More on Star Kissed

Just got two more layouts done using Star Kissed, the wonderful new kit by Lady Bug Designs, available at the Digital Design Den.  You can get it here.  And right now it is on sale - 25% off.

And here are two more layouts using Star Kissed.  This first one showcases David Whitfield, a wonderful English tenor who left us way too soon.  Anyone remember his hit song, Cara Mia?  Back when I was a teenager (many long years ago) I had the pleasure of meeting him in person and actually getting a photo taken with him.   It was one of the highlights of my life.

 The photo below was taken just last year when we were hiking on the Overlook Trail in our Metropark system.  We had a chance meeting with this deer and fortunately, I had the camera with me.

Star Kissed-New From Lady Bug Designs

Lady Bug Designs has just released a sweet new kit called Star Kissed.  Lots of lovely soft colors here, just perfect for spring and on into summer.  You can get it here at the Digital Design Den store.

I've done two layouts with this kit so far - two more are in the works.  The first one is our grandson who is currently in China as an exchange student.  I downloaded the photo of him from Facebook.  He was just getting ready to go on a boat trip somewhere in China.

The photo of orchids is from our trip to Longwood Gardens several years ago.

Still Life

The March Focus on Photography challenge at the Digital Design Den is to create and photograph a still life. My flower arranging skills are sadly lacking and the lighting in our house is not really good for doing still life photography.  Since nothing is blooming in our part of the world yet - way too cold - I used a silk flower.  My SOOC image needed help, so I went to work with textures, gradients and adjustment layers.

This is the image straight out of the camera.  It was way too dark for me and I really didn't like the background.

And this is the image after I worked on it.  The first thing I did was crop it.  Then I added a layer mask and did away with the background.  Next I added the Sweettart texture by Kim Klassen - she has lovely textures on her blog, pay her a visit and see for yourself.  I did erase most of the texture from the  flower and vase using a layer mask.  After that, I added a pale white to pink gradient, then did a levels adjustment.  And I think the finished product looks much better.

Snow and Ice

For a little over a week we had some lovely weather - warm, in the 40's - and we actually saw the grass in our yard!  But, sad to say we are back to cold, snow and ice.   We have had a series of weather fronts go through dropping the temperatures, changing the rain to ice (that was fun - NOT!), and just over the weekend we had another 8 inches of snow.  And there are two more fronts on the way with snow, sleet and freezing rain.  Enough already!!!  With the weather being what it was, I've been spending a lot of time on the computer playing with patterns and textures and I designed a small mini kit which I hope you will like.  I called it, what else, Snow and Ice.

You can download it from Box.net     (Sorry, link expired)

Precious One

Precious One, a sweet new kit by Lady Bug Designs, just arrived at the Digital Design Den store and you can find it here.  It is just perfect for little boys or little girls.  Here are some layouts I made with it.

Found this 15 year old photo in our albums.

Another photo from our albums, this one is over 40 years old!

And as you can see, the kit is not limited to babies!

Photography Challenge

The Digital Design Den has black and white photography as the technique for the month in their Focus on Photography challenge.  I had to try this so I took some photos of sea shells and combined one of them with an older photo we took of the ocean.  I wasn't sure what to expect as I really like color, but it turned out better than I expected.  And in the process, I figured out how to use and process camera RAW files.

The black and white version:

And the color version:

I can't make up my mind which I like the best, so I'm going to print them both.  LOL

Heart of my Heart - new kit from Lady Bug Designs

Becky of Lady Bug Designs just put a new kit in her store - just perfect for Valentine's Day - lots of lovely pinks and hearts.  You can find it at the Digital Design Den.

Since I'm on her creative team, I was able to play with it and came up with three layouts in a short period of time.

This is my little grandniece when she was only a couple of months old.

This is my son when he was only a couple of months old.  I scanned the photo from an old slide.

And this is DH about 16 years ago.