Dreams and Memories by Firelight : Texture Tuesday

Kind of a nostalgic picture for me.  That winter, my husband and kid built a Quinzhee (kind of like an igloo, but not).  The kid really enjoyed it and treated it like a fort.  He was allowed to bring matches and candles into the quinzhee ...   I took this picture and I almost deleted it as a failed picture--but now I kinda like it.  It came up naturally with certain effects we try to add by other means.

It's got that warm firelight texture and the dreamy blur of memory ...   It kind of looks like  he's riding a flying carpet with mountains behind him.   Added Kim Klassen's Appreciate Texture.
 

Sharing with Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday and Texture Artists's FaceBook Group.

Beyond Layers Day 30 : Triptych

Part 2 of this week's lesson was to create a trio of related pics.  After much deliberation, I finally chose the same pictures from the animated GIF in the previous post.   Mostly because they went together.   This was a fun piece to do--I must be getting considerably more comfortable with PhotoShop Elements!  No swearing this time!

Photo Processing :
Clean edits on each of the three photos, separately.
Make each photo black and white, separately.
Kim showed us how to use the crop tool to extend the canvas on the background of a single photo.  That way, you can make extra room for the additional photos.  It was pretty easy to drop them in place!
Now that the 3 pics act as 1 unit, I tied them all together by adding a layer of Kim Klassen's Wonderful Magic at Soft Light blend mode at 54% opacity.
At this point, I saved a copy of the triptych with layers intact, in case I want to revisit it later.
I saved new copy with a flattened image :

Then I essentially started a new project by bringing in the turquoise background by Lost and Taken Turquoise Grunge 10.
Then I simply laid the flattened triptych on top as a new layer, and sized each accordingly.
For the Triptych, I played with the Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings for drop shadow and bevel effects.
Finally, the Text layer :  Pea Aimee font at 100 pt.  

That's it!  What do you think?

Beyond Layers Day 30 : Playing with Animated GIFs

The lesson this week was on how to make an animated gif.  I see these all over Tumblr for Once Upon a Time and Rumplestiltskin/Mr Gold (Robert Carlyle has got to be the most gif-able actor ever! So many goofy faces!), so of course I was interested in learning how to make gifs.    

This is a series of pictures of my kid a few years ago--back when he allowed himself to be photographed smiling.  

The only processing on the photos was to convert them to black and white.  Then I layered them one on top of the other and saved them for the web as an animated gif.  This is the half-second delay.  That's all there is to it!

Here's another one.  This is my dear friend, Caroline, wearing her grandmother's apron as if she's becoming that kind of sweet grandmother who bakes.  She is sweet, and she has recently become a grandmother, too.



I see how making gifs could become addicting!

Creative Cue : Market

This is from the fall of 2002 at The Farmer's Market in Madison. Oliver is just over a year old here. The sights and smells and tastes were a bit much for him then, so he took a nap.

See the other Creative Cue interpretations for Market.

Oliver on Exhibit in Madison

My "Oliver" Portrait Quilt will be on display at The Quilt Expo in Madison, WI, Sept. 13-14-15, 2007. Stop in to see it LIVE, if you're in the area. I plan to be there on the 15th (Saturday) oohhing and aahhing over everyone else's luscious contributions. See you there!

It is an honor to be part of this show with other Wisconsin Quilters!

First Place for Fabric Portrait!

I was honored (and surprised!) to have won 1st Place in the Table Runner and Wall Hanging division of the judged quilt show at the 2007 Sewing Expo in Oshkosh, WI, March 16-17.

I won a basket chock-full of sewing notions!

As if that wasn't enough, I also won the new Viking Platinum sewing machine that Sew 'N Sew of Appleton donated for the event. They have also offered lessons to help me get acquainted with the new machine. Cool!

It's wonderful to have the validation that all the hours in the sewing room have been time well spent (not only for my mental well-being!)

Line Drawing of Oliver

This is the line drawing I developed from the photo below.



I printed a color copy of the photo as big as would fit on 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper. Then I went to work with my light box (I LOVE my light box!). It took a while to develop the sight to turn a photo into a line drawing. Then I took it to a copy shop and had them blow it up to about 3 feet. They can do this on a special copier anf they charge between $2-4. It's so much easier than trying to struggle with an projector ...