One More Patriotic Colored Collage 🇺🇸
I spent too much time searching for an old post to make sure there would not be a duplicate, so I’ll work on that one tomorrow. For today, since the month of July is almost over, here’s a collage from the unused patriotic candle images from the 4th.
Even with the same prompts, different AI tools and different filters in each tool can make such a vast array of creations that my extra storage in Google Photos comes in really handy. In case you want to try the prompt in your favorite AI creation tool, (and now you can put prompts right into many search engines,) here’s exactly what I used…
2 patriotic Candles with red and white stripes plus white stars on blue like the USA flag. They are in ornate golden candlesticks burning with a soft glow that illuminates the air around them with sparkling fireworks. The candlesticks should be sitting on a beautifully polished high quality marble table and some silky patriotic flowers of red white and blue should be sitting on the table near the candles. The walls in the room should be gray granite stonework and festive patriotic decorations. The candle flames are peaceful and beautiful.
And I’ll close with one more image just because I really like the knitted pictures Wombo makes. (Even if yarn is not the best material to make candles from, lol 🤣.) Also, I didn’t ask for the eyes, but their training model for the knitted filter must include something about being cute. 😁
Some Bible Verses About Freedom
Galatians 5:1 BSB
[1] It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/gal.5.1.BSB
1 Peter 2:16 BSB
[16] Live in freedom, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/1pe.2.16.BSB
Galatians 5:13 BSB
[13] For you, brothers, were called to freedom; but do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Rather, serve one another in love.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/gal.5.13.BSB
Psalm 119:45 BSB
[45] And I will walk in freedom, for I have sought Your precepts.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.119.45.BSB
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Blog Break 2–Busy is as Busy Does
Because of many days of not staying on top of things, I got into some very old dust on the back of a shelf desperately needing organizing. I got lots of steps and busy stuff done to prepare for a busy day tomorrow, but I need more sleep for real preparation. That means, another day of taking a break from trying to write any meaningful words, but I can almost always find some pretty images to share.
These images are called digital squared circles because they are created with software (digitally designed in the Mirror Lab app for Android) and you can clearly see the circle in the middle of the square. I learned about these from a Flickr group I’ve now inherited and need to add more of my own images to. But it’s fun to see what others add—when they follow the rules. (That is, when they actually add squared circles and not just add whatever in haste to get their stuff out to multiple groups.)
And with that, I say goodnight and sweet dreams. I hope my busyness will pay off with some good sleep to revive my creative words. 😴
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Blog Break: Sharing Some Pictures
by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
A very long day that ended with a visit to a medical provider for a UTI and antibiotics means I must simply share some nice photos and then go to sleep quickly. I’m thankful I got my first dose by a shot to start healing faster. And I’ll know tomorrow how much the muscle will hurt since they pack the medicine in that way (have not experienced this before), but the advice was to drink lots of water and move a lot. I spent time walking on the treadmill as soon as I got home, and it eased the pain tremendously already.
Now, enjoy some beautiful rainbow images I captured with my Olympus camera some years ago. I had 4 all together, so I made a collage of 3 with the 4th as a background.
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Creative Ways to Deal
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
This is blog post number two because after I had blog post number 1 completed, my check of links revealed that it wasn’t the best idea to share. I was going to tell you all where to get my free phone wallpapers from Zedge, but the link to the regular website is so different from what I see within the app, it became clear I could not share it. Third party ads with misleading statements about activating your account could’ve made it look like that’s what you needed to do in order to grab my creations, and I just couldn’t serve that info with a clear conscience. I did find an alternative I’ll begin working on to share here later, though.
The other issue was that I had put some sample images in a collage, so people would know what they could expect. As it turns out, even though AI images cannot be copyrighted at this time, the terms of service (TOS) for using Zedge pAInt to design includes not being allowed to use those images on a blog or external website, even if it’s not monetized and is only being used to send people to them. 🙃
So, today’s blog post is a lesson for me, and it can also be for you all to learn from my “almost” mistakes, so none of my readers will risk their own violation of a site’s terms. The big lesson being, even if you know the basic rules, ALWAYS read the TOS for the specific user practices they demand. In the meantime, enjoy the collage of peaceful doves, flowers, and butterflies made in Wombo where they have much more user friendly terms.
