Vases, Bikes, Summer Nights and Dogs

On day 64 of Beyond Layers, the challenge was to use a certain texture Kim posted and experiment with some masking tricks she shared. She gave a recipe, which I, for once, followed pretty closely without too much tweaking.  I did, however, add another texture. The photo was taken in April at the student exhibition at the community college where I work.

Pictures at an Exhibition - Vase with Birds

Resources:
- texture Jay by Kim Klassen
- texture Tin Type 1900 by Distressed Textures

The second picture dates from our annual camp with the Finnish Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club. Every summer we get together with other Dandie owners and have a fun weekend. The shot was taken on a cloudy and rather windy night by the lake, and I had a lot of fun post processing it rather heavily.

A Summer Night

Thank you for the textures:
- Distressed Textures by Denise Love @ 2 Lil’ Owls Studio
- Paper Pack 3 by dierat

In the third picture I once again returned to Zwolle, where, among loads of bikes, I found this very attractive feminine specimen, and processed with a texture of my own.

The Ladybike

Lastly there's a scrapbooking layout I made of our youngest Dandie Justiina. Originally she was just lying down on the grass, but the very moment I pressed the camera button she jumped up and rushed towards me to find out what it was I was doing. I have been viewing several layouts lately done in the artsy style, and here's my shot at it. I really enjoyed the creation process of this one.

Resources:
- background paper from paper pack I Can See Clearly Now by myself
- masks from Shadowhouse Creations Splatter Mask Set 2 by Jerry Jones
- brush from Moments 2 by Fran
- flowers from kit Bleu comme une orange by Fran
- stitches from Coutures/Stitches 1 by Fran
- text brushes by Aurorabor
- watercolour brushes by Ron Deviney
- splatter brushes by Robyn Cough
- font Jazz LET
- font Zapfino

Finding Shapes 2 - Rectangles

Didn't I know this from my writing days - I really can go on tweaking anything I create forever, if I don't simply post it somewhere and call it finished. I used to write and rewrite and rewrite a little poem again and again, literally for years, and now I notice I'm doing the same to my pictures. So it's high time to post these pictures off and be done with them and tackle something new.

I took the first picture in May 2012 while travelling towards Scotland with my students. We stayed overnight in Zwolle, and I found this pretty door on our evening walk in town.

Red Door

I layered the picture with texture Waterfront 17 by Kim Klassen altogether four times with various blending modes, masking off various sections of the texture on each layer.

The second picture dates from the same trip. This time we were heading back home and walked about in Lübeck, waiting to take our boat home across the Baltic Sea. It's just another office building somewhere in the city centre, but I found it attractive, especially how the top floor windows reflected the blue sky and the ones downstairs remained black, but also other contrasts, such as the elaborate 19th century door frame and the modern door with company logos.

Looking at the sky

I started processing this photo as another textured image, but was never quite satisfied with it. Then I revisited some digital scrapbooking sites and ran across these techniques of making a photo look part like a drawing, part like a painting. Tried it, and still wasn't quite happy with it, so I went on to try out another new technique, using frames but painting partly outside the frame. These techniques are certainly something I'm going to play with later on, too.
 Resources:
- Brushes & frame
- Brush stamp 
- Papers 
- Font 1
- Font 2 

The third picture is from Salzburg, on a trip we took to the World Dog Show immediately after my trip to Scotland. We walked along the Salzach under a bridge, and high up there was this cage, for maintenance, I suppose.

Kein Eintritt

This one was created much like the one above: I started by texturing the photo, then decided needed a frame, then decided I'd make it into a scrapbooking layout. *sigh* Now I'm letting go of it. No more tweaking.

 Resources:
- texture Cool Grunge by Kim Klassen 
- mask by Julie Mead Designs
- background paper from paper pack Green Finch and Linnet Bird by myself
 - font Dusty Rose NF
- font Mary Helen JF