Just some layouts....

A few layouts I did recently and haven't posted......

This one of Caiden was for a speed scrap and I have to say it is my fave SS layout to date. The first part of the challenge was to choose just ONE paper. I knew instantly I would use a paper that closely resembled kraft paper because I was reading this past week how that is the trend right now....kraft paper with pops of color. And you cannot have a bad layout with a cute & adorable photo subject like Caiden!!


And this layout of Trevor was done for the Jessica Sprague Photo Editing freebie online class I am taking. I have learned some great techniques so far. I am very glad she leaves the tutorials up on her website forever so I can access them anytime I need a refresher. The techniques used on this photo of Trev were a combination of several things. The main idea was to add texture to the photograph. I started by taking a normal, color photo and desaturated it some. I then did a colorize process in the hue/saturation layer and adjusted my hue to closely resemble a sepia tone. Then I added 3 separate texture layers to grunge it up some, blending them all to soft light and voila!!! I stroked the outer edges of my photo in black & then a rusty red to match the journaling/ribbon color. I also added a grungy texture layer over the background paper.


And here is Mr. Caiden again. This was done for another challenge where I could only use 4 different elements to create my page. I started by taking my color photo of Caiden and duplicating it and turning that new photo to b&w using the new awesome technique I learned with a gradient map & adjusting of hues/saturation/contrast, etc. You get a much better end result than just the one-click b&w action that comes in PSE. I then erased the b&w photo in the area of his eyes to make them & only them stand out in color. He has the most amazing blue eyes and I wanted that to be a focal. The rest of the layout was just taking various papers & elements and doing some recoloring to make them match his eyes better. I love all the white space this LO has!