{creative soul}

Art Journaling - Fun with Photos!

Good morning! I hope it is warm where you are because it is FREEZING here today... I've got my cup of joe with me, classic rock is on Spotify and I'm ready to have some fun with photos....

If you haven't yet seen my new Journal Your Art Out 5 with Christine of Fiddlette Designs, you are in for a treat! At over 600 MB, this is our biggest art journal kit yet. It is filled with lots of fun backgrounds, flowers, houses, girls, words and grungy brushes. In creating your art journal page, or scrapbook page, it can be rewarding to mix things up and do something different!

One of my favorite artists is Claudine Hellmuth. I love how she puts together her art by cutting out photos to mix up with her collage backgrounds. The result is truly whimsical and just downright fun!  Here are a few of my favorite pieces of Claudine's...

In putting together my page this morning, I wanted to emulate this fun style. Let's start by opening up the background from JYAO5 with the grass and sky scene, it's called nrj-jyao5-back1.jpg.

To this backdrop, let's add some fun elements from the JYAO5 kit. Here is what I came up with...

Next, we are going to open up some photos and using our lasso tool in Photoshop, let's "cut out" some faces .... lasso, copy & then...

paste them into your collage

Looks cute but we still have some work to do!

My head is pretty big (LOL), but it's not big enough to cover my art girl's head, so lets go ahead and erase the layer behind me that contains my girl...

Move and place your other photos,  masking out or erase bits of them to make them fit where you want. On my page, I put Ellie and John's heads in the flowers... my daughter was not happy about this, btw! :)

Next, make sure you are on the layer that contains your faces and choose Image > Adjustments > Curves.

On mine, I grabbed the bar in the middle of the curve and pull it up and slightly to the left to adjust the lighting in the photo. But you may have to do something different.. watch your photos and stop when it looks good on your screen.

I did this for each of my faces...

Finally, I like how in Claudine's collages she changes the faces from her photos to black and white. It really gives it a unique look. Let's do something similar. Making sure you are on your face layer, choose Image> Adjustments > Black and White.

I did not want my faces to be completely black and white, so I went ahead and checked the Tint box and chose a light flesh tone.

Again, repeat this step for each of your faces...

Here is what my final page looks like. I really love it! Feel free to play and be creative. Have fun with cutting and pasting and remember there are NO RULES in art journaling! I can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

HUGS!
N

 

40% off some old time favorites and a freebie!

I decided to take a design break over November, choosing instead to re-release some of my older Christmas items. These sets, while older, are still some of my favorite things and I believe represents some of my best work. These brush sets are shmootzy, sparkly and just downright fun!  Maybe they will be new to you, this holiday season!? As a reminder everything in my shoppe is 40% off until the end of December.

As a little gift, I'm including this sample from my Merry Merry set....

Christmas Blessings,
N.

 

Somewhat Fit, Sort of Fabulous and Almost Fifty!

A few years back (approximately 10 or so) I ran 3 miles a day. I was trying to get the baby weight off, along with the lingering depression I suffered as a stay-at-home mom. I was about the weight I am now, only now I am much more fit cardiovascularly as well as muscularly.

One morning way back when after one of my three- milers, I walked the small patch of grass that connected the main road to my subdivision. It was something I always did to cool down. As I was walking a car drove by and a young man inside yelled out to me "Hey Fatty, you should be running, not walking!!"

I was shocked and pissed. Didn't he know I just ran three miles?!? More than I was devastated.

After that day, I just gave up. I stopped working out and over the course of the next few years I proceeded to gain more weight - topping off at over 200 pounds.

Looking back on it, I can't believe I gave that little shit that much power over me. To let his words define me and to just give up on something I truly enjoyed — running.

Well, I just got back from a run on that same stretch of road I ran nearly 10 years ago. I didn't run the whole thing, but when I did run my time was about 2 minutes faster than it was back then. It is unusally warm today and as I ran I felt lighter, happier and more in control of my health than I've ever been.

Just as I was walking that stretch of grass today, a car went by and a teenager rolled down his window to  bark at me.  I just laughed and flipped him off. He looked totally shocked at this old lady flipping him the bird.

It felt fantastic!

I'm in love!!

As Buddy the Elf would say, "I'm in love! I'm in love! And I don't care who knows it!" LOL!

Recently I saw a post by Traci Murphy where she was talking about the new photo app PicFX. I really love Instagram and like to post my picts from there to FB, so I was hesistant to try yet another photo app. But I did and now I am hooked!!

