Cape May Point ~ Laughing Gulls

 Another bird that returns each spring is the Laughing Gull with their white eye shadow and red lips.  These are the first Laughing Gulls I have seen this year.

Cape May Point ~ Northern Gannets

 A highlight every year of my spring is seeing the Northern Gannets flying down the Delaware Bay  to Cape May Point, around the Point and then fly North to the Arctic for breeding.  This year since I am staying at the Point, so when I heard they were flying through, I rushed up to the Alexander Avenue jetty.  Over the course of about 6 hrs over 15,000 of the Northern Gannets were counted along with numerous Black Scoters, Surf Scoters and other birds.

Cape May Point ~ Eastern Phoebe

 This Eastern Phoebe was ahead of me on the path to the beach. After he caught the bug, he beat it against the fence. I guess to soften it up to eat. After he was done, he flew up to the rail fence and looked at me as if to say "How did you like my show?"

National Sparrow Day

 Sure is hard to ID the sparrows at times.  That's why they are called LBJ's

Brewer's Sparrow Morongo Valley, CA 1/2/18

Albert's Towhee Paton's Center for Hummingbirds, Patagonia, AZ 4/29/19

Vail, AZ 5/9/19

Rufous-crowned Sparrow Santa Rita Lodge 5/10/19

Rufous-shouldered Sparrow Elephant Head Pond, AZ 5/10/19

Green-tailed Towhee Yellowstone National Park 9/13/16

Red-backed Junco Lynx Lake, Prescott, AZ 9/28/15

CA Towhee Santa Cruz Arboretum, CA 9/25/12

Cape May Point, NJ 11/21/12

Sagebrush Sparrow Joshua Tree National Park, CA 12/27/17

Black-throated Sparrow Morongo Valley, CA 12/27/17 Morongo Valley, CA 12/27/17

Sooty Fox Sparrow Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, CA 12/28/17

Oregon Dark-eyed Junco Idyllwild Nature Center, CA 12/31/17

Fabric Postcards ~ It's my Birthday

 

Greetings Cards ~ 3D Flowers Class

Another excellent class by Donna Rauff on Zoom with this class being a 2 week class on making 3 dimensional flowers.  As I mentioned before, I need a wood burning tool to melt the organza before applying them to the greeting card.  Sometime, I'll have it here to try the second part of the class. These are the base cards which you can use just as they are if desired.

 

Embroidered Greeting Cards ~ Designing using Bernina V7 Software

I've obsessed with making greeting cards.  I've not ever used my Bernina software very much but I can design, add and subtract parts of designs to make new designs and then, add writing to the card.  The first set of designs, I cut a portion of a wreath away to just feature the zinnia and the monarch. The first 2 images are my designs before stitching it out.  In the second version, I rotated the monarch to make it more horizontal.  The next card is a finished stitch out with the greeting card ready to mail to a friend.

This next set of designs, I took a daisy design, deleted one of the flowers and added in the monarch, that was from a different embroidery design entirely.  When I "borrowed" the monarch, I saved it for future use on other postcards.  I am finding doing even the simple design changes are tons of fun.  First image is the design before stitch out.  Next design is actually the greeting card stitched out and assembled.