Bastet’s Pixelventures: Spontaneous

As I was sitting in my doctor’s office this morning, I thought about Bastet’s Pixelventures newest challenge. Our assignment this week is to take a spontaneous picture and then edit it using one of the photo editing apps. I realized I had an opportunity to take that photo while I waited for the doctor!

This is my favorite of the pictures I took. I used the Loma filter on the Pic Shop Lite app to come up with this version. (Be sure to keep scrolling down after looking at the first photo!) Continue reading “Bastet’s Pixelventures: Spontaneous” →

Of Health Food and Butterfly Wings (Illustration)

Our Bastet’s Pixelventures Sunday Challenge for this week is to illustrate Jen Rosenberry’s delightful and thought provoking story and haiku mix, “Of Health Food and Butterfly Wings.”

I am really enjoying this new form of challenge! (The butterfly picture and the red part of the NO symbols I used are courtesy of Wikimedia.)

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Of Health Food and Butterfly Wings

by Jen Rosenberry from Blog it or Lose it!

Who doesn’t want to provide their five-year-old with healthy snacks? Not this parent! When my child took an interest in the pre-packaged apple slices I saw a quick and easy way to get my kiddo out of the cracker aisle. How healthy! How fast! How neat! I grabbed those apple slices and “got out of Dodge” – fast!

When we got home, I opened a bag of those luscious-looking apple slices for my son. He grabbed them eagerly. He took a few bites – then made a mad dash for the kitchen and gagged into the sink.

“They’re awful, Mom!”

the best-laid plans /
o’ moms and five-year-olds – /
should have bought crackers //

The child has a hair-trigger gag reflex. I knew better than to try again. If he wouldn’t eat them then I’d have to do it. They weren’t awful – but they were sour. I wasn’t pleased, but I was resigned that the apples would not go to waste.

expecting sweetness /
finding lemon instead – /
face in a pucker //

The apples were more than bitter, though. Had I managed to stuff a piece of the plastic packaging in my mouth along with an apple slice? There was something non-apple on my tongue.

As they say in Star Wars, “I [had] a bad feeling about this.” Like my son, I walked to the sink. I grabbed a paper towel – and spit.

one naked wing /
from a luckless butterfly – /
stunned speechless //

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Bastet’s Pixelventures: Illustrate the Poem

Reflections

The winding road of life
Takes me from project to project …
I wander along these dusty roads,
Encountering friends and sometime foes,
I can’t help contemplating
Upon the purpose of my existence. Continue reading “Bastet’s Pixelventures: Illustrate the Poem” →

Bastet’s Pixelventures: Playing with Apps

I was excited when I read that Bastet’s Pixelventures challenge for this week was to do some creative editing on an existing picture.

I have belonged to the Pacific NW Litter Project since it began in July of 2011. I decided to use a picture I had taken at the end of our first work party. We pulled a lot of garbage out of a forested area of Seattle on that day! Continue reading “Bastet’s Pixelventures: Playing with Apps” →

Bastet’s Pixelventures: One Point Perspective

The most common form of litter in the world are cigarette butts. It is estimated that 4.5 trillion of the butts are tossed yearly.

Many people don’t realize that cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate tow, not cotton, and they can take decades to degrade.

Birds and animals eat these toxic items. Investigators in a San Diego State University study discovered that if you put fathead minnows and top smelt in a liter of water that also contains a single cigarette butt, half of the fish will die.

I decided I would answer this week’s Bastet’s Pixelventures challenge by creating a picture that shows the enormity of the cigarette butt litter problem. I did that by placing 1,375 butts in a single line on a sidewalk near my home.