The great thing about PicFX is you can add layers of effects, similar to Photoshop, and there are over 100 different effects — lighting, film and textures. Then you can choose to Save the picture, share it, or — wait for it— export to Instagram!! Yeah!!!!!!!!

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, you can check out the PicFX Flickr pool, or just type it into Pinterest or Google Images. FatMumSlim is having an October Instagram Photo-A-Day challenge. I've been playing along and find that I usually go to PicFX first, then take it into Instagram before sharing.

Here are a few of my most recent PicFX shots...

 

Have a great Monday!

 

Vintage Photo Effects with Dreamy Photo Overlays

Hey there! I hope everyone is having a great Saturday. Here in Michigan it has been HOT HOT HOT for the past few months and honestly, I'm getting tired of the heat. I am ready for the cool temps again!

I have a fun tutorial for you today on how to create a vintage photo effect using my new Dreamy Photos 6, which will be in my shoppe on Monday.

First, open up the overlay 10 (nrj-dreamy6-vintage-10.png). Slighty size the .png down and add another layer underneath. Fill that layer with white.

Next open up the photo that you want to create the effect on. I chose a pretty flower that I captured during my recent trip to California...

Drag the photo on top of the layer that contains the vintage overlay #10.

Load the selection from Layer 0 (our vintage overlay 10). Then select the layer containing your photo and create a new Layer Mask. Make sure your selection is active before you create your mask.

Pretty, huh!? Well, we are going to make it look even more aged and cool! :)

With your photo layer selected, take the fill or opacity down to about 80%

Then duplicate the layer that contains our vintage overlay 10 (Layer 0). Drag it up on top of the photo layer and choose "Overlay" from the layer blend mode menu.

Next, duplicate your photo layer, drag it on top of your last layer and set the opacity (or fill) to 20%

To give it even more of an aged and faded look, let's do one more thing! Open up vintage overlay #1 from the Dreamy 6 pack -

drag it over to our workspace on top of all the other layers and give it a blend mode of Soft Light...

and viola! one very vintage photo! :))

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. My new Dreamy Photos 6 will be 25% off this Monday...

Hugs!
N

 

 

Image Resist Technique - Digitally

Image resist techniques are the perfect way to dress up your art journal! In real life art journals, you can use a wax crayon, or stamp with an image resist inkpad, then paint over it for some cool effects. This ia a fun way to write secret messages to yourself or journal, to add titles and even decorative accents.

In digital art journaling, we can achieve the same look pretty easily in Photoshop. Want to follow along with me as I do this? Great! I've put together a little freebie so you can do just that! Download it here.

First open up our scanned old newsprint for a background.

 

Choose the paint color you want (here I chose a soft rose color), then using the watercolor brush, on a New Layer, stamp around so that you achieve a watercolor-wash look on top of the newsprint.

Now, with the watercolor wash layer selected, add a new Layer Mask. Using the color black, "stamp" inside the Layer Mask with the solid flower brush set.

Now load the selection of the flowers and Invert the selection.

On a New Layer, choose the grungy sponge brush, included in the .abr file and with the same rose color, stamp inside the resist of the flowers, to give it an imperfect, stamped look.

 

Next, on a New Layer, add your title and journaling in black. Using the outline brush of the frame, stamp inside the layer mask to give your journaling frame another resist technique look. Add your sponge color to the extra distsressing layer, if you'd like.

Finally, we'll add just a very slight emboss on the resist layer, to give it more realism.

And, that's it! I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial. I'd love to see your digital image resist techniques! If you'd like to join our weekly art journal challenges at JessicaSprague.com, we give a prompt to get you going and then you upload it to the challenge gallery. We've got a great group of art journalers over there so come on over!

xo
N

 

 

Happy Birthday Blog Hop!!

Hello there! It's a great week for JessicaSprague.com! We are celebrathing our 5th Birthday and we've got lots of fun planned for you!

First, head on over to JS.com and check out all the Birthday Celebration happenin's!! There is a alot going on...Jessica's got an amazing FREE class for you, along with tutorials from your favorite instructors. In addition, we are having a sale and some great giveaways!

I'm also excited to share with you today's BLOG HOP, where, if you follow along, you can come away with a great Beach Party kit! First on the stop is Jessica's blog, so don't forget to stop there FIRST!

Next, is my contribution to the hop, which you can grab here.

Now, head on over to Pink Paislee's blog to get the next installment of the Beach Party kit!

