CS Blog Hop November 2016 - Paradise

OK so it is 1st November and the new kit is here, downloaded, unzipped and installed and Photoshop CC and my Adobe Bridge are now open and I am looking at a blank canvas!

It took a while, but I have now opened up ALL the lusciousness from this wonderful Paradise kit.  I think CS has outdone itself with the vibrant color palette this month.  Just gorgeous.

All these super colors make me want to go off and do all the challenges for November in the forum.

What I have now done is build a template to use with a single photo.  I decided to use a single photo as my background here and this one seems to have a really nice tropical feel to it, which I think will work with the colors and elements in the kit and the photo that I have in mind.

Those of you who know me well are probably wondering what I am doing now.  Well after several minutes of playing, I have brought in my photo and played around with the shadows and added a few layers and this has now happened.

These water color style leaves and hibiscus flowers are amazingly awesome - Jac you have outdone yourself with these!!  Anyway,  I am now playing around with embellishing this photo and you will have to wait and see what I have come up with momentarily.

Here you are - the finished layout.

I hope you like this layout.  The colors are just drop dead gorgeous and the digital kit really does speak to me so you have all probably seen all kinds of stuff in the galleria from me.

Please enjoy the holiday season and stay safe.

CSBlog Hop - 2016 Garden Holiday or Christmas Thyme

No sooner than Karen puts out a call for interest in a blog hop for this cute Christmassy kit than I have to open everything in the kit up and see what I can do!!

Now open up a blank canvas on a transparent background.  In this case I am making a card so chose 7" wide x 4.5" high at 300ppi.

Looking at the printables, I really like the one on the bottom left and I think I will use a selection from that one as my background.  Of course, I will rotate what I choose by 90 degrees.

Once the selection is made, and pasted into the new file, duplicate the layer and rotate it by 180 degrees and then you can go ahead and play with the opacity.  In this case, I reduced the opacity by 50% of the second background layer.  Then I used an eraser brush to erase some of the center part of the merged background.  You can play around with flow and opacity at this stage also.

Here is what the top layer looks like after being erased.

You could save this as an overlay/semi vignette for use with later projects as well.  If you do that, make sure you label it with something that you can remember!!!

Above you can see that I am beginning to build a card with various of the components from within the kit.

Add a stamp greeting in a toning color.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas.

OK it is now Election Day - 8th November and the invitation states that we need to make 3 cards or one layout or one project so what I will do is make a layout a bit later in the week when things have calmed down a bit here.

Today is 19th November and things have not calmed down since election day but I thought I better get the rest of my blog entry done prior to the lunacy of next week and 4000 calorie meals!!!

This one is a layout utilising some of the beautiful elements of this delightful kit.  I have a stock photo of the Petronas Towers in my stash that I have never used.  This is the layout that I created with the photo.  It seemed like a good way to use some of this kit.

Your next stop is  http://craftycolonel.blogspot.com/2...