Sweet Tuesday....

It is a few past 7 a.m. on Tuesday. I have been up since 5:30 thanks to a nice little headache. It has since faded, leaving me looking forward to this day. Yes, you heard me....looking forward, not dreading. Okay, okay...I confess...I took a vacation day, LOL. A whole day this time. Yes, I just had a holiday but trust me, this is a much needed day off. And, I did about 2 days worth of work yesterday to prepare.

After posting this I am going to put my face on, brush my teeth and head out the door but first, I must make my list....

• Starbucks...need a non-fat, no-whip mocha & blueberry scone...well, maybe need is too strong a word....I WANT :)
• Wal-Mart...inexpensive blue towels; kids sunglasses; beach toys; 8x8 scrapbook refill pages
• Hobby Lobby...black ink pads (on sale, 50% off, sweet!)

For now, that is all I can think of. I am preparing for a huge women's event at my church, to take place this Friday night. As part of my "duties" I volunteered to do 2 themed tables. One will be a scrapbook/craft theme of which I should have the majority of what I need to decorate the table down in my scrapbook room. The other table will be, if you hadn't guessed it, a beach theme. I want the blue towels to place of the tables to represent the ocean. I could use some new towels anyway so I wouldn't be making a totally frivelous purchase since I will be able to use them when this is over....if I find the right blue that will look good on the table but also work in with my bathroom decor. Hmmm, this should be a challenge.

Well, I have played enough for this morning.....here is a LO I created while the sun rose. As I have said previously, I am taking an online, FREE, photo editing workshop over at Jessica Sprague's site and I am learning some awesome techniques!!! Today's technique is about "burning edges" on your photos to give a more dramatic look to your photo. I really love this technique which is a few steps in length to achieve but so worth it. I like it better than the lighting effect feature I stumbled across in my PSE program recently because it gives a more subtle look that I feel I can control more. In the LO below, I burnt the edges of the photo around Trev's face by creating a separate adjustment layer (levels) over the original photo, dialing down the center slider tab to darken the entire photo, then I chose my gradient tool and changed it to a radial shape in the tool bar, changed the mode to multiply and executed the gradient over my photo. For added emphasis I then clicked on the "white" mask tool within that adjustment layer and "brushed" over Trev's face to highlight as much as possible since I want the focus to be on that gorgeous face of his! Once I had it the way I wanted it I saved it as a JPG and then put it into my workspace to begin the layout design process (adding papers, elements & journaling). Once I placed the photo in my workspace I decided to go back to my photo and do one more b&w adjustment layer and added that b&w into my workspace as well. I love the contrast of the color & the black/white photos. For all you "non digi-scrapping" folks out there this was probably just a bunch of crazy talk. And finally, no more waiting....here is the LO. I also added the "before" photo to show you the difference with this technique I used.