More digital water colors :)

I've been playing with this tutorial.
Here are some of my results:

Credits here at Designer Digitals

from a little excursion into the city yesterday

From a trip may years ago!

For the current Pioneer Woman Edit This competition.

Digital watercolors

I have been inspired by beautiful digital watercolors by digital scrapbooker Agnes Granouillac. I don't have the brush skills or patience for such beautiful work so I went off searching for some tutorials that might help me achieve something a bit similar.
I found these: 15 artistic watercolor effects and tried the Easy Watercolor Painting Effect
With a little experimentation I produced this layout:

(full credits here)

I started with this photo of my daughter because of her mona-lisa smile and the plain background. It also is not very sharp so it's not much good on its own:

So I followed through the tutorial.
Here is the image after adding the 'cutout filter' layer with luminosity blend mode (step 6):

After adding the 'dry brush filter' layer with screen blend mode (step 8):

After adding the 'median filter' layer with soft light mode (step 8):

But I wasn't happy with it quite. I wanted some pencil/ink edges. So I added an 'accented edges filter' layer in pin light blend mode as follows:

to get this:

the difference is not clear at this resolution, but the eyes and eyebrows in particular look like they have been inked in.
In retrospect I could have added a sketch layer over the top a bit like this: portrait to sketch
I used these Designer Digitals products to make it look like it was painted on a canvas:

     

I clipped the photo to one of Katie's Watery Photo Masks which were blended to the linen texture paper in multiply mode so the texture showed through.

I added the watery splashes around and painted them with color (click the "lock transparency pixels" icon on the top left of the layers palette and then paint) inspired by this tutorial: brilliant matte dispersion effects in photoshop

(Of course, I'd be mortified if I was that messy with paint in real life!!)
And after adding the frame and background paper it was done :)

I want to try a few more of those 15 artistic watercolor effects tutorials, they look like so much fun!!

And here are a couple of other fun tutorials I'd love to to try:
puzzle
abstract watercolor wallpaper

Do you have any other tutorials that you've enjoyed? I'd love to know!

Remembering

A significant photo of my daughter taken in New York City 20 years ago. Much has changed since then!

Good design and inspiration

When I first started scrapping, I could a photo or two I wanted to scrap and some pretty paper to match but then I was paralysed! So I approached it like a research project and spent countless hours

• reading tutorials on balance (rule of thirds, white space, visual triangles), contrast, emphasis and repetition, leading the eye, focal points
• analysing two page design techniques
• collecting every page map by Becky Fleck
• storing every page I saw online that was inspiring

But after all of that I found that the most motivating and practical way to learn was to join online challenges. In early 2007 I discovered an Ad Inspiration challenge at twopeasinabucket organised by Paula Gilarde. Paula has a gift for choosing Ads that are great examples of good design. Almost every week for the following 3 years I created a page based on one of the Ads she chose... then Paula took a well deserved break...
Now Paula has resumed her Ad Inspiration Challenge from her blog and last week she tempted me with this double page Ad:

Here is my take:

Credits here.
As usual, Paula's choice of Ad had just the right balance of contrast and repetition.
Some of my all-time favorite pages are from Paula's inspirational choices.
I hope you'll join me in one of Paula's Ad Inspiration Challenges!

ten things you might not know about me

Britgirl - my amazingly creative friend in the UK - has challenged me to come up with 10 things you didn't know about me. It takes some thinking!

1. I was an asthmatic child; pale and anaemic. I was hospitalised with pneumonia at 7. It took my parents 15 years to organise themselves to move from the cold, damp town I grew up in to somewhere with a better climate. I have been well ever since!
2. My great, great grandparents all arrived in Australia between 1840 and 1870 from all over the world. I am about 1/2 English, and the other half is a mix of Swiss-Italian, Cornish, Scottish, Northern Irish, Southern Irish, German and possibly Norwegian.
3. I met my husband when I joined an amateur athletic club. He competed in many places in Australia and at the World Fire Fighters games in New Zealand and in Las Vegas, USA.
4. I am a messy, indecisive procrastinator!
5. I have always looked young for my age. At 21 I could still get children's fares on public transport. I had my first child at 29 and yet people still say to me that I look too young to have a 20 year old daughter.
6. I have a degree in Geology and Mathematics. I enjoyed the statistical analysis involved in geology. 
7. I wore my skivvy backwards all day yesterday before I noticed on the way home.
8. I try to leave a small footprint on the earth. We have a compost bin, a vegetable garden, we dry our clothes on a clothes line, we have solar hot water and recently installed solar panels that can generate 4Kwh (more than we use on a sunny day).
9. I was christened and confirmed in the Presbyterian Church.
10. Both of my parents were teachers. Most of their close relatives were teachers, too. Guess what I do for a living!! ;)

Now I tag fellow Aussie scrappers
Carol
and
Carolyn

And just to leave you with a few pages I've scrapped lately. There are some new Roadside Designs templates that are so beautifully clean and simple. You could use them for anything, but I stuck with the original inspiration and scrapped some wedding photos. See, there's a photo of my sisters and me - I'm the eldest. I was 22 when I was married, and I'm more than 3 years older than my next sister.

 credits here

 credits here

 credits here

Parties galore

The next 12 months sees every one of us having a significant birthday. First our middle daughter's 18th at the end of this month. Then a couple of 50ths for my husband and me. January sees our youngest turn 16 and in June our eldest turns 21! Now we're not usually party people, but I think the next year might see us having to stretch out of our comfort zone a little!
So our eldest turned 20 last month. She is not often home and she didn't want a party, but I felt I had to do something. I rustled up a few friends and they rustled up a few more and they all came for a lovely lunch. I sat inside and watched as they chatted. I thought how lovely her friends were and how she was growing up and felt happy and sad and nostalgic all at once!
I scrapped this page about it - with the lyrics from "Cat's in the cradle" which captured my emotions at the time.

I used a free template by Roadside Designs from her blog.
I also scrapped some joyful pages of the friends. I love how you can scrap the same photo and same event from different perspectives!

All products from Designer Digitals (credits here)

It also appears to be the birthday of a particular country today. Not that I'm very excited about another country's birthday but it is hard to resist a good birthday sale! So here's one from Roadside Designs:

So if you are having a significant birthday soon - happy birthday to you, too! In the meantime, enjoy some birthday shopping!

farewell to [ksharonkdesigns]!

I almost fell off my chair when I saw this post on Sharon's blog yesterday:

I started digiscrapping in mid 2006 and discovered Sharon's goodies in early 2007. I was so inspired by her clean scrapping style. I looked forward each week to her new Friday freebie that she so generously shared. Sharon has been a big part of my digiscrapping journey and I want to thank her for the inspiration, the freebies, and for the opportunity to be part of her CT for a short time.
Here is a collage of some of the pages I have made with Sharon's templates and kits (made with shapecollage).

Thanks, Sharon, for taking us all on such a fun ride. I look forward to seeing where life takes you next!