Happy Holidays!!

From our house to yours, have a wonderful holiday!!  No 

time to shoot for Texture Tuesday, so I'm repeating

a previous image.  Anna and Ollie send their

best wishes and big hugs too!

Merry Christmas

Seems every day since the first of November has flown by.  I'm scurrying around trying to get everything ready for Sunday.  That is the day my side of the family will celebrate our Christmas.  Mike's mom will be here too.  I've been debating what to have for dinner, and I think I will just get a large half salmon from Costco.  I'll roast it and make a mustard cream sauce.  Another tradition is scalloped potatoes.  I'll have a large green salad with pecans and dried cranberries and some sort of green veggie…..pie for dessert.

That should do it!

This image is from a shoot I did for our Christmas card.  It was inspired by something I saw in a magazine.    

I combined several images for the triptych below.  The image on the right is similar to the one I used for the card.  I used Kim's texture "And Then Some" on it and messed around with a couple presets.  Overall I liked how these turned out.  It was fun to use pink instead of the traditional red and green…..and of course I'm a sucker for anything glittery or glimmery. 

Wishing each and every one of you and your families a very merry Christmas and a holiday season filled with love and joy.

Linking with Texture Tuesday

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I'm finally getting in the holiday mood.  The ladies from my art group hosted a holiday boutique over the week-end.  They had so many beautiful hand-made items….jewelry, gourds, ceramics, painted wall hanging, painted cards, Jacki's paper collage ladies and so much more.  I'm sorry I didn't take pictures.  I was too busy talking!! But if you hop over to this post on Jacki's blog, you'll see all the beautiful work.
We're decorated!  My granddaughter Malia helped me big-time with the tree and all the other decorations.

I played with these images in Lightroom print module to make the layouts….. so much easier than Photoshop.  I understand why Kim loves LR.  I've become a lover as well.

For Texture Tuesday I did a couple versions of holiday images….

 

 and below the vintage sepia montage.  Lightroom let me add these cute black square corners much like the old photo album corner stickers. 

Come on over to Kim's party and see what the others have done.  I hope you are all getting in the spirit of the holiday season!

Everyday Life

I'm slowly getting back to "everyday life".  I visited my DIL and granddaughters for turkey.  I got to see all the family including a few on my side I haven't seen for a while.  Hard to imagine the  holiday season is upon us when the temperatures are in the 70's.  We finally had a little rain over the week-end and are due for a lot more tomorrow and Wednesday.  Oh, how we need it!!

Here are a couple of the ladies who participated in Gather

walking the beach.  Texture Tuesday is here again so I'm 

using this for my entry.  I used a layer of KK-Claires and a layer of KK-Hughes on this.  The text brush is Kim's also. 

My DH and I decided not to give gifts to each other this year.  We have enough "things", so we are taking ourselves out for dinners and lunches.  Of course we will have our get together and gifts for the grands.  What are you all doing this year for your holiday?  Any special traditions? 

Thanksgiving

I try to start each day with gratitude for another day, another opportunity, for all I'm blessed with, but at this time of year I'm especially grateful for friends, family, health and abundance. 

I'm linking to Texture Tuesday today with my interpretation of the Thanksgiving holidays.  For this image I used a layer of Kim's "Leaf" and a layer of one of her other textures.  Sorry I can't remember which.   I also used Kim's 

Darklight preset.  I added a Topaz filter.  I love playing with textures and filters as I'm never sure  what will turn up in the final result.  I like how this makes the pears look like they have been gold leafed. I used the same textures and different filters below on this image.

I wish you all a beautiful Thanksgiving.

I'm Sharing

I'm sharing two still lifes today which I'm linking with Texture Tuesday. These were shot at the Gather event in Sunset Beach.  You can see more about that here and here.  I used KK-Dark Light on this image….

and KK-Gentle here.

There will be many more examples of Texture Tuesday, so be sure to click on the button below and go visit.  Better yet, why don't you join us?

Gather - Sunset Beach Part Two

Today I'm sharing the rest of our experience with Kim Klassen and Xanthe Berkeley.   We took shots of still lifes from all kinds of positions.  Here are Barb and Laura on the floor.  We even did one still life in the laundry room.  It had a window and the light was beautiful.

Some more of the beautiful people…. Kristina 

and Pam

and Xanthe

Just look at these shutterbugs! 

from left Xanthe, Lynne, Suzee, Barb, Kim, Kristina and Carolyn.

Many of the houses on the beach have been redone and 

"mansionized" as I call it, but here's one that has not.  It looked so quaint among the "big guys".

 The weather could not have been more perfect, and we literally jumped for joy every day!

There were all kinds of little arrangements (by Miracle Myriam) throughout the house….

Another still life

But as the saying goes…."all good things must come to an end".

I don't think any one of us wanted it to end, and we plan to keep in touch through Instagram, Facebook, etc.  Kim and Xanthe sent us a podcast at the end of their stay to remind us how special the event was and to keep in touch with each other.

I hope each of you will have an opportunity like this.  It's so special when you get to spend time with people who "get it".  I have lots of friends but very few "get it", who share my interests in art, photography, etc.  They wonder why I blog….

"You mean you're going to get together with people you met online?"

Yes, and I loved it!!

Gather Sunset Beach - Part One

My friends, seems like forever since I last posted.  I was getting ready for, and then attending, the first "Gather" hosted by Kim Klassen and Xanthe Berkeley.  Yes, all the way from Canada and England respectively.

We stayed in a beautiful home on Sunset Beach.  

As Kim said it did look like the house from the movie "Something's Gotta Give"……huge with so much light….great for photographers.  Kim and Xanthe were an integral part of the group….no structure…..just laid back fun.  Xanthe took some of us to do portrait shots, and Kim helped others with still life setups.  We spent a lot of time on the beach doing shoots…..the weather was fabulous!

