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Flowers, Flowers, Flowers
Ramie Ahlstrom - Scrapping Deck Cruise DirectorWhere oh where has the time gone? It's 2006 already! The beginning of this New Year brings me and my family back to the United States to live, and we're busy exploring our new surroundings as well as still unpacking! But, I think this is going to be a wonderful year, and I'm looking forward to the coming months!
As SS Reflections sets anchor in the beautiful ports of New Zealand, we'll all get to enjoy some of their wonderful mid-summer days! (It seems as if it was just summer here a few months ago!) New Zealand is covered with lush tropical vegetation of which I have to say my favorite is the wide variety of flowers. Every direction you look in leads your eyes to a different colorful flowering plant.
While I couldn't actually get TO New Zealand to take photos of the wonderful flowers, I did dig out some of my favorite flower photos from the last year or so and scrapped some pages with them! I love to use the Macro setting on my camera to take close up photos. To learn more about photography and how to use your camera to its greatest potential, be sure to check out Bill's Photography Studio.
To celebrate my birthday, I took my daughter to the local market and had her help me pick some flowers. I love to buy them but rarely do it, and using my birthday (and a desire to take some fun photos) was a good excuse! Here are a few layouts using photos of flowers we picked out.
This layout is very basic and just shows the flowers. Gerbera daisies in bright colors along with some white lilies made for a great combination.
Here are a couple of layouts with photos of the same flowers but with my daughter enjoying them. Ok, I confess---I really bought the flowers with this photo shoot in mind!
Ashleigh really enjoyed smelling the flowers and holding them close. And I loved the photo ops she provided me! She spent about 30 minutes investigating the gerbera daisies up close and personal. She even tried to pick the petals off, but I intervened and saved them! Here're a few more layouts of her inspecting the flowers.
While walking through the Butterfly Pavilion in my hometown, I fell in love with Hibiscus plants. I'm not sure what drew me to them in the beginning, but I love the wide variety of colors they come in as well as the large blossom size. I've never lived in a tropical climate, but our time in Southern Spain got us close. Here's a layout with a photo of the hibiscus plant we had in our yard.
We tried to transplant a hibiscus to our yard almost a year before we moved out of our house. After ten months in the ground, it finally produced one small blossom shortly before we moved (while the one above-a native to our yard when we moved in-produced at least three blossoms a week). I was excited to see it, but bummed that we were leaving so soon after it got it's "start" in life.
After successfully taking some photos of my hibiscus plants, I headed around the neighborhood armed with my camera and with my daughter by my side! We came across this gorgeous, deep red hibiscus in a yard just a few doors away (we lived in military housing and most of the houses near us were empty, so we took advantage of the gorgeous flowers in the yards for our photo shoot).
Another favorite flower of mine is the Bird of Paradise. I just love how "different" it is, and that blue portion of the flower is always so striking! Here's a layout with a photo from a plant in my old neighbor's yard!
I know that some of these plants have to be native to New Zealand, since they are mostly tropical plants, and I've heard and read that New Zealand is very tropical! I hope that while on a shore excursion during our stay, you can find some wonderful flowers to photograph as well!!!
If you're in the northern hemisphere and it's winter where you are, how about digging out some of last year's flower photos and scrapping those?! It should help warm your spirits even if the snow is flying outside!
Happy New Year!!!
Ramie Ahlstrom
ramieahlstrom@ssreflections.com
Scrapping Deck Cruise Director
Reflections Publishing Group, LLC
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