And here is one more collage of dove images using the following prompt:
2 white peace doves nestling on colorful flowers with deep royal reds, purples, blues, and greens all with gilded edges. A layer of deep green leaves with gilded edges and veins sits beneath the flowers. Soft glittery rays of sunshine stream from fluffy white clouds in the corner and bathe the doves and flowers. One large butterfly made of stained glass hovers near the doves, and many tiny colorful butterflies flit and sparkle throughout the scene.
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Use that prompt in your favorite AI image generator and then let me know where I can see what you’ve created. In the meantime, have a really creative day!
P.S. The “How to Deal” in the title was about dealing with extreme nerve pain in my back and leg (detailed in the first post), and how that led me to being creative as a way of dealing with what I could not do. Plus I got notes on my phone from apps saying, “Hey, look what we can do now!” It was a good day to be creative, but since it ended up taking me all night to do so, and since I actually wrote 2 posts, I’m officially skipping what would have been published as the date of May 24th and bringing you this for May 25th. Maybe that will set me on a better path forward. Now it’s time for some sleep for me. 😴
Psalm 4:8 BSB
[8] I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.4.8.BSB
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Real Oil-Cell Kaleidoscopes
What’s a simple pleasure in life that brings you joy?
The simplest pleasure is taking my oil-cell kaleidoscope out into the sunshine and just becoming lost in the beauty of light shining through dichroic glass. The largest image is from my kaleidoscope by Shelley Knapp, and the smaller ones are from taking that same image to Wombo Dream AI and designing similar images without the natural flaws.
I have a lot of them from my original oil kaleidoscope on my Flickr site where you can view the album with the Knapp kaleidoscopes and see the beautiful details. And below, I’ll share my YouTube video of the scope in action.
I may come back and add a few more from different kaleidoscopes when I’ve edited them, so save this post.
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Picture in Picture
I’m cheating tonight. I got on some very long learning tasks and wore myself out, so I’m sharing some of the many picture-in-picture creations I’ve made with Photo Studio Pro by KVADGROUP. This isn’t even a tiny bit with all you can do in the app, but I’m falling asleep, so I hope you enjoy it. I have one more collage of strawberries to share and then it’s sleep time.
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.o)
Psalm 118:24 BSB
[24] This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
https://bible.com/bible/3034/psa.118.24.BSB
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I Love 🥰 Emojis
What are your favorite emojis?
Ask anyone who gets messages from me. I love emojis! 💝 There’s something about being able to say a lot with a tiny form. A picture speaks a thousand words, right? And when I downloaded Google’s Gboard keyboard and got access to their “emoji kitchen” to create my own, that was the whipped cream and cherry on top.
I’m not sure why “Day One” chose this for their 1921st prompt, because so many emojis only show up as little boxes here on WordPress, but I still love the idea, so I’m experimenting. I’ve downloaded a lot of the mixed ones I created to share in a collage, and they’ll show fine since they’re pictures. Like this set of train emojis from messages I sent to my sister while she was on the train last year.
I really love the train that’s slipping on a banana peel. That was from combining a train emoji with a banana emoji. You should be able to tell what was combined to get each image. I highly recommend the Gboard app for the personal dictionary and the Glide Typing abilities as well. I don’t know if it’s available anywhere but the Google Play Store, but if you can get it, I’m relatively certain you’ll have fun with it. Go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.latin
And here are some new ones I just made tonight. As you can tell, I like combining the cactus with different things. Oh, and sparkles. I love adding sparkles to other emojis.
Most of these should be obvious, but the wooden globe may not give away that it’s a combo of the earth and a wooden stump. The frying pan is the combo of a dinner plate and an egg. But I cannot do a train and a cactus, so here’s what you get when you choose to do the two types of cactus 🌵 and 🏜️ (I hope these show) inline with a text…
So, yes, I think you can clearly see that I really like using emojis as a communications tool. I hope this inspires someone to have some fun with these great compact emotions.
Now, since April 27th is also “National Tell A Story Day,” I have one more treat for you. It’s a very old story, some sites say a song, that I learned when I was a teenager. I never sang it until I taught it to my nephews and had them sing it like a military marching cadence for their uncle. As I searched, it seemed all the sites had slightly different words, so I’m using the ones I recall from my years of repeating this tongue tangler of backward, inside-out, and upside-down words..
I started with the introduction of...
Ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps,
Cross-eyed mosquitos and bowlegged ants.
I stand before you, not behind you,
To address you, not undress you.
Admission is free, pay at the door.
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
I come to this end, not to this out,
To tell you a story--I know nothing about.
~~~~~~~~and then the story~~~~~~~~
One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other
Pulled out their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to kill the two dead boys.
