Embracing the new…

Due to the fact that I have started to concentrate more on digital and photo art more than traditional mediums, I won’t be posting to this blog as much anymore. I have started another wordpress blog calledEmbracing Life Digitally to showcase all my things photographic, digital and haiku – a far cry from where I started out as a blogger in 2006!

I hope you’ll visit me there, but here is where journal pages, rubber stamping and mixed media belong, along with all the altered art that I am best known for! ♥

Sleeping with the enemy!

Does anyone else have pets who pretend to get along but beat other up when you’re out?! That’s the only explanation for Millie and Shadow… Shadow’s a complete swine and really ready with the “paws” – he’ll box anything his size, bigger or smaller. Millie’s an attack-dog in her head, but can be really cowardly too… Hmmm – so this is quite a rare capture!

I wonder what that cat’s thinking? 😉

Regrets? I have a few…

Just messing about with words and numbers really! For Take a Word this week – “Sepia”…

I’ve always thought this woman is pretty eerie! Thanks to Bonnie Zieman for the textures and to Photoshop Warrior for the tutorial which showed me how to create a ‘classic photo effect’!

The images are all from Elizabeth Golden (Last door down the hall) – thank you!

Please note: I shall be drawing the winning name for the My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software tomorrow, so if you want to be in with a chance of winning, please go HERE and enter!

You are so boo-tiful!

I am enjoying a very loving relationship with my DD’s new kitten – Boo – at the moment, as he doesn’t live here and I can see him grow via the photos she takes with her Blackberry! I then demand those and set to work playing around with them…

It may have started life as a blurry, not so great image, but I love how it has transformed into such an adorable image, right? Ah… the magic of Kim Klassen’s textures and some judicious blending of layers with Photoshop!

I used Zuzu and Edward from the 12 days of textures that Kim is giving us each day in the run up to Christmas. What a generous gift indeed!

Oh and the font? Adorable… yep, that’s what it’s called – so apt!! ♥

On a commercial note, I do have a Custom Pet Portrait service, available through my Etsy shop. Happy Holidays!! 🙂

12 Days of textures and more…

I seem to have a lot going on this week (again!)… Firstly here’s a photo of our Christmas tree, edited with layers and a new texture called lilly, from the wonderful Kim Klassen. Kim is sharing 12 days of [free] textures from today until Christmas day, lilly being the first!

The font I have used is called Curlz MT and it’s appropriately frivolous for the festive season, I think!

I have here a “free to use” Blog Christmas Card… If you like this digital painting of mine and would like to use it, please click HERE, and download it.

Happy Days!

I created this a while ago, and revisited it today so that I can have it ready for the Three Muses (‘Tis the Season) on Wednesday. You just never know how busy it’s going to get at this time of the year, do you?! I have discreetly embedded my name into the file so if you see someone claiming it as their own, do let me know, won’t you? If you download it for your own personal use, that’s great – you don’t even have to give me credit,  though it’d be nice!! 😉

Joyfully, I can post!

It’s been ages since I have taken part in regular art blog challenges – all my reasons were self-inflicted so I am happy to be able to just blog and post a photo with no agenda other than following a theme.

For Take a Word this week – “JOY”!

Thanks to Nancy Donaldson for the great texture! These 3 are sitting on top of a DVD unit next to the Christmas tree. Frosty is one of those annoying battery-operated xmas toys that sings the song and I love it!! The other 2 are part of my reindeer collection…

I’ve been writing a lot lately and working more regularly away from home, so I get tired more easily these days. It’s lovely to have a couple of major projects out of the way now, so I feel I shall be able to relax and thoroughly enjoy the Holidays when they arrive. 🙂

‘Tis the season…

Another Photo Art Friday entry, this time featuring my favourite big reindeer! He’s really soft and cuddly and is one of a number of reindeer that I have collected over the years. I really adore toy reindeer – no idea why! I used to get  a new reindeer every year till I realised that we’d soon run out of space for them, so I haven’t bought a new one this year (yet!!).

He’s sitting on my printer at the moment, smiling benevolently at me as I type… Well, I like to think so anyway! I used intensify, vintage wine label and holey grunge, adjusting blending modes to keep him soft and fluffy-looking. The font is Ace Crikey and I wish all the PAF participants a very Happy Holiday Season, whatever their beliefs.

See you all again in January 2012!  🙂

All I want for Christmas…

… is a bit of peace, good food and time to enjoy it!! For PAF this week, I have used a couple of Bonnie’s new textures – vintage wine label and intensify – to enhance this pic of my DD and her friend contemplating the proximity of the Holiday season… I also used one of Jerry Jones’s photo overlay tints (sunshine), a green colour layer, and a mask from Nancy Donaldson!

Addis ababa is the font…

There will be some gorgeous photos on display over at Pixel Dust Photo Art, so do have a look. I’m going to be browsing after I get home from work tomorrow… Hey-ho! 🙂

Let’s celebrate! TT

Our photos are centred around the theme of celebration this week for Texture Tuesday, using at least one of Kim’s textures. I chose the latest one from her – “Look-up”.

I am celebrating how much I have learned from Kim, Nancy and Bonnie, about photos, photo art and textures – plus the joy of play in Photoshop. To anyone who doesn’t consider this an art form, have a go. You’ll be surprised just how easily you can lose yourself in a virtual palette of shades, tones, moods and atmosphere… I dare you!!

I took this photo with my mobile phone. The clematis sits on my front window sill behind a net curtain which is quite dense, to give us a little privacy! I tucked the curtain behind the plant to get a decent shot and when I started to process it, the magic of Kim’s linen-like texture was revealed.

I copied the image first and used screen @70% to make the flowers stand out. When I added ‘look-up’, it made the curtain fade away completely – wonderful! I copied this layer 3 more times and used overlay, colour burn and multiply all at 100%. I did use a mask on the final layer to ‘clean up’ the flowers a little.

To that I added a layer of Nancy’s texture with text – colour burn 100% – and erased it from the flower heads…

The font is “chiller”.

You can find lots of wonderfully textured photos over at TT – the Cafe.

Texture challenge from Nancy…

I really have fallen in love with textures, haven’t I? To the degree where I feel less guilt every day for not making any mixed media artwork. Ooops! That’s my secret out now, no more “guilty pleasure”…

So for her latest texture challenge, Nancy Donaldson gave us new grungey textures to play with – oh did I enjoy this one!

All I have done is use one of the garage textures, and duplicated it until I got the right blend mode, changing them up can gave such unexpected results.

Method: garage1 – (all at 100%, unless I say otherwise!) – multiply, colour burn, overlay @71%. Then a further 4 x colour burn, using the mask feature to erase some texture from the leaf and stem/s.

My Mahonia never looked this good before – although admittedly, that is just my opinion!! Obviously this pic has a couple of texture layers, and is much more “extreme” (hint!!), plus I used a gradient and curves too.

Edit: I used 3 layers of texture garage1 and the “drippy” one, with multiply, colour burn and exclusion @100%. I then added a gradient overlay which changed the colours to green/red and messed around with the curves, which seemed to shift the emphasis of the tones around. I played with a mask on that last layer to remove a little of the colour/texture from parts of the leaves and flowery bits! Forgive my lack of botanical knowledge – I can only say what I see! 😉

I’ll share my process later – but I really must go iron a shirt for work… *rolls eyes* 😉 Done!