Oscraps

Blue Mountain Lake
musicmom3

Blue Mountain Lake

I'm embarking on two new travel albums and this is a page from the first one—our Adirondack Mountains trip in September—that deals with my evolving relationship with taxidermy. I selected Artsy Paper #2 as a good fit for my blending goals—later on I would lighten the background by duplicating the paper on overlay blend mode at lower opacity. My objective in blending was to highlight the taxidermy while also dialing down the background noise—I was going after more of a suggestion of the crafts on display than a “bam!” Therefore, much of my blending, using an artsy Blending Brush, happened at reduced opacity. The hard right edge of the tree in my original photo was not a good candidate for blending so I was stumped for a while, as my usual tricks of abutting the edge with a frame or Straightline Threadz did not work for me in this case. My solution was to extend the background by adding more tree trunk. To do this, I added Transfer 2 to the right of the photo, duplicated the photo, flipped the photo horizontally (voila, tree trunk!), blended to shape with my trusty blending brush, and texturized the new trunk with transfers from the mini-palette. I finished up with a few elements.
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Designer(s) Used:
  1. Anna Aspnes
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Reactions: zlemon and isDK
Your blending is exquisite and really showcases the darling birch basket and the racoon. Your latest travel album is off to a grand start!!
 
Your blending is exquisite and really showcases the darling birch basket and the racoon. Your latest travel album is off to a grand start!!
Thanks! It seems a little overwhelming at the moment, but once I get my plans in place I'm expecting a good time reliving the trip.
 
Love this, but got a chuckle about your interest in taxidermy! The bane of my mother ... we had "stuffed" fox, squirrels, deer head mounted on the walls that my stepfather insisted on having in the house. Finally my mother moved them all into one room. They totally creeped me out.
 
Love this story and can sympathize with the smitten feeling, not buying, then regretting it forever. Great job on the tree trunk extension, it produced some very interesting effects in the wood grain.
 
Love this, but got a chuckle about your interest in taxidermy! The bane of my mother ... we had "stuffed" fox, squirrels, deer head mounted on the walls that my stepfather insisted on having in the house. Finally my mother moved them all into one room. They totally creeped me out.
I used to get the creeps too, until I learned about Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter and saw his weird little tableaux. Okay, I’ll admit there’s a creepy factor there, too. But that’s where I also saw that in the artful work there can be a passion for creating emotional connection. In our Chesapeake Bay trip house, guess what we found on the living room wall? A deer head! What is the universe trying to tell me?
 
Love this story and can sympathize with the smitten feeling, not buying, then regretting it forever. Great job on the tree trunk extension, it produced some very interesting effects in the wood grain.
Thanks for noticing that grain! Because it was a duplicate photo flipped horizontally, the trunk looked bookmatched, so I grunged it up a bit with transfers and also layer-masked the edge shape so it was a little less matchy-matchy. It was an easy solution to a pesky problem!
 
You took a unique item and made it intriguing and interesting. I love your focus on one big photo and a complementary background. So different from your other style. But I firmly believe we all have several different artists with their own technique lurking within us.
 

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Anna Aspnes
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anna-aspnes-digital-scrapbook-artplay-terraqueous-holmes.jpg
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Mon, 09 October 2023 12:11 PM
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