Club Scrap - December 2014 Blog Hop - Reunion

I do hope you all had an extremely Merry Christmas and that Santa brought you all some goodies.

This month I am going to attempt to do something totally different.  This is called Paint Splatter Portrait and I thought that the Reunion kit would be awesome to use for this.

First up, open a photo, duplicate the image and convert it to black and white and then close the original photo.  I am using a photo of my estranged daughter and grandson for this.

Next open up a new image 12" x 12" with a white background.

Now move your photo onto the new canvas you have created and close out the photo.

Next you are going to use a levels adjustment layer to blow out most of the whites and darken the blacks.  Go to Layer>new adjustment layer>levels.

Click the toggle lever on the right and slide it towards the middle to increase the white; click to toggle lever on the left and slide it to the middle to increase the black.  At this point be careful not to go too far with either of these adjustments so that you maintain features on the faces.  Once you have done this hide the background layer and then go to layers>merge visible.

Now you need to add a layer mask.

At this point DON'T PANIC!!

Hopefully your photo will have disappeared.

Choose a brush and set your foreground color to white.

Click on the black mask in the layers panel and begin brushing and/or stamping.  You can adjust the flow and opacity of your brush at any time.  What you are seeing here is a fuzzy round brush "revealing" some of the photo below it.

Here is what I ended up with for this photo and now comes the fun stuff.

I wanted to make a new gradient fill layer so I created a new fill layer above the layers I have worked with so far and made a gradient using the colors from the Reunion kit.  Once you have the gradient set the property of it to overlay or soft light.

Make a new layer and do your gradient.  I have further adjusted mine using the blend options and lowered the opacity of the gradient a bit.

Now you can complete your layout as normal.  I have actually made brushes out of some of the stamps from the reunion kit and will be applying those on their own layers at their own opacities shortly but right now I am looking to see what extras I can use to make this layout work.

Here is what I ended up with:

I hope you have enjoyed this creative process and something totally different.  As always your response means a lot to me so please ask questions if you want to.

The next stop is:

http://craftycolonel.blogspot.com/2014/12/club-scrap-reunion-blog-hop.html

Holiday Blog Hop - Just in time for Christmas 2014

Needless to say, as soon as Karen posted about the holiday blog hop I knew that I had to be part of it, I guess I have to be part of everything but with the new kits that came out the week before Thanksgiving, it really was a no brainer for me to let Karen know that I was in!

Anyway - here is my offering.

Over the years of digital scrapbooking and card making and other digital activities, I have come across many many templates and projects which I have collected.  Here is just one of them.

This is a template for making a small box.  The base is 2.25" square and the height is 1.5" for each side.  The template makes the most adorable pyramid box which can hold some candy goodies or other goodies if you like.  

With the advent of our new Christmas kits I thought it would be very cool to make a little box up with a gift tag with the name of each of the people who are going to be celebrating Christmas with us this year.

So here you can see I have pulled in a background paper and added Mr. Gnome from the original Gnomes collection.  

At the same time I am creating tags with the names of all who will be at our Christmas dinner.

Now for the tag.  Opened up a new blank piece of paper and pulled in Mr. and Mrs. Gnome.

There are many different ways to make a tag now.  What I have done is found a good tag shape and used it as a mask to make the tag.

At this point I extended the length of the tag so that I had room to put names at the bottom.

Here you can see the tag in place with the box ready to print, cut, score, fold, fill and finish ready to enjoy.

Printed 6 copies.

Cut and scored each one and inked the edges of each tag and stamped each person's name using tiny alphabet stamps.

Filled each box with Hershey's Christmas kisses and added black waxed linen thread into the holes at the top of each peak.  Here is the first finished box, tag and all.

And all 6 finished boxes which will be used as place holders for our special Christmas dinner.

I do hope you have all enjoyed my entry into the Holiday blog hop.

Time to wish you all an extremely Merry Christmas and point you in the direction of the next stop.

http://clubscrap.com/2014-holiday-blog-hop/