Have fun and don't forget to visit JessicaSprague.com all week for all the Birthday Fun! *** All download links will be available until Sunday June 24th at midnight Eastern time. **

Hugs!
Nan

 

Painted Moments

I am so excited to tell you about a new product that just came out today. Painted Moments are 12x12 painted backgrounds that are a little bit artsy and a little messy. The thing I'm most excited about is that while they are perfect for art journaling, they can also be used as a 12x12 quickpage. Just add your pictures and journaling for a unique and beautiful page in a snap!

I just love what the creative team at JessicaSprague.com has done with these painted pages and I wanted to share them with you today....what an amazingly talented and creative bunch!

Painted Moments are 25% off today, Monday, May 21, so give them a try.

Hugs!
N

 

 

Reverie Atelier

I am so blessed to be able to create for a living and I'm especially blessed when it comes to having amazing online artists for friends!! This month, I'm lucky enough to work with a group known as Reverie Atelier....Christine Honsigner, Aja Abney, Shen Guthrie and Danielle. We collaborated on a really beautiful kit called "Retro Spring"! It's filled with vintage finds, prints and retro-goodness! Our goal was to make an eclectic kit similar to what you may find when visiting your Grandma's house... a little kitsch, a little vintage and a whole lot of fun!

This kit includes 22 papers, 52 elements, an alpha and a bonus template…It is so pretty that I wanted to share it with you here, along with gorgeous layouts from some amazing artists! If you want to get the kit, you can use the coupon code 50NRJAPR12 in my shoppe to get 50% off your next order of $10.00 or more. This expires April 30th and is limited to one per user.

And now, without further ado... here is Retro Spring!

 

Fab Friday: Digital Art Journal Tutorial

Hello and Happy Friday to you! Today, I am going to show you a fun tutorial to use for your digital art journaling! We'll be using an inspiration piece from Art.com in combination with my ColorWash Brushes to "paint" on our art journal canvases!

First, in Photoshop, open up an existing painted art journal background that has yellow-orange hues to it.

Then, open up your inspiration pieces. The pieces I chose were more painterly but they can be anything that speaks to you. Remember when using existing artwork to inspire your personal art journals, to respect the original artist by not copying it verbatim - change it up and make it your own!

Next, load up my Color Wash brushes and, using your color picker, pick up the purple from the inspiration piece. Choose a rough vertical brushstroke. Here I decided on the fourth one in. Then in my brush presets, under Shape Dynamics,  I selected flip x & y jitter so it would give me some variance while I brushed.

I also chose the Color Burn mode to burn in a rich purple color as I painted...On a New Layer, go ahead and get painting!! :) Do this until you have a look you like. I chose to do this in the middle of the page. Change the opacity to 37% percent:

Find a horizontally-oriented brush that you like. I chose this one, from the color wash set:

And using my inspiration piece as a reference, on a new layer, I painted the top, creamy yellow portion. I left the orange- yellow background showing through on the edges, just as it does in the Art.com print.

Next, making another new layer for each part of this next painting section, paint in the gray areas. Choose varying levels of the gray and combine it with varying opacity levels on each layer. This is what I ended up with:

Then, to get the brushed look on the bottom to look my art piece,  I added yet another layer of gray, then added a layer mask and painted in the layer mask with the same vertical brush, in black to erase away parts of the layer....

Whew! Okay, are you still with me? LOL! See that brown sketchy line in our art piece? Choose a horizontal grungy brush or doodly border brush. I ended up choosing both - hey it's okay to do because this is our art journal and we can do anything we want, right?! :) Choose a rich brown color for your paint brush and on a new layer, paint in that horizontal border line, anywhere you wish!

I thought the space below the horizontal line was a good place to add my title. For my page, I wanted to put down in words all the wishes I have for my daughter. So my title was "My Wish for You". I added a doodley flower to the title:

For my last step, I thought the purple paint block in my art inspiration piece would be a perfect place to put my journaling for this page. So, from my color picker, I selected the rich purple from the art piece and, on a new layer, I painted in vertical block, using this brush from my color wash set:

I duplicated the layer and flipped it vertically, choosing "Color Burn" from Layer Styles and an opacity of 78%:

My last step was to add my journaling - my wishes for my daughter: sunny days & starry nights, moments that take your breath away, love that lasts a lifetime,  good friends to stick by your side, children to snuggle with and show the way, wonderful pets,  a small house and a large garden, the courage to be yourself and to live every day of your life in gratitude & joy.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! The doodle flower and border are from my upcoming Doodle Book brushset, which will be available next week in my shoppe!

Have a wonderful weekend and I can't wait to see your pages!

xo
N.