Hygge Artplay palette **new and on sale today**
Hygge WordArt Mix No. 1 **new and on sale today**
Multimedia Hygge No. 1_2 **new and on sale today **

Edge overlay from Ablaze Artplay Palette http://www.oscraps.com/shop/ArtPlay-Palette-Ablaze.html

In addition to telling the stories of myself and my family, I also like to document the stories of our times. That is what inspired my use of this gorgeous new Artplay Palette, which is based on the Danish concept of cozy, called hygge. We have experienced this cozy comfort ourselves while staying in Copenhagen, where at our local coffeeshop we were greeted by name and coffee/pastry preference by the third visit. But you don't have to be Danish to feel like you belongwe've also experienced hygge in diverse places from Iceland to Italy and everywhere in between. There's a certain inclusiveness inherent in hygge, and, looking at this Artplay Palette, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that here in the United States we seem to be headed in the opposite direction, to exclusiveness. There's been a sharp uptick in hate crimes and acts of discrimination recently. This realization colored what I created.

Notes with Photoshop Elements 14
I started with the printer's tray, an element in the Artplay Palette. I wanted warmer wood tones, so I duplicated the layer and used overlay blending mode. I then grounded the tray with the legs of a chair that I found on the internet. I added the internet children only because I didn't have full-length photos of my kidsI really would have preferred to use them in this composition. I put in the background next2 artsy papers on overlay mode.

I filled the printer's tray with the same internet girl on the chair, then added the phone and ruler from the Artplay Palette. I left the other slots blank to symbolize the isolation that separation bringsthe opposite of hygge.

From there it was just a matter of fleshing out the idea with details, such as adding the hairbow (duplicated then blended on multiply mode for a darker tone), foliage, buttons, transfers from the Artplay Palette, and the piece of wordart, which I tweaked a little with duplication and blending modes for a color change. The slide behind the title is from the MultiMedia set and I also used bits and pieces of foliage from other pieces of the set to amp up the green.

It's a busy design, and to keep it all from falling off the page, I enclosed everything with an edge overlay.