Texture Tuesday - The Pink eDition

This week at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday the theme was pink. Funnily enough, pink so isn't my colour. I'm an Autumn in colours and I could never ever wear it. I have, sometimes as a teenager, and it looked awful, I still shudder to think about it. But as long as I don't have to wear it, pink can be pretty. In fact, where pink is definitely beautiful are flowers.

So the picture I chose is obviously a flower. And so that I don't have to resort to pictures from last summer, I worked on this recent shot of a Women's Day rose, which I textured with Kim Klassen's "Music Lovin'" and FrostBo's "Texture 54".

In other news, it might be officially Summer Time, but last night we had quite some snowfall and this morning when we first looked out of the windows we thought it looked more Christmasy than anything else. The branches were covered with fluffy snow, which they haven't been for a long time, and everything was fresh and white. Come to think of it, I wonder why one would associate white snow to Christmas at all. Is it all because we have all been well indoctrinated into dreaming of a white Christmas? For one thing, over here we have snow for at least five if not six months a year, and at Xmas time, there is always far less snow, days are short and dark and you rarely see even the faintest shimmer of sunshine. It is only when the days turn longer in spring that the sun makes all the snow glisten and glow.

Below a quick layout I made of a few photos I took this morning, from my windows.

template by Margote - Template 64; paper from "Playing for Keeps" by Designs by Angel; snowflake brushes by env1ro

Texture Tuesday - The Black & White eDition

As my life has returned to more or less normal, albeit far busier than average this week, I was absolutely certain I wouldn't make it to this week's Texture Tuesday. Luckily it seems I was wrong, although last minute really doesn't begin to describe this.

Anyway, the challenge this week at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday was black & white. Here's my take. The picture shows a rather beautifully rusted metal crane standing in the snow in our garden. I used Kim's "Happy Heart" texture as well as a lovely painterly texture called "The Wave" by Emeraldsugar-stock.

Crane in Snow

Tonight it'll turn to summer time -- we'll be having Daylight Saving Time from tomorrow on. And yes, the Great Tits and Yellowhammers are twittering out of their heart's content. In spite of all the snow, spring is definitely here.

Texture Tuesday - Your Fav eDition

Out of the Shadows

This week in Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday challenge we were asked to share our latest textured fav.

The picture I chose is of our 4-month-old Dandie Dinmont Terrier puppy Justiina. I took the photo on Saturday in our garden, where there's still plenty enough of snow...

I'll try and give the recipe here, too, just in case somebody might be interested. The original image was rather dark, so I duplicated the image at 64% screen. For editing, I used the following: the new weekend texture "Paper Love" by Kim Klassen at 55% soft light and 28% linear burn, both layers first turned black and white with the Neutral Density filter in PS CS4, as I didn't want to change the original colours. Then I felt I needed a light beam to focus attention on the puppy, so I added a beautiful light beam and cloud texture called "I Tell The Stories" by Smoko-Stock at 96% soft light. Loving both of the textures.

  

I was also working on another doggie picture, so here's that as well. It's a photo of Justiina's mom Misa, her sister Marleena and her dad Renny, again taken on Saturday in our snowy garden.

And the recipe for that one: first I took Kim's texture "Evolve", changed it into black & white with Blue Filter, then used at 65% soft light. Next I took the same texture, again turning it black & white but this time with Neutral Density filter, used in blending mode colour burn at 44%.

Then I felt I needed just a touch of lightness and a touch of blue, so I used a blue texture from LiZn's texture pack "Eirene" at 15% colour dogde.  I still thought the picture could use a tad more depth and added one more texture, Fabric dye 10 from Dierat's Paper Pack 3. The blending mode here was 30% colour burn.

Out with the Family

As I don't ski, I'm not the most enthusiastic winter person, but here I find myself wishing there'll still be a couple of beautiful sunny days like this before it's time for the snow to melt away.

Happy Women's Day!

Happy International Women's Day! I present you with flowers from Keukenhof in Holland, albeit a couple of years back.

Template by Letiscrap, photo and papers by me.

Texture Tuesday - The Happy Heart eDition

Barcelona, October morning

My second Texture Tuesday challenge entry. This time I ended up with an older photo I  found in my archives this week - this one I took actually in 2006 in Barcelona.

It was a rather early morning in October, we were walking along the sea shore, and because of both the time and the season the 4.5 kilometres of beach were mostly deserted. Looking at the picture, I can still almost hear and smell the sea and feel the sunshine in the gradually warming morning.

Textures used: texture "Happy Heart" by Kim Klassen (twice), additionally a texture from Jerry Jones's "Art Grunge Texture Set".