Searching for My Creative Side. I've Almost Found It...

Hello my friends.  Now that the holidays have come and gone, it's time for me to dust off my camera and get back to work. I have been itching to create, but wanted to do something different.  I spent the entire day thinking up what I wanted to do, but gathering the energy to actually do it is another thing.   This afternoon I finally  put my skills into the drive position!   I decided to do some watercolor work using my boys art kit and a jumbo art pad.  I painted a photo background by using pastel pink, purple and teal.    The background didn't really turn out as good as I envisioned, but I knew that I could tweak it around in Photoshop.   While my background was drying, I went out to the front yard to gather any flowers that might be blooming.  Thankfully there were a few, thanks to the nice warm weather we've been having.  I found one white rose, some pretty little purple cluster flowers, and some variegated foliage.   I went back inside, put them in a little bud vase and checked on my background, which was already dry! So, the next thing for me to do is decide where I wanted to shoot.  Did I want to go outside and shoot in that beautiful aftern0on light that I love so much, or do I fire up the halogens and shoot in the photo tent?   I decided to shoot indoors, since it was pretty windy out, which is not really fun to shoot in windy conditions. I took about 10 photos and worked on them in photoshop.  I was happy with the exposure, lighting, focus, colors etc. but there was something missing.  I love to add an artistic flare to my photos, something that sets them apart from just a regular snapshot of some flowers in a vase (set in front of a wildly colorful background), but what do I do?  It's been a long time since I have done this type of artwork and I am a little bit rusty.  These photos desperately needed something to help make them stand out.  After mulling it over for, um...about 5 minutes, I figured out what I wanted to do.  Here are the final results.  They are different, and I do like them, but I really want to try this technique with more exotic flowers.  That is next on my agenda. :)[gallery link="file" orderby="title"]