Butterfly Mandala Take Two

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I Googled 'mandala templates' and found a bunch out there.  The one I used for today's daily seemed to have a reasonable amount of sections to fill in.  Some had a huge number and even though they were pretty, I steered clear of them.  I used 5 different butterfly photos (swallowtail, sulphur, monarch, and fritillary) to fill in the template.  Most of the sections have original color except the sulphur one which I tinted from yellow to orange.  I like how it turned out, but I'm not thrilled with it.  It doesn't wow me.

I started following around with various things in PSE.  I duplicated the butterfly wheel, rotated it 90 degrees to the right, and applied a difference filter to the rotated layer.  Boy did that produce some awesome colors! I think I tried an invert and a poster filter and a couple of other filters plus using color variations to create the same image in many colors.  I don't know what I thought I was going to do with those...

Which is your favorite color?  I really like the pink one below.  Donnie thought the blue one was best.  I think the sun points and the layer outside of them need more contrast between them in the fully colored ones something I didn't really see until this AM.

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This is the template I used for the daily.

Butterfly Mandala

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OK, I'm still addicted to creating mandalas this week.  Yesterday it was cloudy and rainy and there weren't a lot of photo ops.  Although I do note that my picture taking was way down last month and so far this month too.  Next week I know I have some new and exciting photo ops coming up while I'm on vacation, so I'm just biding my time.

The butterfly shot below was used to make today's daily.  I really wanted to try a butterfly.  I guess that's a Painted Lady or American Lady. My goal was to get wing, pink, and coneflower center all in the mandala wedge piece.  I'm pleased that I was able to do that.  The mirrored wedges ended up looking like a butterfly looking down from the top instead of the side I think.  I like the star center and pink accents. Not only do you have to think about what pictures to use for mandalas but also what parts of the picture will work best.

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I find that starting out with an abstract image can really work well.  In the original swirl shot below, I was attracted to it because there were so many lines and I felt it would be easy to get green, red, and yellow all in the wedge shot.  I like how this one has heart shapes in it.

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The original shot below is a sequined or metallic ball gown (Ms. NC from a few years back).  I experimented with altering the color and using filters to get two very interesting madalas out of one creation.  I'm sure I could keep going and get several other coordinating shots too.  Mostly I needed to boost the color.  The original was too blah.

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This one is cool but needs more boost and has a few lines not lining up as I'd like.  See the blue upper and center window in the original.  That's where the wedge piece came from.

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On another note, Donnie asked for help creating a business card with a techno theme.  I created a few using wallpapers and such from the web but really wanted to create my own.  Below I created a new blank image, tinited the background blue, added in a layer of text with a typewriter style font and making sure to go out of bound.  Then I duplicated the layer, slid it a bit, and changed the type of layer to translucent (or was that screen or overlay?).  Just a few minutes work really.  

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Then I used a polar coordinates distortion filter to curve the numbers.  Gives it that black hole sucked into space look.  Adding an edge burn filter gave it even more depth.  

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The finished product has name upper right, address lower right, and a techno globe lower left.  Cool stuff at least to me!

Another Day Another Mandala

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The addiction to create more mandalas continued yesterday.  I used the burned DVD image below to create a few.

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I also created some using painted light Christmas tree cards.

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It's so fun to see what types of patterns a particular image will yield.

The juvenile cardinals continue to frequent my feeder.  I believe the top is a male and the bottom a female.  The bottom bird is older with the beak turning the distinctive red already.  I think they have the same father but are not from the same clutch.  

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I made short ribs for the first time last night.  They turned out yummy!

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Tulip Mandala

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Making mandalas can be a bit addictive.  One picture can create an infinite number of patterns, so it's fun to experiment with one picture using different parts of it and see what different mandalas you can come up with.

I created the images in today's daily and blog post using the tulip shot below.  I picked it for bold color and I thought the stems might be useful in creating an intricate pattern.

I used the standard 4 pieces of pie technique on my daily.  You can find 2 piece, 3 piece, and 4 piece templates and even much more intricate templates out there.  Once you get a piece of pie created, finishing filling the template is not too hard and then it's just a matter of duplicating the quarter of pie around and rotating the pieces to line them back up into a circle.

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Here's a template and tutorial you can use to create a mandala.

TinaMarie had a very pretty mandala on on Facebook last night and was kind enough to share her technique with me.  Basically you create a square image and then a blank square image file, and you use the image to fill all 4 corners doing some flipping for symmetry.  Once you have the one 4 corner image, you make a copy of it and rotate it 90 degrees and then change the opacity and layer type until you get something pleasing.  Of course you could use 8 piece corners or 16 piece or well you get the gist.  Here is an image of the tulips I created using TinaMarie's technique.  Maybe I should have made this the daily? I was torn...  Ping me if you want to see the psd files for any of these mandalas.

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I'd also like to try making mandalas from mandalas like this guy did.

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Halloween Mandala

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This is my first ever created mandala.  I was inspired by TinaMarie's post from yesterday.  The picture below is what I used.  You end up using just a small section of it.

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This is the tutorial I used on PSE7.  I used a 4 pieces of pie template, though instead of 3.

I've improvised a bit because the first completed on looked like this.

SmugMug Link Purple is a much better color than pink for Halloween.  I also thought the peg board was too much reality so used a blur to get rid of it.  I do wonder if however after I blurred it out if maybe I should have somehow textured it back since it's the only blurred area in the shot.  Personal preference i guess.  Also, if I were to redo this, I would keep a margin around my creation and crop a close square at the end.  As you'll note, just a bit of the design/circle is off the frame.  It was not too hard to select each pink area, layer via cut, and build a layer of the pieces so that I could adjust the color and blur. Anyone got some nifty pieces of pie psd files they'd be willing to share?  The one I found is pretty small, and I'd love a bigger one.  Anyone build an action to just create a mandala from an image?  That would be very cool! Here is a second one I did more on a harvest theme.

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Who else wants to give this a try?  Ping me if you have questions...

Ghouls and Friends

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The boys and I spent a good part of the day on Sunday putting up the rest of our Halloween decorations.  I took these pictures pretty hastily, but you get the idea of the fun we were having.

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Horse and Buddy 3rd Annual Horse Show and Pig Pickin'

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Yesterday, Donnie, the boys, and I had the privilege of attending the 3rd Annual Horse Show and Pig Pickin' at Horse and Buddy. From their website, "Horse and Buddy enriches the lives of people with special needs in Wake County and surrounding areas through therapeutic horseback riding." We enjoyed watching the riders and horses demonstrate their skills. I had a great view on the rail in the middle of the arena, and of course I had to start taking pictures. It's just what I do... It sure was good to see our friend Janet and to meet her daughter and husband. We feasted on the pork and sides and even got to watch two horses get married (too cute!)

I went through the 400+ shots that I took keeping out the best of the bunch, and then I went through and built an 8X10 collage for each rider using 3-5 shots. The smiles on the kids' faces as they performed was incredibly heartwarming as were the smiles on the volunteers' faces too. Each participant got a ribbon at the end. They were so proud!

I picked my daily shot by the smile:-)

And here is the horse wedding ceremony.

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All the other collage shots are here.