Sunsets were gorgeous.  

Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters stopped in for a couple hours.  She lives down the road in Huntington Beach.

L to R….Lynne and her sister Suzee, Tracey, Laura, Carolyn and Kim.

The light was so wonderful in the early morning and late afternoon.  Just look at the way it makes these beautiful faces glow!

From top left to right….Myriam, Danielle, Kristina, and Carolyn.

Myriam and her friend Alisha were the facilitators and what an incredible job they did to make our stay a true experience!  I'll post Alisha's pic tomorrow.

The beautiful freestanding "window" with the word "create" was created by Myriam.  We had a craft room and gathering room on the third floor which had its own kitchen too.  We set up still lifes all over that floor but also all over the house.  We even did a still life of a sunflower in the laundry room.  Xanthe did a portrait shoot of me sitting in the window on the second floor.

We had a marvelous dinner Monday night - giant crab legs and sea bass.  Yum!  

Myriam and Alisha did marvelous lunch spreads for us every day.  The last day we had a brunch of pancakes and eggs with Mimosas.  Thank you, Myriam, you and Alisha were wonderful!

Here's Xanthe creating a flowing scarf for a shoot…

and Lynne and Kim having a serious discussion.

More tomorrow as I have pictures on two different computers and my smart phone.  

I'm just learning the nuances of my Macbook Pro……and thank you, Laura for spending tons of time teaching me Instagram.  Kim was great working with me on my Lightroom shortcomings.  Thank you, Kim.  Lookout world, here comes the technology wizard LOL!!

This gathering of kindred spirits was so far beyond my expectations, I'm missing everyone already. 

Stay tuned for more. 

Thinking of the Sea

I am so fortunate to live close to the ocean……about a mile as the crow flies.  It is ever changing, some days windblown and rough….some days smooth and clear as glass.  Depending on the clouds some days it's a deep dark indigo color…..other days it's a beautiful aquamarine.  I love shells and other artifacts from the sea.  This week I went for a dreamlike feel.

This little box was a project I did sometime ago.  I think I may have done a post about my grandmother's button jar.  I covered the box with a vintage paper, glued on buttons from her jar, and tied it all up with an organza ribbon. 

For Texture Tuesday I made adjustments in Lightroom and then added two layers of Kim's "Waterfront 7" texture, one on soft light at 15%, the second on linear dodge at 33%.  I masked and "erased" a bit of the texture from the starfish, sponge and box.  I love the font…..it's called "Lemon Chicken".

  

A Scribble of Paint...

and a Stabilo pencil, and I'm a happy camper.  I'm posting two more of my 100 faces challenge by Dina Wakley.  I do scrape a coat of gesso on the page before I draw.  That way if I make a major blunder, I can use a baby wipe to "erase".  No gesso, no "erase".  The goal is, however, to scribble away and not worry about perfection.

#13 above and #14 below…

The paint came first and then the drawing.  I promise you I did not plan the eyes to be as they are -- one over the blue paint and one over the green.  It was just one of those serendipitous things.

Makeup Brushes

I was looking through my files for an image to process for Texture Tuesday.  I found this image of makeup brushes.  It's a full color image, but I decided to experiment with it in Lightroom.

I added Kim's Dark Day and Quiet Dreams presets.  Then I took it into Topaz Adjust to return a bit of detail and add a border... then back to LR for a slight vignette and a bit of grain.  I wanted it to look like an old Hollywood photo.  

Below I added Kim's Word texture blend mode color burn at

52% opacity.

More Texture Tuesday here.  You'll get to see Kim's post about her  article in Stampington's "Artful Blogging" publication.  Congrats, Kim! 

More Joys of Lightroom

Texture Tuesday seems to arrive before I know it.

This week has been heavy on the Lightroom learning curve.  Some days I seem to spend a lot of time figuring out why something doesn't go as I planned.  As my friend says, it's almost always a selection problem.

In Kim's Start2Finish class I've been working in the print module learning to make a contact sheet.  I edited one of my photos four ways and managed to create a contact sheet of them.

I did a still life photo shoot, something else we've been working on in S2F class.  My kingdom for some light in my house.  I discovered if I set everything up about 10:00 to 10:30AM I have a window of about an hour where I get some light in my bedroom sliding glass door (depending on the whim of the sun).  That time frame is going to get a lot shorter as daylight hours dwindle.  I uploaded 47 photos to Lightroom, culled them and then worked on a couple.  I really like working with LR presets.  Since LR and presets, it seems textures can almost be an overkill depending on the look I want.  Kim has some beautiful presets, and I've made a few of my own. A project I completed for S2F…... set up a plant or flower or? using a paper bag as a holder.

I used only a preset here, but for my Texture Tuesday entry below I used Kim's "Not Too Shabby" texture on the same image.

and…..one final image…clean and simple.

Is It Fall Yet??

I'm pretending it's fall, but it's really more like Indian summer…..hot enough to sizzle the best of us.

Here goes though.  I have been dabbling with Topaz's latest addition - Topaz Impression.  

This image of white pumpkins was edited in Impression "Impasto".   

I'm so delighted I don't need to buy Corel Paint (which I've been sort of lusting for after seeing the incredible work Karen Burns does.  I drool over her art.  I know she used Corel Paint at one time.  Whatever she uses, she's very adept at it.   

Another Impasto "painting".  

Have you noticed how many different colors and styles of pumpkins appear every year?  They just get more and more spectacular……even the blue are interesting.  Oh, and the warty ones..beautiful in all their quirkiness.

Enjoy the season with friends.  Also be sure to see all the Texture Tuesday entries at Kim's.  I used her "Autumn Burst" on the image below.

and finally, a montage.