Painting With Light

On day 58 at Beyond Layers Kim challenged us to watch another video lesson and either try the technique on a photo by her or on our own image, and of course I went for a photo of my own. The topic of the video was how to use light to draw focus on a subject.

With the dogs snoring around me this Saturday morning, I picked up a photo and started to process, following Kim's suggestions. This time I took a photo of Da Man about a month ago. He was sitting and watching by the back porch, with a dried yarrow funnily framing his face. Again, Kim's picture and mine were so different that I didn't create the effect she did for hers, but I do like what I got out of this picture with the recipe.

Dog and Yarrow

Photo taken on 7 September, 2013.

Resources:
- texture Heartfelt by Kim Klassen

Sharing at Texture Tuesday.

Quote Challenge revisited

After a good while, I decided I'd play along the quote challenge from Beyond Layers day 39 anyway. I had already had a look at some quotes, so I went back and did some digging for photos. Seeing the results, I'm happy I did.

First Tulips

A picture of the first tulips pushing up, taken on 2 May 2013. Thought the quote was pretty apt for the image. The prompt word was "life".

Resources:
- font KG Ways To Say Goodbye by Kimberly Geswein

Sleepers

The quote challenge word was "peace". This made me think of our latest little puppies when they were little puppies, in this picture less than a month old.

Resources:
- textures from Shadowhouse October Square Texture Set 2 by Jerry Jones
- font Learning Curve Pro by Blue Vinyl Fonts

Foxy - Indian Summer

On reading the prompt word "change" I knew immediately what my quote would be: Dorothy Parker's poem Indian Summer. Ever since I first read it I've loved the poem. And I roughly knew what I wanted to do with the images, too - originally I associate the poem with our second-ever Dandie, Veera, whom we called Madame, because she was very dignified, self-assured and definitely not one to fool with. She was a businesslike, no-nonsense personality, but charming. However, since she left us years before the age of digital cameras and even the scans I have of her are not of very high quality, the dog in the photos is our present Madame, called Foxy. Totally different, with a lot more sense of humour (yes, Dandies come equipped with that), but certainly a lady who knows what she wants, who turned nine this week. In the last picture, by the way, she is not growling but actually smiling.

Resources:
- template 018 by myself
- background papers from paper pack Green Finch and Linnet Bird by myself
- font Lavanderia by James T. Edmondson

By The Frozen River

The fourth prompt was "intentions" and for this, the Douglas Adams quote was my absolute favourite. It's so true for me in so many ways. The picture shows my home town since 1987, where I definitely didn't plan to move. When I first went to study, I somehow thought I'd end up in the south, Helsinki or thereabouts. And here I am, 600 kilometres north, and have been happy here for more than a quarter of a century. Oh my. I took the picture on a walk in the centre on 1 May this year. Yes, it was pretty cold.

Jackdaws

The last prompt was "focus". I like the quote, and the photo is one of a series I managed to take on 8 June of a gang of Jackdaws, who landed on the grass and  were a bit shy of me, obviously thinking the treat on the ground might belong to me. They circled around, trying to appear nonchalant and uninterested, until one of them started the approach. Unfortunately none of the photos I took of the actual attack turned out any good but well, that's life, right?

Instagram-ish

At BL day 54 was declared Instagram day. This old fart had to dig up what that meant. Instagram seems to be this online photo-sharing thingy where you upload your phone pictures and apply some filters on them. Oh and all the pictures are square. I tried it out, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it on the browser. Obviously it's meant to be used only by phone, so I decided it wasn't for me. Anyway, for the challenge we were to try out some instagram-ish photoshop actions on our photos, and there was a scavenger hunt as well. As you might expect, I did the hunt in my archives again, but restricted myself to using photos from last summer only.

Also, when I started playing with the actions Kim suggested we use I was not awfully impressed by the way they were made - they didn't open a new document, as many, or create the action as editable layers, as many others I've used, so I had to use the history tool to go back to the original if I wanted to try out the action. Sure gave me good practice in using the history tool! In the end I decided I wouldn't be using only the given actions but some others, too.

There were five themes for the scavenger hunt: something pretty, something blue, something borrowed, water and dreamy. For the pretty one I chose a picture I took on my birthday as we were driving back home from Helsinki. We stopped at this new lay-by service place, and they had this little thing we call maitolaituri in Finnish. Literally you could translate it as "milk jetty" - it was a place where the farmers would leave their milk churns by the roadside where they could be collected by the dairy deliverers. There are none in that use anymore, but I thought this thing, although new and non-authentic, was pretty and nostalgic and definitely worth a photo.

