Celebrating my 1 year blogiversary!

Tomorrow, actually.  I can't even believe it.  To celebrate, I bought you all a big bouquet of flowers.

Then I started playing in Picasa....you know, with all my spare time.  I think playing on the 'puter (blogging and editing pictures) is my new zone-out time.  Used to be decorating mags...still is at times...but with the 'puter I can actually get creative instead of passively scanning. Anyway....

I picked up some pretty milk glass at a thrift last week and created some rosy vignettes.  I need to tell you straight up, I use a $150 point and shoot.  Nothing fancy.  I use the 'macro' setting a lot, never use flash, and I'm still learning how to hold the ding dang thing still when I actually click the picture.  Picasa then adds the fun effects.  I'll tell you what I did with each one.

Here's what I started with.  I just cropped and brightened this a bit.  It was taken in my kitchen under (hideous, soon-to-be-changed-out) florescent lights.

I used the macro setting for this one.  I also clicked 'I'm feeling lucky' option in picasa under 'basic fixes' which adjusts colors and contrast.  Sometimes it turns out pretty like this.  Other times, well, not so much. 

Macro setting, just cropped it and used the tuning tab to warm it up a bit on the color temperature slide.

I moved this into the sunlight, snapped in macro setting.  In picasa, I warmed it in tuning, then used 'soft focus' and 'glow' under the effects tab.

Again, macro then edited with a slight crop and a touch of warmth. I LURVE the creamy pale yellow and pink!

This shot I adjusted the 'fill light' in the tuning tab.  Cool effect....

Yellow lilies and mums...you know the routine: macro, crop and warm. I added some 'glow' to the mum.

Some more pretties.  Like my beloved bird's eggs, I think roses are sublime.

In this shot I didn't warm it.  See how the pinks have a blue undertone?  I like some of my pictures to have the cooler tones, but generally I warm them up at least a smidge.

This one I played with 'saturation'....isn't it awesome?  (I see that nodding head....)

If you happened to pop over this weekend, you might have seen this collage already.  I made it just before the lightning struck and I realized that as much as I LOVE roses, my robin's nest fits better with what I'm trying to do here on the old blogger-roo.  Kinda funny I went full circle almost to the day with the blog, eh?  Still....I'm smitten with this header, and collages are so fun to do.

So that's it....a bouquet of pink picasa roses with a touch of yellow to celebrate ::cottage instincts:: 1 year anniversary~from me to you. Thanks ever-so-much for joining me on this wee spot on the web.