Collection 1 - Winter Warm - launching soon.

I am hoping to be able to launch Collection 1 - Winter Warm in a few days time.

Details of the collection can now be viewed in the shop.

See slideshow of textures here - best viewed fullscreen.

Music is moonlight

(click to view larger)

I am sure all of us have at some stage been mesmerised by a beautiful moon. The most beautiful moon I have seen was witnessed from the jetty at Ardrossan, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia.

It rose up from the horizon over the water as a huge orange full moon. Everyone just stood and watched it. It must have been a 'super' moon for it appeared so much larger than expected and I guess most of us don't get to see it right on the horizon. Once it had moved up into the sky it appeared as normal. Unfortunately I had just packed all my photography gear into the car so didn't catch it on camera.

The above image was made from a photo I took of our recent super moon shrouded in mist.

I have added a texture which I created and stamped with a 'window' PS brush I made from a photo of an old ruin window.

Blue Window

The scrolls and vintage music came from "The Graphics Fairy".

http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com.au/

A great site for royalty free vintage graphics.

FREE DOWNLOAD.
If you would like the above   'BlueWindow'   texture I am making it available for a limited period free of charge. This is a large resolution 8MG file.

Credit to "Coffee Pot Textures"or a link to this blog would be appreciated.

Terms of use: royalty free, personal use or sales as part of a hobby when blended with other photos and or textures. Not for professional or commercial use.
************
Download
************

Hoping you all have some music in your lives this week,

Cheers
Kathy

Aim for the Moon

While returning from a country drive on Saturday the Super moon was rising in the east. However it was covered with misty cloud and though it didn't exactly look very 'super' it did look quite nice.

I pulled over and took a photo of it with the tele lens.

I thought a little texture would suit it and chose a blue texture I have created since doing the Art of Textures course.

I've used 2 layers of this, one of soft light and one of screen, both with reduced opacities.

The result - Aim for the Moon

The font is called "Before the Rain" from www.dafont.com


Thanks for visiting,
Kathy

Happy Easter

Took some time off making textures today and had some fun marbling eggs.

Wishing you all a very Happy Easter.

Cheers
Kathy

Schools Out

Well the Art of Textures course is nearly finished. We've been given an extra few days which is great. So now the challenge is to take all the wonderful things we have been taught and learn to put them together with our own creative style.

That's quite a challenge. It's like being given all the tools and techniques but the possibilities are endless so it's hard to know where to begin.

I suppose it's just a matter of playing with it all enough to find my own style and begin to understand which technique to use when.

Here is one  I tried on the weekend.

I had taken a picture at the old school house at Old Tailem Town, one of Australia's largest pioneer villages and I loved how the light was coming through the window. I wanted to accentuate that and add some contrast and also warm up the light and give a more vintage look to the image.

Over the weekend I made a few textures, one was with coffee, tea and nutmeg and baked (perhaps a little too long) in the oven. The back of this page also proved an interesting pattern so I used that too. The third one was made using texture paste and then staining it with coffee.

I decided to try blending all three together and after trying a few hundred possibilities I found one that I was happy with.

It proved to be just the right texture to get the result I was looking for with the school house photo.

School's Out

click to view large

thanks for looking,

Kathy

Week 4 - Putting it all together.

This week we have been learning to put together all the things we've learnt over the last few weeks.

This image is really an exercise in putting together some of the textures, scans, brushes etc that I've made.

The base pic was simply some coffee stains on canvas paper.

I then blended in several layers of other items such as a photo of the side of a very old, well used cake tin,

and some brown paper,

I added a crack effect by using a brush I had made from a ruin wall

I cannot remember everything I did to them but after changing blend modes and experimenting with different processes I came up with this final texture image.

I then blended this texture with one of my stock pics of an onion, added some text and distressed it a little.

click to enlarge

Looking forward to trying more of the hands on messy type of textures,

thanks for looking,

Kathy

Why textures.

So what are all these textures about?

Well for me it is taking an image which otherwise might just sit on my hard drive and enhancing it to be a piece of artwork that could be used as an image for a card, calendar or wall art for example.

I have thrown subtle out the window for this one and gone for a much more dramatic, bold look.

The final result is always subjective and will not be to everyone's liking.

I've chosen a picture I took of my bouganvillea set against the blue sky.

Though this image has great colours, as it is it would sit on my hard drive as just another photo of my garden.
The bold colour of the flowers always makes me think of fire.

I had created two textured backgrounds using some photoshop brushes I created out of splashes of paint and they remind me of fire also. 

They are very similar, one a little lighter and more yellow than the other.

I blended both of these backgrounds with the original photo using different blend modes until I was happy with the result. Also added a lens flare in the top left corner to add some highlights.

Finally I cropped it slightly and added some text.

Final image.  Bloom...

click to view larger

I hope you like the final result.
Feedback welcome.

I'm still working on my brushes sampler so maybe I'll have it ready for next post.
See you then,

Cheers
Kathy