Something Pretty

Resources:
- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box
- framing action by Paint The Moon

My "something blue" photo is a photo taken by the river on a walk with the dogs.

Something Blue

Resources:

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

For "something borrowed" I chose a photo of our dandie Justiina, whom our friend Nunnu borrowed to cuddle with. I photographed them after the ring at the Terrier Specialty show, basking on the grass in the sunshine.

Something Borrowed

Resources:

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

The next prompt was "water". I had two I liked and couldn't decide which picture to choose, they were so different but they go well together. They also reflect well the difference between the dandies in them, the two sisters Justiina and Marleena. Justiina is approaching the water carefully and suspiciously and barely wets her nose there, whereas Marleena happily wades in the water, enjoying the refreshing coolness on a warm day. What the picture doesn't show, however, is her constant rushing in and out of the water. She has recently discovered that one can actually play in the water, but her sister still thinks water is only good for drinking.
 

Tasting the Water

Resources:

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

Wading in Water

Resources:- CoffeeShop Vintagram action by Rita @ The Coffee Shop Blog

- framing action by Paint The Moon

The last prompt was "dreamy". Here I ended up choosing two images taken in Lappajärvi during our DDT Club Show and summer camp at the beginning of August. The first photo is of a folly right on the lake shore, the other one is a shot to the lake - originally I tried to shoot the gull sitting on the navigation mark, but it turned into a shot of the type "there-is-a-gull-there-just-try-and-spot-it".

Folly on the Lake

Resources:
- action Watermelon Blues by Sarah Lynn Cornish

- framing action by Paint The Moon

Lakeshore Rushes

Resources:
- action Pretty Hazy by Sarah Lynn Cornish

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

Lots of dogs and water in these pictures. Yes, we had a nice summer.

Kim's Lilacs and our Dog

I'm posting days 44 and 45 of Beyond Layers here. In the day 44 challenge I was to process a photo by Kim to my liking. It was a pretty bunch of lilacs, and Kim seemed to have desaturated and toned down the original. I took another way and added more contrast and sharpness. This seems to be my way: adding clarity where I can, using bright colours. With a few exceptions, I don't seem to be too good at creating dreaminess or toning down - perhaps it just isn't my thing.

Here are both of the images side by side.

Here's the steps I took:
1 added texture 294 by Sirius-sdz
2 blurred the texture: Gaussian Blur 8 px
3 changed blending mode to soft light 100%
4 ran action Fresh & Colourful by The Pioneer Woman
5 changed action group opacity to 34%
6 added texture Now by Kim Klassen at Colour Burn 76%
7 added frame
8 resized image

Next I'll be off to see Kim's recipe to how she processed her own photo, I guess.

******

As I anticipated, on day 45 Kim shared how she processed her lilac image herself. But I have to say, I was astonished to realize she was sharing with us a technique I had just used in my own processing of her image! I swear I didn't have a peek at the video beforehand, just ended up using Gaussian blur on the texture on my own.

Anyway I decided to have another go according to Kim's suggestions. I picked up a photo taken of our youngest Dandie Justiina, taken on 29 May this year, when she was a bit over a year and a half. She's like many Dandies we've had in that she'll often stare right at you and the camera when you're taking a picture. Often, that is. Usually not when you'd absolutely want her to.

Here I kept the added noise Kim suggested at a minimum, added Gaussian blur to the first texture so that it only gave me the lighting and none of the actual texture, then added another texture for a painterly effect.

Resources used:
- texture Cool Grunge by Kim Klassen at soft light 100%
- texture Paint on Canvas II by Kerstin Franck at overlay 77%
- framing action Double by Chain

What I didn't do here was adding type and then adding gradient to the text, that'll have to wait for some other time, perhaps when I do some scrapbooking?

This & That

Day 41 of Beyond Layers offered two challenges that I totally enjoyed doing. Again, where I started from was not at all what Kim did, and I didn't want to create dreaminess, but used her recipe to add crispness and clarity to the photo. Here Misaki is standing at the front door, staring at me wide-eyed like she often does, asking me if I really mean what I'm telling her. So herself here, that's what she's like with her large nose and big dark eyes under the topknot.

