Birth of a Dragonfly.

I am always in awe of Mother Nature, Spring brings new life and new beginnings for my garden and it's wildlife. I love seeing the new shoots push out of the ground and seemingly dead shrubs producing vibrant green shoots and leaves!
We have a very small pond in our garden and it was teaming with life just a few short month's after we built it a couple of years ago. Last year though we couldn't understand why our tadpoles were going missing, we ended up with no little froglets at all.
Then one summer evening I spotted the ugliest, huge bug I have ever seen clinging onto one of the pond iris stems. Fascinated by the creature I called my hubby and girls out to see it too and as we stood wondering what it was the body started to split open!
The ugly bug turned out to be a dragonfly larvae and over the next couple of hours we were spellbound into watching the new dragonfly come to life!  

As it's mid-month we have a new challenge reveal for you over at Sketch N Scrap and I used the sketch to scrap (some of!) the photo's I took of the dragonfly emerging.

Today's sketch comes courtesy of Kelly Holifield. 

Of course I needed to spread the photo's over two pages so I adapted the sketch to make a double-pager. The right hand side is based on the sketch.

Here is the right side on it's own. As you can see from the photo's the dragonfly is so much larger than the larvae shell that it's amazing to think that it was squashed up inside!

The left side and the first photo shows the head emerging as the shell splits open!

These Thickers worked perfectly for the effect I was after with the title.

I kept the page very simple as the photo's are quite detailed, with just a few paint splats and a couple of understated clusters.

From just the larvae that we counted we estimated we had more than fifteen in the pond feeding on our poor little tadpoles. No wonder we had no survivors! 

I wonder what will become of them this year!

I hope you enjoyed my little story today,

Don't forget to play along with us at Sketch N Scrap.

All the details can be found on the Sketch N Scrap blog HERE.

Sketch N Scrap is so excited to announce their THIRD annual Birthday Bash beginning May 1st! There will be lots of fun challenges, lots of inspiration and best of all LOTS of prizes!!!!  

So make sure and join Sketch N Scrap everyday in May and be ready to be inspired!!!