Menu of Products:
ArtsyTransfers WayfaringNew! http://www.oscraps.com/shop/ArtsyTransfers-Wayfaring.html
Christmas Magic Artplay Palette (frame): http://www.oscraps.com/shop/ArtPlay-Palette-Christmas-Magic.html
Distressed Overlays No. 9: http://www.oscraps.com/shop/Distressed-Edge-No.-9-Overlays.html
Skribble Blooms No. 1: http://www.oscraps.com/shop/SkribbleBlooms-No.-1.html
Daffodil Artplay Palette (button): http://www.oscraps.com/shop/ArtPlay-Palette-Daffodil.html
Viaggio Artplay Palette (brush): http://www.oscraps.com/shop/ArtPlay-Palette-Viaggio.html
Arrive Artplay Palette (frame): http://www.oscraps.com/shop/ArtPlay-Palette-Arrive.html
Process Notes:
This was a layout of there's gotta be a better way.
The layout pieces of this went together fairly easily, thanks to the ArtsyTransfers, although I took the long way around, I'm sure, in attempting to darken and thicken one of the artstrokes, the grace and motion of which I absolutely loved. I accomplished the darkening by repeatedly duplicating the file; to thicken the atstroke, I'd grab a few of the duplications, merge them, and tug them over by a hair. And repeat. If you do this enough, a big black line appears, which is what I wanted. Like I said, there has to be an better way.
The other area of challenge for me was to create a photo that had within it the look of two blending modes. I wanted my younger daughter (the dancing one in the photo) and husband to pop with color since they were very dark in the original snapshot. I liked how they looked in the color burn mode, but how to do that while keeping the daughter in the foreground in HER blending mode? I'm sure there's a better way to do this, too, but what I did was to duplicate the photo, give it a layer mask, do the color burn and then slowly, with the eraser, remove the color-burn areas that I didn't want, which revealed my other daughter in the first photo underneath in HER blending mode. Thank goodness for layer masks...but there's got to be a better way....
Anyway, after rising to these challenges, I had fun pulling in the artsy transfers, writing the story, sticking in a supporting photo and frame, and adding a few embellishments. There's a lot of text to the story and I couldn't find a natural paragraph break to separate it into boxes around the page, so I used the artsy transfers yet again to provide at least a suggestion of visual separation.
The Story (if you don't like squinting):
By nature, I am a storyteller. I snap a picture and tell what happened, because our stories make us who we are. I try to teach my kids that, even though sometimes they think Im a little nutty with the memory-keeping thing. What I love about stories is that some of them change their meaning over time, with perspective. Here, for example, we are looking at a scene from when Emma and David and I visited Eva for the first time in her first apartment out of college, which Eva had been telling me was in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn but was really in Bed Stuy, a dangerous part of the city. She had to walk past two junkyards to catch the subway to get to work. With lots of places where bad guys could lurk. In the dark. Since it was late Autumn, it was dark both ways. Evas roommate had a dog with an enormously big head, who was like something out of Grimms fairy tales, with eyes as big as saucers. I nicknamed him Big Head Todd after a band I liked. He was a love, but fierce, barking at the slightest sound. I found this reassuring. The roommate had a weird cookie jar. It provoked the girls to burst into a spontaneous song and dance. I remember crying hysterically as we were leaving, and I sobbed all the way home. Emma stayed behind for the night. I cried about that, too. Looking back, now, there is far more joy than pain in this memory. The emotions were real, that cookie jar is still weird. But the faith and confidence and fearlessness of my girls, well, thats the real story. That was just a first step for Eva and shes in a far better place now, with a great career and a great apartment on the opposite coast. I didnt have that kind of courage growing up. I am glad and grateful that my girls do. 9-29-15