Serious?

Here's what I did to this image:
1 duplicated bg layer
2 added gradient map Pinkish by Kim Klassen, at soft light 100%
3 added a b&w gradient map at normal 30%
4 created text layer, font Shardee by Bright Ideas, applied stroke, turned fill to 19%
5 duplicated text layer, deleted stroke, turned fill back to 100%, set the text slightly off
6 flattened image & resized it for web
7 added frame: framing action Glass by Chain

The second image was an exercise in enlargening the canvas and using gradient fill. The photo is a detail of my belated birthday bouquet that I received last autumn. Since I was quite happy with the photo itself, I didn't do any processing to the actual photo, only enlarged the canvas, created and used a gradient fill and added the text. Can you tell warm orange is my favourite colour? Then I decided I'd like it better with a frame, so I made one using an action by WallStorm.

Editing steps:
1 used crop tool to make image canvas wider than original
2 created gradient fill (my own, warm orange)
3 added text layer with font La Belle Aurore by Kimberly Geswein, blending mode Vivid Light 64%
4 flattened image & resized it
5 added frame: framing action White Frame V4 from Photographer's Toolkit 2 by WallStorm

I'm very happy with both results here. Feels good to be achieving something satisfying with my pictures. And with two of my favourite photography subjects, too - dogs and flowers.

One Little Dog, Basking

Followed Kim's recipe on Day 40 at Beyond Layers. Because the original image was so different, so was the result. Hers was a dreamy image of pastel colours, a still-life with lots of white - a notebook on white table, lilacs in a white vase next to it, some blurred greenness on the background. What she wanted to achieve was to create more warmth.

What I did was almost the opposite. I started with a picture of a pansy, but it was too different for it to benefit the least of the kind of cross-processing Kim did. I trashed the image and took up a very old one: a picture of Foxy being scratched on the sofa back in 2006, when she was a young girl. Don't ask why. Perhaps because this one at least had some very faint resemblance in colour to hers? Obviously I had to adjust Kim's recipe quite a lot again anyway, but at least this time I got some results and got the dreaminess I was looking for. And in the end, what matters is whether I get what I want out of a picture I choose, not whether the picture is like Kim's. Because my pictures just aren't.

One Little Dog, Basking

Resources:
- framing action Shadow by Chain

Doesn't she look pleased? And uncannily like  her granddaughter...

Our Newest Dandie

On day 37 of Beyond Layers, Kim gave us a recipe to try out. No texturing this time, just some Gaussian blur, light adjustments and cross processing.

Our Newest Dandie

I tried the recipe on this lovely statuette. He is our newest Dandie. He joined us at Crufts in March, where we first admired him at the stand, and then simply had to come back and give him a new home with us.

His expression is quite priceless. "Isn't this a pretty hole and I dug it all by myself!" Must really be thankful that our present pack isn't really that keen on digging. We've had some great diggers, especially Fanny, who always dug herself a hole to lie in when in the garden. Dandies can really be a gardener's happy little helpers… whether the gardener is happy afterwards, depends.

Life's Light

Playing catch-up at Beyond Layers… the day 33 challenge was Honouring Life's Light. The purpose was to capture "anything that shines light into your life", to celebrate the love.

This one was so easy. My bright spot, as Kim said, is without any doubt similar to hers: the pets. There’s been a Dandie Dinmont Terrier in our household for more than twenty years, and after the first half year there have always been at least two of them. Our current pack has six members, each one of them unique, each one of them special. Life certainly isn’t boring with the lot of them around, and I really cannot imagine life without them.

We discussed this with Better Half some time ago, trying to imagine what our lives would have turned to if we hadn't taken the first Dandie. You know, "Turn a different corner and we never would have met." Although we are both blessed with good imagination, neither of us could really figure out where we'd be now without the Dandies. But there's one thing we concluded: it certainly would be hugely different. There are so many things we're involved in nowadays - and have been for years - that have evolved out of this, our whole way of life, how we see the world, friendships… everything.

The scrapbooking layout shows the whole current pack in photos taken between 29 July, 2011 and 25 October, 2012: the old Great-grandauntie Leia, Granny Foxy, Mom Misaki, Dad Renny and their daughters Marleena & Justiina.

