Of Calendar Making, Photoshop Playing, and Just Plain Fun...

For the last ten years or so, I've been making family photo calendars for my parents and my in-laws.  Last year was the first year that they didn't get done and I had decided that I wouldn't continue making them since the kids are getting older now and aren't as "cute" but my mom really, really wanted me to make her a calendar so I've been scrambling, trying to find enough pictures of the kids and get everything done before January is over.  :)

In my tried and true tradition of making things much harder than they need to be, I decided that I would try making some of my own backgrounds using Photoshop.  After all, I have a book I bought years ago that I thought I really ought to use.  :)  It's called Digital Designs for Scrapbooking  by Renee Pearson.  

After a whole day of dinking around, I finally got realistic and found some editable backgrounds to go along with the ones that I had made.  After a few color changes to make some variety, I had enough to get started adding photos.  I digitally cross-processed most of the photos to make them more interesting looking (well, at least I hope they're more interesting).

I really like the way they turned out.  These are a few of my favorites.

  

I'm definitely looking forward to playing around some more with making background pages and other things like tags and stuff that I can use for scrapbooking or mixed media art projects.  

Digital Xpro fun

I had a ton of fun playing around in Photoshop tonight.  I wanted to post some Christmas photos on Facebook but I didn't really like how a lot of them looked so I decided to try some digital collage and cross processing to see if I could make them more interesting.  Here are a few of my favorites.

I think they really look very vintage and analog, don't you?  The picture of the tree branch was cross processed and then layered with a transparent background to give it extra texture and interest.  I even learned how to create an interesting border around the photos, although I'd like to find a frame that simulates the border you'd get when you do a polaroid transfer.  It looks a lot messier and grungier, which is what I like.  :)