Golden Dreams and a Dragonfly

It's been a while since I posted a photograph worked up with layers in PSE.  And I thought it was about time I actually DID something with these textures I've been creating ...  Hence this Golden Dreams Dragonfly was born on a rainy Saturday afternoon!

Layer 1)  I started with one of the gelatine print textures from last week.
I call this one Golden Dreams.   I doctored up the upper right corner before I set to work with the rest. 
Layer 2) Swirling Snowflake Brush by Linda Nelson at Pixel Berry Pie  in the corners - Overlay Blend Mode at  67% opacity
Layer 3) Dragonfly Brush (my own!) - Soft Light 100%

Although there are some free dragonfly brushes out there, they were too small to fill the space I needed, so I made my own from this picture of a real life specimen who happened into my vicinity a few years ago.   I'm really happy with the way it turned out!

Layer 4) Copy Layer 3 - Soft Light 80%
Layer 5)  Obsidian Dawn Swirl Brushes in the corners - Soft Light 100% (added last)
Layer 6) Text : Dream- Change-Joy - Zapfino Font - Overlay 65%
I looked up the symbolic meaning of Dragonfly, and these were some of the key ideas.  How's that for a positive spin on change?  After some input from a thoughtful friend in Sweden, I changed the words a bit to the modified version at the top of this post.  The original words were : Dream, Joy, Change.  I thought Dream-Imagine-Create elevated this piece even higher.   Here's the first version :

Layer 7) Color Fill Frame (a la Kim Klassen) - black - Soft Light 65%

Sharing with The Texture Artist's Facebook Group. 

Sharing with Texture Artists FaceBook Group.

Sharing with Texture Artists FaceBook Group.

Creative Cue : Dream

Tornado Dancer

Years ago, in my early 20s, I was plagued by recurring nightmares about tornadoes bearing down on my family's house. I couldn't find them, couldn't call out to them to warn them or call them to safety. The sense of terror and frustration and helplessness really got to me ... Living in the midwest, Tonadoes in May and June are a fact of life. You just hope you don't run into one ...

Finally, I shared these dreams with one of my coop housemates, a wise woman named Sinden. She suggested that the Tornado was probably trying to tell me something. Since I kept running away from it and shutting it out, it kept pursuing me ...

So, one day, I planned a meditation where I would meet this Tornado and find out what it wanted to tell me. It came, laughed a bit and said, : "It's about time, kid." His name was Morrison, a small whirlwind--but effective. It took me up into it's whirl so I could see the view from the upper rim It was not spinning wildly up there--it was more like I was in the eye, so it was calm. After a while, the Tornado set me back down on the deck, under the birch trees. He "stepped" back and presented me with two gifts :

1) a four-pointed blue white star
2) a rose just beginning to bloom

I never had another tornado nightmare. I'm not sure I can say much about these two gifts in terms of the symbolism and what they mean to me ... They speak to a place where words don't go easily.

At about the same time, my friend Terra Gold (a budding Shamin) who lead drum circles made a drum. She put it in front of an open oven to dry, but the heat was too intense and it warped. She brought this sad bent drum to a drum circle and I fell in love with it. It sat perfectly on my knees. At some point, I decided to paint these images on the drum. Here it is ...

See other Creative Cues for Dream.

This story was published previously at Hidden Passages in May 2008.