Dance little lady

Ally's dance lesson.
The background paper and dancing dolls are by chris, the clipping mask is from Annna Aspnes kit : 12X12PageHPFotoBlendz2_.

There's this British paper cutting artist that does wonderful paper sculptures coming out of books. Seeing them was an inspiration for doing my - more stylized paper dolls.

Su Blackwell: http://sublackwell.blogspot.com/

George

My brother George.

I saw a movie-star grid like this on the net so made one for my brother's photos.
I need to give credit for the texture background - will hunt it down.

Maybe I wont delete this blog after all.

Except for the occasional visitor, I thought I was pretty much alone here posting pages for my family to see. They have busy lives and only look if I show them, so I gradually started to neglect my two blogs. I finally decided to get rid of both of them and just keep my stuff on my computer.

I was shocked when I discovered Picasa, and found out the number of views I was getting. Some of my layouts have over a thousand hits, I realize this is not many to some active blogs, but when you think no one is watching, it is! I now feel guilty that I haven't been posting the credits for my layouts. Most are from designerdigitals.com, or made by me.

My original intent for blogging was to use it to give away freebies of the many papers and elements I was making in Photoshop. Now I know I have visitors, I might just try to learn how to do that.

Life on Silver Lake

We sit and watch nature do its thing as people play in their party boats
and the camp children maneuver their bright blue kayaks out of the way.
The occasional seaplane disrupts the quiet as it positions itself to span the breadth of the lake.
We watch an eagle scoop its supper with a single plunge as the camera gets ready to open its eye. . . .not soon enough.
The ducks also sense the click and so dance a little ditty as they scamper on their way.
Yes we watch while the heron. . . .or is that a crane? sweeps down to find a spot amongst the reeds.
We sit, we wait, and we watch. . . .


I've used my words about our visits to Silver Lake before, also the photo but Anna Aspnes Fun Play kit brought them together in a different way.

Joey skateboard

Christmas Decorations

Meeting up with my daughter and two of her children and her two grandchildren at the mall. It was over an hour wait the little ones did well in line until we were almost at the end. The little one, Bria, spilled her drink all over her tights and Brooke, who was so excited before, decided she didn't want to meet Santa. Fortunately there was a Gymboree close by so I rushed and bought an overall and Linda just changed her in time. Couldn't get a smile from them!

I made the bubbles from a web tutorial

Daughter Lauren in Japan - Very poor spelling! - I will fix it when I find the original!

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Ally, our Granddaughter has this expression everytime I ask her what she's think ing about!

Our Great granddaughter, Bria, as she was when we left for our trip.

Bria no longer a baby!

Bria
We haven't seen you since before we left for our trip and what surprise to see you have grown so much - from a baby to a toddler. Where did that baby nose and those big saucer eyes go?

Everything from DesignerDigitals.com except the glass balls and the background papers. Oh, and the stitching holes that I scanned a number of years ago from real stitching holes.
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The glass balls: (This isn't a tutorial, just the steps I took)
for the ball cover I used Filters: Render > Lens Flare and Distort >Polar Coordinates
then used the tools: Transform, Radial Gradient, and Color Burn.

Underneath with Katie's ornament brush, I took it into styles and played around with stripes and a couple of other styles (turned off the shadows because it would flatten the ball. A real hanging ball would send a cast shadow if close to a wall or such)

Then tweaked with the Burn and Dodge tools, and set the transparency for the glass cover so the underneath pattern would show through (had to add more highlights because of this)
Katie's ornament brush was great because it already had a pattern, top, and hanger.

Yokohama Festival

I've been sorting through the slides I scanned a couple of years ago. These go all the way back to the fifties.



On this particular Sunday, our best friends were having their son Baptized, so I fortunately popped the camera in my purse. I'm almost sure the slides were bright and clear once upon a time, but they're dark with many mold spots now. Lots of Photoshop work! Japan, 1970

Yokohama Festival

We had just left the Chapel one Sunday morning after the Baptism of Caroline and Paul's son, and found ourselves in the midst of crowds of people waiting for something to happen. There wasn't anything for us to do but join the crowd, since our car was blocked in by theirs and them! At first we heard a faint sound of music that got louder and louder and suddenly the street was filled with lines of colorfully kimonoed ladies, and some guys carrying a very long dragon and having so much fun as they laughed and ran down the street with it! Japan 1970

A long time since I posted!
I found these slides but couldn't make out what was on them until I scanned them into Photoshop and lightened them.

This is my Brother and his son, I think it might be the Devon or Cornwall coast, I can see the sea in other slides - I'll have to write and ask him. I have the twin to the jacket he's wearing. Eileen, his wife, gave it to me on my way to Turkey and it really saved me from the bitter winds from the Sea of Marmara, while I stood and waited for my bus that took me to Karamürsel several times a week.