Christmas times past

As I mentioned in an earlier post I spent much of my working life in Strasbourg. Christmas was my favourite time in that city as it always had a very festive air about it and people went to a great deal of trouble to decorate it at Christmas time. It is famous for its Christmas market of which there were several, in different areas of the city. I used to love wandering around the streets and markets during my lunch hours. The following photos are some of my favourites taken there over the years.

this toy shop always had a fabulous window display of bears

display outside a jewellry shop

the largest nativity scene made out of salt pastry

the Christmas tree in the main square

entrance to one of the markets

one of many stalls selling beautiful glass balls

and other decorations galore

one of the stalls near the cathedral

 

decorated facade of the most expensive chocolate shop in Strasbourg

decorated street in the area known as “petite France”

 

 

You can see more of these photos here if you are interested

PAF-Christmas 2011

For many years my work took me regularly to Strasbourg (France). The city went all out in preparing for Christmas with many businesses making a special effort to decorate their premises. Part of my Christmas preparation was to walk through the streets marvelling at people’s inventiveness. This is one such scene.

I’ve processed this photo using PDPA’s French script on parchment at 100% opacity.

Helgas challenge number 6

This latest challenge is a continuation of last week’s challenge to get inspired by those you love. I missed that one as I was away so have had to do 2 weeks work in 1 week! I ended up creating two separate collages as I decided the size of the first one did not lend itself to the cards I would be making.

This is the first one

I manipulated the photo of us in photo editing software so that it looked as if we were enclosed in a sphere (ie. a Christmas decoration)

and this is the final one

I will be sending “virtual” Christmas cards to some of my overseas online friends this year so I have adapted my card for this purpose. I have created a Word document which, when printed and folded, will be a real paper card but without the postage. The image has to be inserted upside down so that it will be the right way up when it is folded. This is what the document looks like in its flat form. The text can be adapted as necessary.