A Pack of Dandies

Resources used:

- background paper Happiest Search 01 by myself
- gradient from the Super Dooper gradient pack by Digital Phenom
- template 212 by Yin Designs

Snow, Birthday & Tricks

We woke up this morning to see the first snow, and it seems it's not going to go away either. Not really surprising in the sense that it's been frosty all the weekend, but still. It's cloudy now, the temperature is at zero °C, and the weather forecasts for the rest of the week promise even colder weather, with daytime temperatures around -4°. It's about time we had the winter tyres changed for my car today, Better Half has had them for a week already. Wouldn't really have wanted the winter to start already, there would have been work to do on our yard, if not exactly in the garden anymore. But luckily we were so hard-working a week ago and prepared most of the garden for winter, and it was only on Saturday that we raked the last leaves.

Our kids Justiina and Marleena turn one year today. Happiest birthday, girls! I guess they enjoy the weather - when they first got out of doors, there was plenty enough of snow around, and they had months of it before they even saw the first glimpses of bare soil, let alone grass. Anyway, they certainly have changed from what they were a year ago. Here's one of the first pictures of the girls: Nuppu, Marleena and Justiina having a meal a year ago.

Credits:
- template by myself (link upcoming)
- texture Sweet Tart by Kim Klassen
- papers from kit Pour Loane by Margote
- font Daniel by Daniel Midgley
- font Channel by Måns Grebäck

But to get to the original topic of this post, on day 30 of Beyond Layers Kim shared a few tips with us. The first one of them was how to create animated gifs. Now I have to state that I'm not a great friend of animated gifs in general. I think there are far too many of them blinking around the net. Sometime ages ago I had also created quite a few of them, so I wasn't too enthusiastic about it to start with. But Kim's got this wonderful way of throwing in something new that you'd never known or realized. Since Better Half uses Photoshop at work and especially when making all the various club magazines in the so-called free time, I've also been using it for years, starting even before we bought Elements 2, but I'm constantly learning new things.  That's exactly how it was this time, too. Watching the video, I was suddenly inspired to dig these two series of photos I took of Misaki and Foxy in March 2011 and make animations of each.

Here's Misaki, placed firmly on snow and observing the road, making her presence known to anybody who happens to be within earshot by howling regularly.

This turned out to be quite funny. As if she climbed up from a hole or something, Foxy appears out of nothing behind Misaki, walks around her, goes down to the path, shakes herself and disappears again.

Credits for both:
- font Mawns' handwriting by Måns Grebäck

The second tip of the day was creating a triptych, which, simple as it was, again taught me two new, quicker techniques for creating storybook layouts. Had to try out both of them, and the beautiful bouquet I got a few months late for my 50th birthday from the trade union was the perfect subject. Well knowing my favourite colour, my workmate had ordered the bouquet only stating "make it orange". Well, orange it really was, and I just loved it. I took the photos on 15 October, and didn't retouch them in any way, only piled them together and added the labels and text.

Belated Birthday Bouquet

Autumn Bouquet

Credits for both:
- brush from Kinetic Splatter Brush Set by Dustin Schmieding
- font Mawns' handwriting by Måns Grebäck

Now off to take the car to the garage and buy some birthday presents for the girls.

You First?

It seems that my backlog at Beyond Layers just keeps growing, at the moment I'm a whopping twenty-three days behind. Furthermore, the challenge for day 27 was to take some "me time" and document it with at least one photo. That made me groan - for me it just happens that these challenges are the time I've reserved only for myself, but arranging the time is not so simple.

Well, photography and singing fall into the "placing myself first" category, too, but since my photography is taking snapshots it takes next to no time, just having the camera along. And as I take singing lessons and sing in an ensemble, that time is necessarily scheduled, which means that this photo-tweaking hobby of mine and blogging get their turn only when work and other hobbies leave me enough time.

So far that time has been gloriously lacking this autumn, as work turned out to be far busier than I thought. At the moment I have nine hours more to teach a week than originally planned, which equals about eighteen hours less free time every week… We've also been busy with dog shows, both visiting some, arranging some, working in some, so it's really no wonder I've had little time for photo blogging.

But yes, I did actually manage to snatch some time for photography. It might not sound like a big deal, but since it was the first half an hour I didn't need to use for preparing lessons or doing the related office work, it actually was a big deal. On 11 September I took this stroll in the garden with the doggies and the shiny new camera, which had been in my possession for four days then. I'll share some storyboards of the new camera and the pictures of the garden here - this has taken more doing as it is far more time consuming. But I'm so happy to be doing this again.

