Sweet Shot and Texture Tuesday

We are settling into a new schedule and with that comes more regular opportunities for me to choose sedentary activities (my favorite).  Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself while the boys are down for nap and Zion is finding a quiet activity.  Today I am choosing to spend a little time blogging and what better spur of the moment topic than a photo challenge (or two).  Especially since I just spent the weekend on a little getaway with a friend and have a ton of pictures.  Most of which I haven’t had the chance to look twice at but I do have a stand out or two.  For today, my sweet shot:

We were truly blessed to find this cross standing at the very spot we found to pull off to photograph the rainbow.  Wow, just wow. Thanks, God!

OK fine, I’ll post another.  After I picked up my friend we stopped at a camera store.  It’s the one I like to go to but a bit far off and not at all kid friendly.  I had some money set aside for a lens or maybe two and I wanted a chance to shop. I came home with a 50mm 1.8 and a 90mm 2.8 macro (sweet!).  While my friend and I had lunch before heading for home I took this one because she’s got great eyes and I couldn’t help myself:

Please go check out more Sweet Shots at My 3 Boybarians!

And for Texture Tuesday, hosted over at Kim Klassen’s Café (LOVE it there – go check out more!).

This one was taken with my new macro (I am SO in love with that thing, it makes my heart sing – funnily enough I wrote that line before I discovered that Kim had made this week’s Texture Tuesday theme “love”.  I’m so glad I did because now I can join in with the theme and feel like I’d intended that way, LOL) as we were walking around the grounds where we stayed.  We found a few snail shells placed randomly on rocks and in the flower beds, this one was partially buried.  I added a layer of Kim’s Corrugated Crack with soft light at 100%, adjusted the levels a little to brighten it, cropped it and added a light vignette around the edge. 

Texture Tuesday–Orange

Ah, I had one of those days were I got a ton done and doesn’t that just feel grand?!  Then I saw that Kim’s Texture Tuesday was orange themed which was perfect because I had just taken a bunch of photos of Zion juicing oranges the other day.

I textured it with Kim’s “granny’s cupboard” twice (both with the soft light blend mode and one at 100% and the other at 62%) and then desaturated the colors using a brush on all three layers (the two texture layers and the hue/sat layer) over the one orange to make it bright again just for fun.  That’s it. 

It’s nice to be “back in the saddle” and do a photo challenge for the first time in a little bit.  If you’d like to join in or see other photos in the challenge check out Kim’s blog here:

p.s. Orange is my favorite color!

Texture Tuesday–Dream

How satisfying it is to find a use for a photo that was so entirely fun to take but also pretty much entirely pointless.  ha ha  Thank you, Kim, for giving the dream assignment this week.  I had fun creating this tonight. 

Remember you can click on the photo to see it larger and, of course, remember you can click on the button below to see more Texture Tuesday photos and participate if you like.

And while this post may seem rather lame and short I need to be off to dreamland now.  Good night.

Texture Tuesday

If I’d had my head on straight I would have had this ready to go last night.  Ah well, it’s still Tuesday so I’m not technically late even though I feel like it.

My offering for Texture Tuesday this week is this scooter-turned-planter that we discovered on the Yarn Crawl.  It sits in front of Fancy Image Yarns and I think it’s adorable!

This is using one of Kim’s magic textures at only about 25% on screen mode.

Go check out Kim’s site to see what other people have posted for this garden themed Texture Tuesday.

Texture Tuesday

Oh me, oh my, whatcha donna do?  The cord for my camera broke so I can’t get any pictures off it.  Good thing I took some quick pics of a few of the flowers from my Mother’s Day bouquet a few days before it broke. 

Isn’t she lovely?

And here she is again after applying Kim’s yesteryear texture with the overlay blend mode at 100% (that’s all I did):

Thanks, Kim, for another gorgeous texture!  I love what this one does!

Texture Tuesday

Last week Kim gave us a heads up about this week’s theme for Texture Tuesday saying it would whatever comes to mind based on the word vintage.  My first thought was old cars.  I wouldn’t be my father’s daughter if I thought of lace hankies now would I?  :)

I did not get any new pics of old cars but I did dig out one that I took a while back.  Here’s that lovely old thing after running a vintage action and applying one of Kim’s new magic textures as well as her history texture.  I love the crackly effect the magic texture gives.

This one I took at one of my favorite restaurants over the weekend.  I think the chairs are a bit vintagy, don’t you?  This was after a MAJOR desaturation, addition of another of Kim’s magic textures, then I added a sepia layer and brushed over the chairs to bring some red back.

Lastly, and what turned out to be my favorite of the set is this old sewing machine that I found in one of the yarn stores I visited over the weekend.  I converted it to black and white and added one of Kim’s really extreme grungy type textures and that was it.  I really love what the texture did, really, really love it!

