Floraspirations, Week 3: Chinese New Year

With help from pixlr.com

     In honor of the Chinese New Year celebrated this past week, I thought you’d enjoy this creation made by members of the Richmond Children’s Hospital Junior Board for its annual Ball in 2004.

Welcome to the Year of the Water Dragon!

     This visual image is still as fresh to me today as it was seven years ago when I watched fellow board members create this masterpiece, and I really wanted to share it with you.  Unfortunately the only photo that I had of it was taken in the afternoon with a very glare-y background through the tent which looks much better at night.  My daughter was in it, too.

Original is definitely not a blog-worthy photo.

     As luck would have it, though, just this week Kate of Centsational Girl wrote a lengthy post about a new on-line photo editor that she has found to replace Picnik, which Google is retiring on April 19th.  I have used Picnik for a few editing jobs, but I really hadn’t taken the time to figure it all out.  It has been on my to-do list, along with at least a hundred other things, and fortunately I never bought the premium Picnik service, which I had seriously considered.

     On Kate’s recommendation, I clicked over to pixlr.com.  Since then I have been spending my free time listening to all of the tutorials and playing with this original photo.  A Scandanavian man narrates the tutorials, which makes for an especially interesting exercise.

     I have finally figured out how some of my favorite bloggers, including Centsational Girl, create such great photos and graphics.  In the middle picture, I have blurred my daughter’s face, and in the photo above, the background is painted with the contrasting blue.  The background for the first photo was erased, and I added the text from the wide selection of fonts included with pixlr.  Though I have yet to reach the professional standards of many bloggers, I am now looking forward to bringing you more interesting content through photos.

     While pixlr.com is not perfect (a couple of my editing attempts just disappeared), it really is a fun on-line program for enhancing any photos.  You don’t need to be a blogger to try it.  The bonus:  it’s free!

Photos by Avad Fan.

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