New Camera

Here's the new toy. Better Half noticed this ad for a considerable reduction in the price of a camera, which was of the same make as our previous one, and the one before that. So, on Thursday 6th September, I hurried to the shop after work and now I'm the happy owner of a brand new beautiful camera. *beams*

Credits:
- photos by me and Better Half
- template by myself (link upcoming)
- Tone textures 3 & 10 by Jerry Jones
- textures Poetic & Luminous by Kim Klassen
- pattern from Pack 87 by Elemis
- gradient Rivendell 14 by ElvenSword
- font Bank Gothic
- font Savoye by Alan Meeks

Below I'm sharing the results of my photo walk in the garden on 11th September.

Animals in the Garden

The dogs were, of course, with me, and I got some nice shots of Renny, Justiina and the Leopard Duck, Misaki and Leia, the sixth creature is our Garden Gargoyle that Better Half found somewhere a couple of years ago. He (the Gargoyle) has been guarding our garden at various spots ever since.

Flowers in the Garden

There were surprisingly many flowers still in bloom, here some of them: in the large picture, the Panicled Hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata) we planted almost exactly three years ago - this autumn it luckily has had time to blossom. Below it, Narrowleaf Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) with a visitor. On the right, a New York Aster (Symphyotrichum novi-belgii), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and Bistort (Persicaria bistorta).

Resources for both of the above:
- template by myself (link upcoming)
- texture And Then Some by Kim Klassen
- brush from Real Brush Strokes Set by Doodle-lee-doo
- font SF Arch Rival
- gradient by Digital Phenom

Autumn Flowers

Still more, and this time more colourful flowers: the blue Monkshood as well as the blue-and-white one (Aconitum napellus), pansies, Petunia Million Bells, Loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata), Garden Phlox (Phlox paniculata) and a strawberry bud.

Resources:
- template by Margote @ Au coin de l'objectif
- papers from Close to Ground by myself
- texture Happy Heart by Kim Klassen
- font Zirkon
- gradient by Digital Phenom

Autumn Colours

The fading and faded flowers of Marguerite Daisy (Argyranthemum frutescens) and a leaf of Thicket Shadbush (Amelanchier spicata).

Resources:

- template by Esther @ Au coin de l'objectif 

- papers from Close to Ground by myself

- texture Happy Heart by Kim Klassen

- font Zirkon

- gradient by Digital Phenom 

I wonder if it occurred to you that I might be studying the plant names in English, too? ˆ_____ˆ

Frame It

On Day 22 at Beyond Layers Kim gave us a tutorial with a few examples of how to frame our photos. This wasn't a difficult challenge, as I've been framing my photos for years. I used to create my own frame templates, so that I'd just copy a ready-made frame layer (or layers) from a photoshop document to the picture I was processing, but lately I've mostly been using actions by Jonas M. Rogne. He's got seven different sets of actions for framing, you can find them here. My favourites are the filtered framing actions. The only minor drawback with these actions is that you need to flatten your image before applying them for them to work properly, but I usually make a flattened copy of my image and discard it then after using the frame action and saving for web.

I decided to try out Kim's suggestions, however, since there were some keyboard shortcuts for photoshop I hadn't used before, and you only ever have a chance to remember them if you use them yourself. So here are three images I framed, using each of the methods in the tutorial.

Behind the Gate

This picture I took of our Dandie boy Renny on 2 September, 2010, at our home gate. Here I used the stroke framing technique, although as I used blend mode Saturation, it is very subtle. The other frame, the thin bevelled inner frame, is my own invention, and I used it a lot earlier.  

Resources:
- texture Evolve 2 by Kim Klassen

Sunset on Koli

We visited Koli National Park in Northern Karelia in the east of Finland at the end of May. The landscapes from the wooded hills down to the lakes and woodland are very much a part of Finnish national landscape. The views have been painted by numerous Finnish artists, and whenever anybody in my childhood neighbourhood in Southern Karelia had visitors from abroad or other parts of Finland, Koli National Park was at least recommended to them as a destination or else they'd be taken there (by my father and/or uncle). The sunset that evening was rather spectacular, I wish my picture would do better justice to what we saw then. Used the enlargening canvas method here, and added some layer styles.

