How I did it

Because Lorraine from With a grateful prayer and a thankful heart asked me to share how I did my painting of Duke in photoshop elements I thought I would throw together a semi coherent tutorial.

I'll attempt to show you how I created this picture

I'm using photoshop elements 7 and working with the impressionist brush. I don't know which other versions this is available in. Sorry about that.

Any way, to begin open up the picture you want to use. This will work on any picture you want. Duplicate your layer. The duplicate is the one you will be doing all the work on.

In the tool bar go to your brush tool, right click to bring up the menu and choose the impressionist brush

At the top of your screen choose your brush. All of them will give  you different looks and you can play around to see which one you like the best. I found though that a smaller size brush works the best. Here I chose one of the wet media brushes.

On the duplicate layer just start dabbing around your picture. It's not going to look like much at first but have fun with it. Remember if you don't like what you did control z is your friend :)
When you think you're done go over to the layers pallette and change the blending mode on the duplicate layer to darker color (you can chose a different blending mode if you prefer). 

Now you're done. If you want a stronger effect, just go back over the duplicate layer with the brush and dab around some more until it looks the way you want it.

Not much of a tutorial but I hope someone finds it useful.

The plan

Do you remember a couple weeks ago when I said that I had something coming up that was both exciting and scary? I thought about keeping it a secret until it really happened but it turns out that I have nothing else to blog about.
Well the plan involved some of this

This is about all I've been doing in my spare time lately. These will all eventually end up in a can like I did with the spring flowers, The smaller ones I have another idea for but not quite sure how I want to do them. So why am I making all these?
Because I'm planning on doing a craft show with a friend of mine in September. I have no idea if I'll be able to put together enough stuff or not but I guess I'll find out.
Aside from the quilling I thought I might take along some of my photography too. I'll be doing it in the form of either fridge magnets or cards or both.
The picture above I'm pretty sure will be going along only it will look like this.

Any way, if I don't spend as much time commenting in the next couple months you'll know that I'm frantically trying to put stuff together.
Wish me luck. I think I'm going to need it :)

Asking for a little help from my friends

I just love the chance to play in Photoshop. Sometimes I like what I get and sometimes I don't but I always have fun.
I dug this picture out of an old file the other day

Now I know that this picture is no photographic wonder, but I like it. I said to myself, "Self, lets see if we can make this picture better" Of course I agreed and set out to tackle the job.

When I was finished it looked a little something like this 

Actually, it looked exactly like that but it really isn't finished. I wanted to put a quote or something on the left hand side. Now here's where you come in. Give me suggestions. It can be a quote, saying or just a single word. What would you put on this picture. Tell me in the comment section. If I choose your suggestion I'll send you a little prize. What that prize is I just don't know yet but it will be something.

How about one more look. Side by side, before and after

Grocery shopping

What do you buy when you go to the grocery store? We went last Saturday and Wade bought burger, steaks, chops and chicken.
I had something else in mind.
Now I didn't intend to buy anything but when we got there they had all their plants reduced. I've been looking for a lilac bush so I asked the girl that was working outside if they had any. It was my lucky day, they did. Even better, they had two different kinds.  I opted for this one. Nice size and only $19.99

Happy as a clam I headed into the store to find Wade. He didn't stick around and wait for me, all he could think about was "shopping, get in get what you want and get out". He is so NOT a shopper.
As I was saying I headed into the store but just before I reached the door I spotted this.

Don't you just love the colors? Want to see the whole thing? Well of course you do. Here it is

The best part about this whole shopping trip was that when I went to the register my $19.99 lilac bush rang up as $14.99. Yeah me!!!

In search of a blog post

All day long I've been trying to catch up on my reading and come up with something for tonight's post. Now I'm late but I have something.
I dug through folder after folder of pictures and settled on this one.

I opened it up in photoshop and made some adjustments and got this.

Then I noticed that the way the shadow was laying on the robin it looked like a blue stripe. An idea hit. I give you the most patriotic robin I have ever seen.

Something to tweet about

Who needs Twitter, I've get plenty of tweets right in my own yard.
I did a little bird watching out my front window and these two were quite accommodating.

