Cabo Sunsets

The sunsets here are so beautiful.  It's hard to truly capture an entire sunset with just one photo.  I discovered a button on my pse (Photoshop Element), Photomerge panorama.  I love this element. It is so cool to load your photos, watch the program take your photos, match up where each one left off, for one extremely large photo.  Of course I had to resize this for the post, but it's 53 inches long, that would make an awesome poster.

This photo is actually 9 photos put together by the Photomerge.  I stood on the porch of our condo and just moved a little bit in each photo.

The sky was so beautiful on this side of the building that I ran quickly down to the deck above the pool, on the west side and took 4 photos for this beautiful Photomerge panorama.

Simply Gorgeous!

Fyi:  I DID NOT enhance any of the photos.

Linked to: Monday Create With Joy

Harmony in Paris

My Granddaughter and all her little friends are totally into PARIS, PARIS, PARIS.

So, with that theme in mind, this is what I made this for her birthday.

Once you have the picture you want to mod podge onto your canvas, follow these easy instructions:

1. Iron tissue paper

2. Measure and cut tissue paper

3. Run double sided adhesive along edge of 8 1/2 X 11 inch sheet of White printer paper

4. Be sure to put the rough side of the tissue paper up.  It's more pores then the smooth side.

5.  Flip the photo to be printed, if you use PSE (Photo Shop Element), when you go to print it gives you an option to flip the picture.

6.  Trim the picture (I've used exacto knife and it tends to tear the tissue paper)

7. Place your photo paper on the canvas, and hold it in place with a ruler.

8. Lightly apply a layer of mod podge to upper canvas (I don't like to split a face, you don't want too many wrinkles on that part of the picture).

9. Gently lay the picture on the mod podge and quickly move on  to the bottom half, and repeat.

10. Gently DAB mod podge to photo.  NOTE:  Be very careful, the colors start to bleed through the tissue paper, regularly check your sponge, once you have color in the mod podge, switch to a new sponge and avoid areas already saturated.  Set to dry for at least 2 hours (to be sure).11.  Second coat, again watch for the color to bleed,  after this coat dries, you are relatively safe from the bleeding.

12. Now, my picture basically only covers the top of the canvas, around the edge I printed and mod podge this:

14. Let it dry again for 2 hours, and add your final coat of mod podge.  After that's completely dry I spray the entire canvas with a clear coat enamel spray, if you don't do this, here's what could happen, if the picture ever gets wet, it will leave water spots on your photo.

 FYI:  It's easy, but there have been times when I mess up and I have to paint over a picture to start over;  if this happens to you, paint over with white acrylic paint.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Here's some more mod podged art I done.

I've been doing the PSE mod podge for years now.  I love homemade personal gifts.  It's seems that every Christmas the funds are tight.  Here's one gift I made and gave my daughter Deby with pictures of her and her best friend taken on a trip they did together.

I bought the canvas at the dollar store, there was a picture of a bird on them, I painted them white, then mod podged.

Here's the MONA DEBY, I love this one.

Blog Header

I swear that is it, I am done messing with my header.

I have been obsessed with the artwork for my blog header.  Maybe it is worth paying someone to do it for you, because then you are stuck with what you paid for.  In my case, I did contact the local caricature artist first; he wanted $170 for strictly a head drawing.  Is that what they charge on the street?  Well I'm too cheap or too broke to pay that kind of money.  I had a vision .  After 4 weeks, and many late nights, I am finally happy with this last posted header.  

Poster Edge Effect

I started with the photo, pulled the photo into Photo Shop Element -PSE, took out the background, went into the artistic effects, and use the poster edge effect on the photo so that it was easy to trace over a light table.  I printed the photo, put tracing paper over it, colored it with pastel pencils (chalk), scanned it, pulled it back into PSE; using the smudge tool, I smudge the colors around.  

Two layers

PSE has some very cool features where you can somewhat fade one picture and lay it on top of the other picture, then merge the layers; as you can see, after smudging the colors I would take all the lines out of the face.  So I would back to the tracing photo and start again with the coloring making sure I would emphasis the lines on my face.

I also drew all the other elements; then colored the drawings, and repeated the same process.  I've made it so that every element, even parts of my face, are layered.

Eyes

Lips

Glasses

Shirt

Sweat

Tape Measure

Sewing Machine (I designed the fabric in the machine in Publisher)

Fan

Crafting supplies

Background (I designed background in Publisher)

Text

  Yes, it is strange that my face elements are layered, the reason:  Well I took the eyes off the original photo, they shined brighter; I could merge the eyes but then I can't un-merge once I save the file, and the lips came from a more recent photo, I thought it would be cool to be able to change my expressions.

  My biggest problem was that I wanted the artwork to resemble me now, you know with wrinkles, and the photo was taken in 2008, after 3 years, well I've changed.  That's what took so long to get it right.  I started over, 4 times. At last, I took a picture of myself and faded it behind the smudge face and they the wrinkles showed through.  Wa La!

Thank you for reading about my obsessive  project.  Hooray, it's done!  Now I have to do my button............