Creeping Buttercup

A tiny fly paying a visit to a Creeping Buttercup after some rain on 24 June, 2012. For this image I used the subtle frame technique, which I think suits this image perfectly.

Resources:
- font BlairMdITC TT Medium by Jim Spiece
- font Shardee by Bright Ideas

Dear me. Seems I got carried away, again. It's definitely time to attend to the family, in other words, to feed the doggies. Better Half left for the Terrier Specialty last night with some friends, taking the kiddies to their second show ever, and as I couldn't travel with them because I was working, I am now dog-sitting the older ones. They are beginning to give me certain kind of looks, and Renny will soon start singing. Better act, before their hints turn to demands. Then it might be time to keel over -- waking up last night at two to make breakfast for Better Half and help them pack the car did leave me feeling somewhat groggy, although I managed to snatch some sleep for about three hours before driving to work.

How 'bout a Little Black & White

Another rainy day. There have been too many of them for my liking this summer. The end of the week was nice and warm, at times hot (for a Northern girl like me), and it was the kind of weather when you don't want to do anything serious, just bask in the shade, have a bite on our little homemade patio, walk in the garden watering the flowers, weeding a bit here and there, feeling the soft flow of warm air on your skin...

To counter that, it has been raining for two days now. It started yesterday, but that was mostly just drizzle. Today it has been pouring down all day, with perhaps a short break at noon, so that I managed to push the doggies out without too much yelling and stamping foot. They don't like the rain, oh noes, but we refuse to have a sandbox for them in the house. Period. As it is, I have to listen closely to what happens outside and kick them out at just the suitable moment when there is either momentarily no rain or only very soft drizzle.

But I've moved on to week 9 of Beyond Layers. The assignment for day 17 was to work in black & white, create a few different images and try and see what works and what doesn't. I have three different images here, and decided I'd stay away from flowers this time. I also thought I'd try out different methods, such as occur to me, to turn the images b&w.

Watering Hen

Me in Six Words

Day 3 Challenge at Beyond Layers was to write a Six-Word Memoir as published on Smith Mag site, or as I took it, to describe ourselves in six words. Six words. Well, after some scribbling I ended up with Laughing, loving, teaching, touching, doing, daring...

The photographic challenge was to add the 6-word memoir to a photo. Originally, I did just that, but somehow, with the photo I chose, the text looked out of place. There was simply too little room for it. So I thought, why not do a scrapbook layout with the photo and text? And I did, and it looks so much more like me now.

Texture Wonderful Magic by Kim Klassen
Template by N@te

The photo was taken on 28 July, 2008. It was my birthday, and we were coming home from the DDT Club Show in Imatra, and, if I remember correctly, decided more or less on the spur of the moment not to drive straight back to north but to take a day tour in South Eastern Finland. It was a wonderful sunny day, and we visited the beautiful Punkaharju ridge, the Kerimäki Church, which is the largest wooden church in the world, the Valamo Monastery in Heinävesi and the Iron Age hill fort in Sulkava. In this picture, Misaki is admiring Lake Saimaa from the hill fort (or the fisherman down on the jetty, or the boat on the lake, but anyway). It was quite a climb to the hill, especially for our low-legged doggies, as there were hundreds of steps to climb, but we really enjoyed it.

I did another take on the giraffes, too. Here they are. Not much has changed, except I lightened up the image, and I am far happier with it now.

Texture Tuesday - Oh so SOFT eDition

This week the theme in Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday challenge was soft. I knew immediately what I was going to do with the theme, and here's the result. 

I took this photo on 10 November, 2011, when our Dandie Dinmont Terrier puppies were 18 days old, and spent most of their time feeding and sleeping next to their mother. Their eyes had opened a few days earlier, and they were beginning to take their first steps, but it was all so very exhausting...

Watching puppies grow up is wonderful, but with them time really really flies. Especially at this point, each single day brings about so many changes... if you want to take a photo of them the way they are today, you absolutely have to do it today, because by tomorrow they will have grown up so much more again.

Dreamin'

Thank you for the beautiful tools:
- texture "Embrace" by Kim Klassen
- texture "Sleepy Bokeh" from "Assorted Bokeh Set" by Shadowhouse Creations
- texture "Grunge 6" by Mysteria-DL
- action "Lovely & Ethereal" from The Pioneer Woman's Action Set 1

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.