Happy Times

Happy Times

After lifting a number of these types of LOs I finally decided to try one on my own. There was tons of blending and using soft and hard light on layers, but the two things that are hard to see are that I put a sun burst underneath all the elements with only half of it on the page - radiating out to the middle of the page with opacity lowered to where it just brightened up the blue background. And then I put the bubble over the black and white photo to give it more of an ornament look. Both are elements in the kits that I used. They were SussieM's Happy Island and Take me to the Old World.

The quiet path...

The quiet path...

I took this photo a couple of years ago when we were lucky enough to all spend some time together. Finally I found a kit to use it with. After I extracted the photo I made four copies of it. Bottom copy was hard light and the top three are soft light. Then I played around with opacity to get the feeling I wanted with the background paper. The light for the lamp is several copies all soft light with again opacity played with. Several of the elements in the cluster are also soft lighted. I made the frame by taking another background and cutting it out. To make it darker I used the burn tool - set at 50% and burned until I liked the color. There are three kits used here, Take me to the Old World - one each by SussieM, Lily Designs and Lotta Designs as well as freebies found on their blogs.

Autumn

Autumn

This was just an assortment of elements and clusters. I did change the color of the word art by clicking on the lock transparency and then coloring with my brush. Also, made that layer soft light and lowered the opacity. Gave some of the single elements some soft drop shadows as well. Most of my time was spent trying to get the various parts of the LO to look the right depth through sizing. Kits used are Take me to the Old World by Lily Designs and Cozy Kit by Jofia Devoe.

By the Sea

By the Sea

This one is very simple. A groupie with a couple of element additions. Photo in background is blended using soft light and the erasing around the edges with a soft eraser set at about 35% opacity. Font is Water Street.

This Moment

This Moment

I just love the beach and I'm always looking for good beach kits. So when I saw Sea Side and the matching kit Playing with Overlays 5 by Natali Designs I just had to have them. I will be using these kits for other LOs and I may even scraplift something using this kit because I'm way behind on that resolution at the moment.

Age One

Age One

Another lift for practicing! I used Lullaby by Birgit Kerr. I lifted the first example LO with a couple of minor changes. Ran the photo through the PhotoBlast Midnight Color Pro and made the title with Atomic Cupcakes Acrylic Action. Links for both on left side of this blog.

Easter '05

Easter '05

This is a scraplift of an example given for this kit where it is for sale. (Click on the 9th page after the pop-up window appears.) The kit is The Grass is Green II by Jofia Designs. I'm trying to continue my scraplifting in order to add to my style...

Lovee Maxine

Lovee Maxine

This LO just looks like a black blob in the gallery, but there's really alot going on and I'm looking forward to printing it. I extracted the kitty and since she was sitting on a tan floor I had a light outline going around part of her. So I used the burn tool around the edges until I got rid of the faint tan color. Other than that I was a matter of arranging elements and then working with the opacity!

Believe in love...

Believe in love...

First thing was to fix the photo which was very overexposed. I played with the Enhance, adjust lighting, shadows/ highlights. And then I worked a little with the levels as well to bring back the facial features. After that I lowered the opacity on the photo to let the rays element show through just a touch. I also lowered the opacity on the red charm drop and the swirl of dots. The clock element I changed the layer blend mode to overlay and then duplicated it two more times and lowered the opacity on the top one until it looked the way I wanted it to.

Last days of fall...

Last days of fall...

Took this photo and thought to myself that I'd probably never use it... but the colors just seemed to go so perfectly with the kit... Only thing that I did special to this LO was to lowered the opacity of the striped paper in the oval frame. Gave the LO a richer feel and made the photo pop more.

What lies inside...

What lies inside...

Changed the little photos to black and white using the enhance option. Did that so that they would match because he was wearing a green pair of overalls. With the main photo I used the lasso tool with feathering set at 100. Drew around what I wanted to keep, inversed the selection and hit the delete key. Then I played with the opacity until I was happy. Also lowered the opacity on the vine frame a tad.

Time for love...

Time for love...

First thing I did here was to make the ribbons under the red threaded ribbon out of the papers. I also put the white background paper under the blue one and lowered the opacity on the blue. Then I made the blue ring frame out of the blue background paper. Everything else was a matter of lowering opacity and adding drop shadows.

Maxine

Maxine

First thing that I did on this LO was to extract Maxine's ear outside of the circle frame. I made an extra third layer of the photo on the bottom that I left color and then I made the top two layers black and white. Then I erased the kitty's face on the two black and white layers. This got rid of an annoying yellow color that was behind the kitty while still keeping the color of the kitty. I also did the double layer trick on the fish bowl and erased where the ladder was in front of the bowl.

Dream big...

Dream big...

I added the tree to the background by changing the blending mode to Luminosity and then lowering the opacity. I also lowered the opacity on the scattered flowers and the leaf wreaths. Other than that I added elements and drop shadowed them to taste.

Imagination

Imagination

This was fun to make! Things that I did on this one. First I added shadow on the blue background where the floor meets the wall by burning. I used a pretty big brush and put the opacity at around 2o something. I did two strokes arcoss the background where the floor meets and then one stroke across just above that. But you can eye it so that it looks good to you. I also lowered the opacity on the word art and I put the mouse into the balloon. The bubbles I made gradually smaller as they go up the page to give the impression that they were further, blowing away.

Maxine

Maxine

First I took a photo of myself and placed it over the background using blending mode Soft Light. Then I took the heart element and made the red mesh using Atomic Cupcake's Mesh effect. I also lowered the opacity on the word art. Other than that I just placed the elements and added the drop shadows.

Dream little one...

This one uses tons of blending into the background and then shadowing the elements that are being blown by the wind... I used two kits by NewLife Dreams. Dream Little Mouse and The Invisible World.

All you need is love...

This is pretty much a direct scraplift of the Sydney example LO for the kit All you need is love by Natali Designs. There is just an amazing amount of detail in her LO too...

Heavenly Max

Heavenly Max

The only interesting thing that I did with this kit was to combine two of the partial flowers together to make them one. I also did a lot of element interacting by making two layers of an element and putting another element inbetween them and erasing the desirable places on the top layer of the two... Then you add the shadow to the bottom layer of the pair...

Max's balloon ride...

Another kit that I bought used... this time I looked through the scrapbook site's gallery and then tried to make my own LO. Used a couple of ideas from what I saw of course! The kits are The Innocent Imagination by Jofia Devoe and In the Pixie Forest by Nicole Young. You may notice that I also used Jofia's kit to make my current blog background too!

A new look!

I tried out a new background for the blog here! And I have put the link under tools for where to go to get this blog background as well as a couple more. You can visit the Nicole link for the backgrounds and the tutorial for how to customize your own blog. I will probably tinker around and make my own background shortly, but for now I'm just happy to have this up and running.

Some more kits that I have "collected" used in a LO... yay! This time I used Madeleine, Heaven Sent and Sweetness all created by Birgit Kerr. I was inspired by/lifted one of her quick pages found here. The quick pages are in 8x8 and I wanted to keep my 12x12 size, plus I just love this style and wanted to try to copy it. I also used Meryl Bartho's overlay for the antiqued look on the background.

New challenge...

Yep... a new year and a new challenge to myself. I've been wanting to add to my style so I've challenged myself to take a kit that I love and then to scraplift or be inspired by a LO that I find made with the kit. I started with Thoughts by MK Designs. The LO I was inspired by is located here. I'm very excited by the idea of getting a new direction in my scrapping style!