I could show him the place in person. We walked one trail, and were only there for a couple hours (so I only took about 300 photos, lol!), but there's always something to see as long as you're looking for it!

a self-portrait (Tom on the left, and me with the camera)

The pictures were all taken right near the library building. There's a small group of mallards and ring-neck ducks that hang out there waiting for people to throw them snacks from the floating bridge, so they get pretty close. 

fyi, you really should click on the photos to make them larger- the details in the pictures are amazing! 

unfortunately, here is where I lifted my finger off the shutter so I didn't get any pictures of him settling back down onto the water, darn it!! (but I'm sure I'll go back soon, to take some more, lol.) It's interesting to me how quickly this kind of thing happens in real life, and the fact that a camera can capture it in such small increments. It really is almost like 'magic' when I look at the pictures on the computer and see what information the camera got that our eyes can't really process to that extent when we're just watching.

(I'm going to post some super-close ups in another post, too-- maybe water droplets and bird feathers aren't that interesting to everyone, but I was really amazed by the amount of detail the camera captured in some of them.) 

birding, part one. (semi-random photos from a few hours in time)

Since I didn't start my new job until January 6th, giving my notice at my previous job gave me an unexpected week or so off between Christmas and New Years. So, with some free time, I decided to take my camera, binoculars, and bird book out for a spin. Some Western birds are the same as the ones I grew up seeing in Illinois, but there are quite a few I'm not overly familiar with yet. I hadn't really been out 'birding' since college, when I took a summer ornithology class at the school's field station along the Mississippi river near Hannibal, MO. 

It was great to get out and enjoy the outdoors, watching the birds was really alot of fun, and getting some pretty good photos out of it was the icing on the cake. And thank goodness for having a digital camera and a delete key, since I took well over 2000 photos over the course of three different days out! (Birds don't sit still for very long, you know-- I have plenty of badly composed shots, blurry pics, or the bird was already on its way out of the picture by the time I clicked the shutter.) 

The photos in this post were all taken at the Gilbert Riparian Institute, a 110-acre preserve in Gilbert, AZ that has 7 ponds and a lake, situated behind a branch of the Gilbert Public Library. The pics are semi-random... they were all taken on December 27th, starting at just after sunrise till about 11:15 am. Oh, I have plenty more where these came from, too- I just didn't want to add too many to one blog post-- enjoy!

sunrise with geese... gorgeous!
(even though I did have to get up early to see it!)

some sort of hawk, catching an early-morning thermal.
No idea yet what species it is- I need to do some more research. 

I was quite surprised to see this fellow come out of the bushes.
The geese weren't concerned by him at all.

According to someone I spoke to later, he hangs around the preserve regularly;
the birds must be quite used to him. (plus, they're pretty big for him to take on.)

I have no clue what this bird is- I'm no good identifying sparrows
and the like. But I really liked the pose!

RIng-necked duck. (not the best lighting; this picture was taken kind of early,
before the sun was fully up.) 

This gives you an idea of how close you can get to the birds-
well, more like you wait quietly, and they come to you, actually.

snowy egrets (on the tree) and a great egret (by the shore)
it's tough to see in this photo, but the snowy egrets have black legs and yellow feet.
(there's a couple double-crested cormorants in the background, too- there were tons
of them around, fishing in all of the shallow ponds.)

 

female Hooded Merganser cruising in the morning light-
there were three of these hanging around together.
I love their crest of feathers!

Northern Pintail, I think. (? I might be wrong; I don't have the bird book handy)

pied-billed grebes-
they're somewhat odd looking diving ducks; it looks like they don't have a tail.

Mallard
(I thought this was funny- it looks like he's checking out his hair, perhaps??)

a few shorebirds-
the larger ones are Black-necked stilts, but I'm not exactly sure about the smaller ones.

I hope you enjoyed this little slice of winter birding in AZ- I'll be back with more soon!