My daughter took this photo of the orchard on Groundhog Day behind her house. Its this time of the winter we are tired of the lack of color, the nothingness. Personally, I love the down time of January and February, its when I capture the wind in my sails again, its when I am given the message seemingly out of the blue, of the theme of my year ahead. I always listen closely.

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12 x 12 Page FotoBlendz No. 4 (Retired) 12 x 12 Page FotoBlendz No. 7 is similar
Photo: Jackie Reed
Fonts: Spiff and Traveling Typewriter

Process Notes: After bringing in the photo, I chose a 12 x 12 fotoblendz and resized it to fit the photo, not the other way around. I did this by just pushing the mask up from the bottom until it touched the bottom of the photo. I tested out several papers for the foundation and solid paper 5 from Anaphora was the one I liked the best.

After experimenting, the blend modes I used are: the fotoblendz is Multiply, the first photo is Normal, and the copy is on Darken, all at 100% opacity.

Since its so darn difficult to photograph falling snow, I added the layers of snow from the Snowy FotoBlendz to give a more accurate picture of the day. I know it was snowing this hard in my neck of the woods.

Over the snow I added the month and days stamp and the brief message underneath as well as the title. I moved the title under the snow in the layers panel and adjusted with the Blend Ifs in the fx panel. It made it look obscured by the snow.

From there, I went hunting for transfers and liked the Hinterland transfers the best because they went with the color of the grasses in the photo. I used a layer mask to get rid of any harsh edges showing with an AnnaBlendz brush. They are the best! I also slipped in a tape at the top right edge of the photo, recoloring and using the Levels adjustment to bring it out more.

From there I added the twig, flower thread and button along with a scribble under the left transfer and word art mix.

According to the forecast, we have more snow coming. :-/