Paper tree

It's time for 2015's first edition of the ROY G BIV photo challenge, so we are once again beginning with the color "red" (the "R" in ROY). My images this month are of our 2014 Christmas tree, pre-"assembly."

The Christmas tree was always one of my favorite traditions of the holiday season, but getting an evergreen home on foot and up fifty-five steps became such a project, and then I always felt guilty having to dispose of the tree in the new year. So, as an alternative, for a few years we made one of tissue paper pom poms suspended from the ceiling fan in a pyramid arrangement that loosely represented a tree. Last year we were in Sydney over the holidays, but my daughter emptied several bookcases to create a tree of books that we draped with beaded garlands and a string of lights. I really liked that one, but it made accessing many of our books a bit of a challenge until we finally got around to disassembling it some time in February!

Last November, as I was hunting out crepe paper to make streamers for my daughter's birthday, I found some luxurious (i.e. beautifully sturdy) red and purply-red papers. Since the holidays arrive soon after her birthday, I grabbed some olive crepe paper as well, thinking maybe it could at some point be brought into the equation, extending the birthday decorations into December. The ceilings in the living room are a few meters high, and I envisioned a second, more intimate, "ceiling" composed of crisscrossing streamers.

After trimming the paper into narrow sections, there were far more than I needed for the birthday decorating, so they sat, pretty little rolls, in a basket. I liked how they were all kind of squished together, somehow reminding me of roses. At some point I got the idea to create a Christmas tree with streamers. We gathered the ends together at the top, suspended them from the trusty ceiling fan, and then attached the loose ends to a ribbon-covered hula-hoop...so there we had it——a lovely "tree" of red, purply-red & olive streamers.

But first, I took a few pictures...

Incidentally, I find red to be a very difficult color to photograph accurately when it is the main color in a composition, so I tried under a number of different occasions before getting the handful of images you see here. Controluce, with the day's later light, seemed to best capture the reds & purply-reds. Then all of the JPEGS became washed out once they were imported into Blogger, giving the lovely reds a pinkish cast, so I resaved them as PNGs. (I include this info because I know others have also had issues with photos retaining their properties in Blogger...the PNGs are a bit darker, but definitely truer to the originals.)

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I just wanted to say thanks again for the condolences and very kind comments in response to my last blog post. Things continue to be hard here; it still feels like things will never be the same in our little world, but the support is very much appreciated. Thank you...

 

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And, for those of you who may not be familiar with the

ROY G BIV photo challenge from past years, it was first begun

by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is

devoted to a different color of the rainbow, and once we do each

of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. All

are welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's

 blogs for links to other participants. Guidelines are here.