Now For A Word from my Sponsor
My Sponsor is the One who gave me breath for life, so taking time out to seek His presence and thank Him for all the moments and minutes He gives me is only natural. I cherish all His creations and the joy I find in them. His word on the first Sabbath in Genesis 2:2-3 is…
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
For a Sabbath day’s rest, my first Sabbatically Saturday post will simply be the pictures I took yesterday along with some creative editing. Relax and enjoy God’s gifts of nature and creativity, and share with me if you do some creative work of your own.
Pic 1, Naked Ladies (Belladonna Lillies) from my front yard. These soft pink beauties are all over the neighborhood right now too.
Pic 2, I wanted to catch the flowers while they still had some water from the earlier rain, and I got some, but then I cheated and decided to use the KVADPhoto+ raindrop filter to add a little more to it. While I was at it, I thought a nice bamboo frame and a bit more saturation went nicely with the raindrops.
Pic 3, When I have a nice contrast in an image, I really have fun getting out the Fractalius plugin and seeing what all images it will create for me. It takes my love of fractal and colorful design and adds it to real world images. What more could I ask for?
Naked Lady (Belladonna Lily) with Fractalius Edits & Framing
Pic 4, Another Fractalius image with a bit more color and a nice vignette and frame from Irfanview. 
Pic 5, And we’ll end this with a kaleidoscope made from one of the fractalized flowers because, after all, it is #KaleidoSaturday on Twitter.
Creative Images & Fun Apps
In my effort to blog daily, I’m finding myself taking more time than I plan ahead and ending up far later at night than planned, but I’m gonna stick with this. That said, here’s my Tech Time Tuesday submission.
I love to play with graphic programs and apps, especially if they make colorful and kaleidoscopic designs. The designs themselves are a bit of technology, but to stick with a true techy theme, I’ll share just a few of the apps and sites I use to create and have fun.
For starters, because of copyright laws, I suggest always using your own images as a base to create from. That means you’ll need some kind of camera, and the higher quality images you start with, the higher quality graphics you’ll end up with. If you just cannot find anything of your own to use, make sure you use something with a Creative Commons.org license that does not prevent derivative images. (See the CC site link above for explanations of the various licenses.) And if the CC license requires anything (such as attribution–giving credit to the original photographer, or share-alike–repeating the same CC license in your final product), be sure to uphold such requests.
I put together this mosaic of designs from the images I created from the top left picture of a stack of colored chains. The pink, black, and white chains were actually a necklace, and I was very happy with the colorful designs I was able to make. Here’s my mosaic from the creative and fun website called Big Huge Labs…
Necklace Kaleidoscope Mosaic
Now for the technical part. (Note: I’ll add links to make it easier for readers to find the sites. Also, know that links to Amazon are short links with my affiliate information. If you decide to purchase from Amazon, it helps me a little if you use my links. Thanks.
First, I used an app called “Kaleidoscope Lime Pro” that I downloaded from the Google Play Store to make the circular mandala designs as well as the tiled tessellation designs. I love how one picture can create so many images, and I play with this app often when I’m waiting somewhere with my phone. There is a free version of the app, but for 99 cents, I found it worth supporting the developer to continue to make quality apps such as this. I have used it on both a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Note 5, and both worked perfectly. You may even find my Note 3 review when you view the app.
Next, I used a slightly newer app I’ve had since May called “Photo Studio Pro” that I got from the Amazon App Store. I also opted for the pro version on this to support the KVAD developer and to have access to all the extra options. The PIP (picture in picture) options just came out recently, and that is what made the image above where you see my original kaleidoscope mandala inside a glass with a flower at the bottom. The image above with the cupcakes is done with one of the KVAD frames.
And that’s about it for this Tech Time Tuesday. Download some apps, make some images, and upload them to a safe site like Flickr or Google+, then come back and share some links with me. If the sites and images are safe, clean, and family friendly, I will approve your comments so others can visit your images too.
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