I recently spotted this amazing beetle in my garden and thought that its colours were so beautiful I had to photograph it. I loved its shiny, metallic appearance but how it was also fluffy around the sides! It was around 2cm long. I looked it up and think it’s a rose chafer (cetonia aurata), apparently a very beneficial beetle to have in the garden because the larvae make good compost!
I had this beautiful bunch of flowers for my birthday this week and thought they would be great for using as the inspiration for a bright, bold colour palette!
It’s been a long time since I did one of these colour palettes and I decided it was time they made a return to my blog! I had been thinking about all the photos I take that I do nothing with, they just end up sitting on my computer and are never looked at. I also enjoy playing with colour, so I will try to make this a regular feature on the blog again.
We have two types of peonies in our garden; some deep red ones which are now over and these beautiful pink flowers which are in full bloom and inspired this pretty pastel colour palette.
This is one lucky newt – the other day as I was walking up the garden path I almost trod on him, but fortunately spotted him in time! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a newt this colour in our garden before; they’re usually much darker. I managed to scoop him up and put him on a leaf by the pond. By the time I had got my camera he had started to move off and was hiding in the leaves.
Spring is well and truly here! :D It’s my favourite time of year – blue skies, the sun is warm (but not too hot!), the garden has come to life and is full of flowers like these tulips. Although our garden is actually looking quite tidy there’s always lots to do – I spent an hour or so yesterday morning potting up sunflower, sweet pea and marigold seedlings…
I’ve almost run out of space on the greenhouse bench so am hoping that some of the plants will be able to go outside before the next ones need planting up. A few years ago I only managed to get one marigold seed to come up – now I have a forest! :)
We have several different colours of heather in our garden and they’re good at attracting the bees and butterflies. This photo was taken before our neighbour’s cat (who I call Kitty) sat on the heather while pouncing on a butterfly. Kitty can be quite naughty! She’s also very sweet and often comes bounding over to say hello when she sees us across the road. :)
It is officially Spring now but it’s still freezing outside – more snow is expected by the weekend! :( I can’t wait until Spring is really here – the bulbs are starting to flower so hopefully it won’t be long now. I took this bright photo of one of the purple crocuses in my garden.
Photographing things in my garden a couple of weeks ago, my eye was caught by the lichen on our pear tree. I loved the texture and bright, warm yellows and thought it would make a great colour palette.
There aren’t a lot of pretty flowers in my garden to photograph at this time of year but I realised there are some interesting textures, like this log, to inspire colour palettes.
I thought I would experiment with something a little different for this colour palette. Instead of taking the palette from a photograph I went on a hunt around my house for objects to photograph as a collection. I started with the bits of sea glass and was thinking of doing a blue/ green theme but it turned into this instead! The colours I chose reminded me of the greyed jade in Pantone’s Fashion colour report for Spring 2013.
