Would you combine such colours for a Scrapbooking Page?

Well, in the wake of uploading the latest issue (November) of the SimplyScrapbookingNow.com Newsletter last night, I am currently in the process of "clearing the decks"!

Goodness me it is a mess in here! Mostly of paperwork and not of craft stuff unfortunately, but my aim is get stuck into a page or two tomorrow.

Honey has not one, but two birthday parties to go to tomorrow! What it is to be popular eh?!! LOL

Anyway... Have you worked out what the top picture here is yet?

Well it's a photograph from one of the winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the year 2008. And actually the picture intrigued me, but that's not why I post it here... I actually think that the little write up that went with it was beautifully written! It is posted below exactly as I found it on msn news.

The second picture I do post here for aesthetic reasons... such beauty in nature... such superb colours. It is a "Carmine bee-eater"... um I wonder what he likes to eat?!

A fabulous photograph!

Anyway, I give you the write up with that picture as the text is evocative too.

Now would you think to put those colours together in a scrapbooking layout? Nature.... doesn't have any rules... and neither should we!

(For the TOP picture)
Baris Koca, Turkey: Starling genie (Animal Behaviour: Birds)
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008
Birds are among the most popular subjects for photographers entering the competition, but the challenge is to take a picture with aesthetic appeal that also shows active or interesting behaviour. At Lake Mogan, near Ankara in Turkey, the photographer tried over and over again, day after freezing day, to capture the amazing shape-shifting of the flocks of starlings coming into roost, but none of his attempts did the spectacle justice. Then, one weekend, something different happened. The lake was frozen, and so he was able to stand facing the reeds with the sun behind him. As usual, at around 5pm, thousand-strong flocks of starlings wheeled in over the horizon to merge into dense super-flocks, providing half an hour of incredible aerobatic routines. Then, as the sun set, the birds pirouetted into the spotlight of its rays, and the perfect picture was created. As they descended, their wings sounded like soft clapping. It was ‘so relaxing’ that he stopped taking photographs and just listened. Then the starlings twittered down into the reeds, and the curtain of darkness fell.

(For the BOTTOM picture)
Chris van Rooyen, South Africa: Bee-eater ballet (Animal Portraits)
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008
This category, one of the most popular in the competition, invites portraits that capture the character or spirit of an animal in an original and memorable way. A boat moored on the Zambezi was the perfect hide from which to observe the colony. At least 1,000 carmine bee-eaters were breeding in this area of riverbank, in Caprivi, Namibia – one of the largest colonies in southern Africa. Whenever a loitering raptor drifted too close, a burst of carmine would explode from the numerous burrows. Activity was constant and the birds never stopped chirruping to each other as they chased insects. “I had the distinct impression some were just having fun,” says Chris. “They would weave around in the wind, hover in the updraft created by the riverbank, and then fold their wings to parachute back into the nest-hole.”

Words By Benjamin Chernivsky
Photographer, MSN UK News
For more information about the photographs visit Natural History Museum: official website