I’m looking forward to seeing what others have posted.  Go check it out:

Texture Tuesday

I had a couple of really neat shots from my outing on Mother’s Day to play with this week.  I also had Kim’s magic textures that she just released to her Test Kitchen members.  I think the second magic texture matched well with this statue photo:

This is also with slight levels, brightness/contrast and hue/sat adjustments.  Upped the brightness, dropped the saturation.

And then there’s the fun pot bench.  I used Kim’s paperstained, chamomile AND the second magic texture on this one.

Not sure I love the crop I did, may go back and play with it more later. Alas, photo play time is over.  The kitchen won’t clean itself.

Go to Kim’s and check out more, textures are so much fun.

 

Texture Tuesday

Gave myself permission to sit down tonight for a while and texture the heck out of a photo .  And texture I did.  First I snapped a shot of my tea and cake. 

Then I ate the cake. 

Then I played with the photo.  Brightened it, desaturated it a LOT, then brushed over the flower on the cup and the cake to bring back some of the color, texturized it with Kim’s “chamomile” and “major grunge” textures and lastly brushed over the tea cup and cake to eliminate some of the texture there and viola!

Remember, you can click on the photo to view it larger.  And also remember that you can go to Kim’s website and check out the other lovely texture photos there.  And you can enter your own photo.  And if you don’t know how Kim will teach you, she rocks!

Texture Tue…er, Wednesday?

A day late but not a dollar short.  I’m rather pleased with how this turned out.  Zion was in a dress-up sort of mood today so I took advantage and shot a few pictures.  We just got back from Bible study so I thought I’d get the pics off my camera and play around a bit. 

Here’s the original:

Here’s my edit:

This is with a levels adjustment, a little desaturation of the colors, Kim’s “sweettreat” texture on soft light at 87% and Kim’s “serendipity” texture on overlay at 70% and that’s it.  My pretty little fairy is a little more dreamy now.  I like it.  Go ahead, click on the picture and make it bigger, it’s even better. :)

Came back and did a second one.  I love the wistful (is that the word I’m looking for?) nature of this one:

This one is also using “sweettreat” and “serendipity” but I added a layer of “sweettart” in between and desaturized the colors even more.

Now click on the button to go to Kim’s site and check out more Texture Tuesday offerings.

At pretty much the last minute I also decided to put this up on My 3 Boybarian’s Sweet Shot Tuesday.  It’s been a busy week and I haven’t been feeling well so the fact that I decided to do on Friday something I should have done Tuesday shouldn’t surprise me.  It takes that long for my brain to make a decision right now.  ;)

Texture Tuesday

Nearly forgot tomorrow was Tuesday.  Um, well, technically it’s Tuesday right now.  And because Tuesday snuck up on me, that naughty Tuesday, I didn’t have anything ready for Texture Tuesday.  I have not been at this long enough to happen to have extra texturized photos lying about.  *dreamy sigh*  Someday.  But then I remembered this one photo that I took at my Mom’s Club playgroup on Wednesday.  I did not ask the other moms if they thought I was weird for taking pictures of this old barn out the back window of the host’s house and not photos of the kids while they played.  It only takes time before people who hang out with me stop thinking I’m weird and start KNOWING I’m weird.  So be it. :)

So here’s my SOOC just for grins and chuckles:

 

And here’s my Texture Tuesday submission:

This is after a levels adjustment, a slight brightness/contrast adjustment, a layer of sepia with soft light, two layers of “bent edges” (thank you, Kim, LOVE that one!) and a layer of “history” (also Kim’s).  I surprised myself with how much I like this after only a few minutes of play (shows what a good teacher Kim is, I certainly couldn’t have done this two months ago before her classes).  The one thing that I really don’t like is how blown out the sky is.  I’m too tired to keep playing tonight though.  Any suggestions for how to help that would be lovely otherwise I might just start doing some creative cropping and cut the whole blasted thing out.  Here’s the button to Kim’s to participate or check out the other entries:

Texture Tuesday

Kim Klassen is asking us to post photos that have used her Warm Sun texture and as it happens I just used it last night for this:

These lovelies Zion and I bought on Saturday (I wanted tulips, she picked the color and she said she wanted orange because it’s my favorite, awwww) and I’ve been taking pictures of them practically non-stop since then. They are so, so pretty and Kim’s lovely texture makes their colors POP!

Check out how others have used Warm Sun by clicking the button.  You know you want to.

Texture Tuesday

Apparently my new addiction is photo challenges.  Ah, well, there are worse things.  This challenge is brand new and is hosted by Kim Klassen who is the wonderful lady who’s classes I have been taking.

I haven’t played with textures too much yet so choosing a photo wasn’t too difficult. 

These pretty blossoms are hanging out on one of the trees in my front yard. Yay, Spring is coming!

For this I did minor adjustments to levels, brightness/contrast and hue/saturation and added a level of Kim’s “Chamomile” texture twice, once in soft light blend mode and another in multiply both at 67%.  And that’s that.

Pop on over to Kim Klassen’s to join up or check out more photos done with texture.