If you don't believe my story is true,
Ask the blind man... He saw it too!
One day, I’ll tell you the story of Petey the Snake. But it’s best to hear it, so I’ll need to get over myself and be willing to record it. But wait, there’s more. I just had to make my juggling emojis with the knit filter. Too cute!
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My Own Creative Muse
Like the character Cameo in yesterday’s story, I feel like I have the voice of a “muse” in my mind that drives me to create. Unlike Cameo, I haven’t turned away from that voice completely, though I’ve gone through dry spells. Maybe that’s why the story came to me and made me examine the relationship between our thought lives and our real lives. And if you ever battle with the still, small voice like Elijah, maybe Cameo’s journey will be enjoyable for you as well.
Though it’s not time to share more of her story yet, I want to share just a little from recent creative endeavors. The above photo is a close-up from the first good blooms on an azalea plant hubby got for me a few years ago. He did the research to find out what would make it grow, and it paid off well. I’m thrilled with the plant and with the pictures. I added a sparkly frame on this one because I knew how it would affect the images I got from Wombo Dream AI. Get ready for a barrage of pink and full instructions for any why might want to try designing images in Wombo.
So my first stop was to their browser page because they recently updated it with a new “edit” button. You can upload an image, and then tell it how you want it edited. Maybe you want the flowers in purple or the sky in green. Put your thoughts in the prompt box, and let it go to work. I told it I wanted the image in stained glass. The outputs were the same in the app as in the browser, so here are some from the app before I added the frame…
You can visit the website without downloading the app, so you can make your own fun edits at https://dream.ai/ and click on the “Start Creating” button. On the creation page, you can use my prompt (below) if you like, or create your own. When you add a prompt, you’ll notice a button that says enhance. That button will add some fancy extra prompts that are well trained into the AI. Once you have the prompt you want, it’s time to select a filter. Anything that doesn’t say “Premium” is okay to use. The latest filters are V4, and the V3 filters also work well. Once your filter is selected, you can choose generate to make your picture. It will download with a watermark if you don’t have premium, but it’s not bad and may be able to be cropped out in another program if it really bothers you. Here’s the prompt…
Turn these beautiful magenta azaleas into a stained glass window.
This is just the beginning of what you can do. You’ll notice you have image sizes to choose from in case you want to make a phone wallpaper size or a Facebook header size. And then you can look toward the bottom for the browse button where you can upload your own image. Or mine if you’ve downloaded it. That’s why I make most of my images Creative Commons. At some point, the page may ask you to create an account in order to download your images. I’m not sure if the gallery to store your images comes with every account, or only on the app, but having lost a number of gallery photos when they crashed last year, I recommend actually saving your favorites to a permanent location.
Now, because I’m a fan of abstract creations, there is a V2 filter I go to often. I’ll share the collage and prompt for that, and I hope to hear from readers that you’ve tried this for yourself and had as much fun with it as I do. The prompt (for use with the image at the top and with their enhanced additions) is…
Turn this into a beautiful stained glass window with the original magenta pink azalea and pink glitter frame colors intact. Intricate lead lines separating vibrant glass pieces, sunlight streaming through to cast colorful reflections, delicate floral motifs surrounding the azalea, subtle gradients blending pinks and purples, the window set against a softly illuminated stone wall, enhanced by shimmering highlights on the glitter frame that catch the light at different angles.
And here are the images…
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🎵Photo Walking
What’s the most fun way to exercise?
Daily Prompt by Day One
If I can get myself out the door with a camera around my neck, I tend to enjoy the steps I get a little more. A trip–back in 2022–to Azalea Path in Indiana is my favorite of all time. I’ve been there more than once, but that year, we just seemed to arrive during the best color display I’ve seen there. Here’s a collage of some of the captures from that day, all straight out of the camera (SOOC). It was cloudy, so I used a higher color setting, but I was very happy with a few of the shots out of 1200+ I captured. I especially love the ones with waterfalls.
© 2022-2026 (All Rights Reserved)
And even though these are not lilies, this reminder from the words of YahShua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ The Messiah) are a fitting comfort that goes well with such an array of colors.
Luke 12:27-28 BSB
[27] Consider how the lilies grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these. [28] If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith!
https://bible.com/bible/3034/luk.12.27-28.BSB
And since I used that verse, well, I might as well share the beautiful song with the same words, right?
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Others’ Posts I’ve Liked
Crystal Writes A Blog 