I also did a little bit of playing around with Photoshop

I think these two would look nice on a card

A feather in my cap

The other day while out playing with the camera I had such a cool experience I have to share it with you. I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of my house taking pictures of the flowers. When I got up I wandered over to the tree and was taking pictures of leaves. I turned around and I was about 5 feet away from the bird feeder. The amazing thing was that there was a bird sitting on it. I raised the camera ever so slowly and snapped. The bird didn't budge. I must have taken a dozen pictures and he didn't move. I slowly walked around to the other side of the tree he was still there so I took some more pictures. I had my sony with me which only has the 18-55 lens on it. I took a chance and went in the house and grabbed my point and shoot that has 10x zoom. I slowly and quietly walked back out to the front yard. HOORAY! The bird is still there. I took another dozen or so pictures. Again I was only about 5 feet away from the feeder.

I couldn't wait to get back in the house and see what I got. Now I must confess here that I'm horrible at paying attention to critical things when I'm taking pictures. Needless to say in most of the photos the bird is in total shadows, BUT, all was not lost. I did get a few good ones.
This one didn't turn out too bad.

Another confession, I don't know a whole lot about birds yet. Some of you experts have more than likely figured that one out. I looked at this next picture and thought, wow, that bird has some strange looking eyes.

When I looked at this one I realized, that birds been sleeping. 

That had to have been one worn out bird to be so tired that it didn't care one bit about how close I was or how many pictures I took. Maybe he can spread the word to all his birdie friends that I'm harmless and I only want their pictures.

In all three of these pictures I used textures that I got from Shadowhouse Creations and Kim Klassens Cafe

Feeding frenzy

What a wonderful surprise I came home to the other day. I pulled in my driveway and spotted a flash of yellow from the tree in my front yard. I immediately knew it had to be a gold finch and they are always a welcome sight. I got out of the car and suddenly I realized that there wasn't one but at least a dozen of them.
In this first picture there are 3 on the feeder and 4 on the ground.

Apparently they are quite pleased with the cuisine at this particular establishment because they have been returning. It is a total pleasure to watch them.

I used a texture from Shadowhouse creations and another from Kim Klaussen. It may possibly be a bit on the dark side but I liked it

Monday Madness

Not really so much madness going on today but it is Monday. We actually reached 60 degrees today but with lots of rain. Tonight and tomorrow it's supposed to get cold and turn to snow. Oh, well I guess there is some madness in there after all.
I'll just console myself while you look at another result of my play time over the weekend.

This was from a couple weeks ago. We went out to eat after work and I played with my camera while Wade checked out the salad bar.

More editing

Doing the before and after challenge the other day got me in the mood to do some more creative edits. That also translates into my weekend didn't go according to plan. Yes I did do a little (and I do mean little) bit of cleaning, I did work on some craft projects, even finished one. Mostly I laid around, took naps and did a whole lot of nothing. It was rather nice.
So today I'm going to give you a couple more edits I did.

This was taken in the back yard. Just as I was taking the picture the bird started to fly away. Couldn't have worked out better.

now I have a before and after. I was outside enjoying the warmer weather yesterday and just thought the sky looked rather pretty. 

The textured overlay that I used in all of these was one that I got from Shadowhouse Creations. Amazing stuff over there and he generously offers it all for free.

The Brenda Photo Challenge (3-19) before and after

It's another Brenda Photo Challenge and this one is before and after. This was posted at just the right time for me. I had just finished doing an edit to an old picture and I was getting ready to post it on my blog. Well then I read the theme for the challenge and knew that I had to hold off and save it.
I used a textured overlay on the photo. The texture was a freebie I got from Kim Klassen cafe. (at least I'm pretty sure that's the texture I used) Why oh why don't I ever write these things down?
So lets get on with the picture already shall we.
This is the original picture that I took last summer

And this is the after

I wish I could tell you exactly what I did here but again, I don't remember. I may or may not have adjusted the brightness and contrast. I can tell you that the texture was layered over the original picture and I most likely used the soft light blending mode. I tend to do a lot of playing around until I like the way it looks.

If all goes according to plan I will be spending most of my Saturday doing some much needed cleaning and hopefully working on a few projects I have started. I will get around to checking out all the other entries but probably not until Saturday night.
Check out the rest of the entries on the Brenda Photo Challenge. Just keep in mind that I post mine the night before so others may not have theirs up yet.

take a seat

Wade is in the midst of a huge project at work. The shop he works at had two buildings. They just sold one of them so now they are in the process of moving everything from one building into the other. Not only does it involve moving heavy machinery but he's also in charge of setting everything up in the other building. Since they have been there quite some time they have accumulated a lot of junk that they are throwing away rather than moving. Some of it may be perfectly good but they just don't need it so out it goes.
Over the weekend, Wade took me on a little tour to show me how empty the one building was and how he had set up the other.
 While we were in the one building I saw this group of chairs destined for the trash. I don't know why but I was fascinated by them.

