Credits:

Anna Aspnes Designs

Art Play Palette Chill http://www.oscraps.com/shop/product.php?productid=32918&cat=383&page=1
Cool Glows No. 4 http://www.oscraps.com/shop/product.php?productid=32913&cat=383&page=1
Urban Stitchez No. 1 http://www.oscraps.com/shop/product.php?productid=32916&cat=383&page=1
Art Play Chevrons- Infatuated http://www.oscraps.com/shop/product.php?productid=32782&cat=383&page=1

Process:

These are a few snow photos I took yesterday of my youngest son--one with a very distracting background and the other with a blown out background so I knew right away I wanted to use an extraction or blending on them both.

The focal photo wasn't a very engaging photo with his back to me, but he just looked as if he was on a mission! So to give the photo a bit more life I used the blues in the Chill AP to really intensify and set apart my son in his orange coat. Then I performed an extraction on the photo using my magnetic lasso tool and a layer mask. To finish my extraction off I added a soft deep shadow to really make him look as if he was walking into the page.

My second photo I positioned running off of the left edge because the left side of the picture was where most of the distraction was. Then I used a soft brush and a layer mask to remove the portions of the background I didn't want to show and used a hard light blending mode--duplicating it once and then dialing back the opacity a bit.

I butted my title up against my extracted photo and used the color dodge blending mode to get a nice white that would stand out from the background and then I duplicated it and changed the blending mode of the duplicate layer to overlay to pick up the pretty blues in the background. Then I positioned a nice cool glow beneath it so that the white in the word up would stand out even more.

Finally I used a few dimensional elements including the buttons and messy stitching in the bottom right corner to complete the diagonal flow of my page.