It was rather dark in the building and there was a light shining down right on the chairs. It just seemed to put them in the spotlight and say "Hey, you with the camera, come take our picture".  So I did. I changed the photo to a sepia tone because it just seemed to fit.

Before and After

Hooray it's Friday. Boo, it's snowing again. It was more shoveling when we got home tonight. Now I'm way behind on reading all your blogs. I'm even last minute on writing this one.
On to the subject. Tonight lets do a little before and after.
I can't believe I'm showing you this one but Duke told me to just do it. Since some of you asked for a picture of the new hair color I've got a before and after. The before I took with my cell phone to send my daughter a picture of my new hair cut. Really bad picture. The after, not much better. The lighting is way different in the two pictures but I think you can tell the difference.

Yuck, I hate pictures of myself...lol
OK, lets move on to a Duke before and after.
Of course you can't improve on Duke's already handsome face so the after is an edit to the photograph.

and one more Duke for good measure

More from the past

Not everything I found in my archives was sad like the picture I showed yesterday.
Here's another one that I found. This was the original, unedited picture.

Next to it was an edited version I had done.

Not bad I suppose but after seeing it I wanted to see where I could go with it a year later. Had my skills changed at all? Just a little test to see if I could do better. I think so but everyone has different likes and dislikes when it comes to things like this.

Boredom buster

Yesterday after my angel therapy session I went back in to warm up and find something to do. I did work a little on a couple of projects but concentration wasn't my strong point of the day.
I grabbed the camera and started playing. When I was done I had discovered I had taken 135 pictures. That's 135 pictures of nothing but silly stuff. Things like remote controls, anything on the coffee table, the dogs brush, batteries and the thermostat were all some of my subjects.
When I ran out of things to snap I turned the camera on myself. With my outstretched arm I took self portraits of all the silly faces I could think of. Then I decided I wanted to see what I would look like with bangs.

I got some really strange looks while I was taking these. Not only from Wade but from Duke too. I don't care I was amusing myself.
Finally I took the card upstairs and started playing around with some pictures.

I really hated this picture of me. My face looked really strange so I cut half of it off and just started trying different effects. Maybe NEXT weekend I'll be more productive but then again maybe not.

just for fun

I don't play around with photoshop elements as much as I used to but sometimes I just feel the urge to do some mindless editing. I'll take a picture that really isn't anything special and just start messing around with it. I don't have any particular plan or idea, I just try things.
I took this picture while I was sitting in the car waiting for Wade one day.

 Don't ask me why I took it, I just do things like that sometimes. When I'm bored or killing time I pull out the camera and take a picture of anything. Sandra might refer to these as Snapper shots.

So I took this shot and started messing around with it to see what I could do with it. I couldn't tell you what all I did because I never remember when I'm finished. But I rather liked the way it ended up looking.

Hibernation

Correct me if I'm wrong but when animals hibernate aren't they spending that time sleeping? The plan for this weekend was hibernation but I haven't done much sleeping.
I did a little blog hopping
I played with the dog
I went upstairs to make the bed and that was where things went wrong.
I ONLY intended to make the bed but then there was a basket of laundry that needed put away. When I opened the drawer it was a bit messy so I pulled everything out and refolded it. If I did one drawer I may as well do them all right? Before I knew what was happening my lazy day off turned into an all day cleaning spree.
I did find time to get a picture of Duke for you though

I even found some time to play around with the picture in photoshop elements. So here is my painting of Duke

Now I think I'll spend the rest of the evening working on a project or two that I have started, maybe grab some coffee and read a few blogs and whatever else I feel like doing. After all it's so fun to relax in a clean house

Picture play

Since I didn't have much energy for much of anything over the weekend I sat and played with my photoshop elements. I don't do too many creative edits any more and thought it would be fun. A few nights ago I was playing with the camera trying to produce some ultra creative photographic compositions. I wasn't real impressed with the results. Oh well, nothing lost, nothing gained right?
this is one of the pictures I took. It was almost what I was hoping for except that the ornament was too dark.

I set out to lighten it up but I may have gone a bit too far not to mention that it's looking rather grainy.

Just for the fun of it I thought I would make it look more like a painting. I liked it a whole lot better when I first did it. Maybe my head was a bit stuffier than I thought.

One more thing before I go today. I wanted to point out the badge on my right sidebar to you. For those of you that aren't familiar with Jackie of the Painted Veil her and Sandee from Comedy Plus are having a Chrismtas blog hop. If you aren't already planning on joining in go check it out, it sounds like fun