Welcome to another edition of Why it Works, where we share and highlight a page from an awesome scrapper in our gallery that utilizes a really cool technique, a design trick, a photography tip, journaling ideas or any number of other things to get you scrapping outside your comfort zone. We hope to share and inspire you to try something new, revisit an old technique you may have forgotten about, or maybe just approach that blank canvas in a new way. So, here are some of the things you can do to be involved in this thread if you want to be. 1. Ohhh and Ahhh over the awesome layout or project that has been highlighted and head over to the gallery and show the scrapper some love. 2. Learn something new from the tip or tutorial. It's all about becoming better at our craft! 3. Try the technique yourself and post it in this thread for us to see. 4. Show off other pages from the gallery that use the technique as well. Be sure to link them so we can give them the love they deserve! 5. Ask questions about the technique that you may have or tell us how you may do it differently. There are many ways to do these things and this thread is all about the learning! *note: this is not to be a critique of the page/project in any way, it's all about learning to emulate the awesome technique highlighted. Any negative comments about the highlighted page will be deleted.* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello! Today I wanted to share this uber cool urban page by @tracymonica : I love how vibrant and edgy the page is. She uses the photo twice: once framed as a B&W and also as her entire page background. I love how the background is brightly tinted, super contrasty, and simply singing with COLOR! This page idea is so perfect for travel photography, landscapes, cityscapes, architectural photos and things of the like! It really caught my eye and I knew I wanted to give it a try. To get started you can fill your blank canvas with your photo and possibly turn it B&W, then play around with adding different textures and different papers. Use your blending modes on your layers, add brushes and play with opacities! You can add some Adjustment layers too - to bump Contrast/Brightness, to play with Levels or to use the Curves Adjustment Level to fine tune the look you are after. I did all of the above. I used some great textural papers, Paper Collection #17 from @paula kesselring over my background photo layer and set the textured paper to the Color Burn blend mode. I added quite a few vibrant layers of Paula's Under the Sea Papers too and brushed away parts so just little bits of colors peeked through. I loved the rainbow watercolor paper in the Under the Sea pack, but didn't want the lines to show over the background photo, so I just brushed away parts of it with a layer mask. It was a relaxing process of playing on this stifling hot day! I left my smaller version of the graffiti photo (in the frame) in full color because the color & artwork is really the star of that building ... but I love the way @tracymonica chose to process her Chicago street scene with the soft, low contrast B&W - it really plays so beautifully with her vibrant, punchy photo background! Either way I think it works great. Here's my page trying out this photo design idea: What do you think? Cool concept? If you give it a go please share what you make with us ... including any neat blending tips or tricks you use on your photo background. If you already do this kind of page, we'd love to see that too!
Here is one I would like to share. I will be back with more info. Edited: My background was a combo of 3 different background papers, each one blended into the other to give it all a bit of texture. My photo was clipped to a paint transfer. At that point, I felt that the photo needed to be a bit lighter, so I copied it and set it to screen at 28%, then another photo layer at 32% linear light. This brought in more contrast of the original photo, making it a bit edgier. My 4th & final photo layer was at 61% hard mix. I then created 5 differently sized circle shapes and filled them each with a different color, best described by me as: apple green, poppy red, royal blue, turquoise and lime green. I'm sure I experimented with blending modes until I liked the effect. Two of the circle shapes were blended in at 77% vivid light, one was at 79% color burn, and the last two were at 100% color. I added more paint transfers above and below the photo layers, a few elements here and there, and my "journaling" which is where & when the photo was taken.
I know I showed this example in the "photo as background" learning pad thread, but it is an example of a photo being blended into the background. I took a rather boring & cluttered street scene in San Francisco, enlarged it to eliminate some of the street noise (cars, pedestrians, etc.) and then blended it at 100% color burn into one of Dawn's papers from her Good Fortune kit. It knocked out the distracting colors in the original photo and gave everything a wonderful red/gold glow.
Thank you SO much, Marilyn - your layout is truly a piece of art! Like I said, in the gallery, it's my new favorite of yours (and I have a lot of them). BTW, I just noticed it says "Delray Beach" in the corner by the pineapple. You don't live near there, do you? My dd used to live there and they still live about 15 minutes away. I'm there a lot.
I love your second lo too of San Francisco! I need to start playing with all of the layers more. I love playing with and manipulating photos, but you're doing so much more than that, Marilyn. You've elevated it to a whole art form!
Here's a LO that I manipulated the photo a lot. I wanted it to look like "50's Miami". Honestly, I don't even remember what all I did, but I started with "cross hatch" and went from there. I've always loved manipulating photos, but I'm going to try to start going further with them and incorporating them into more layers. I did use quite a few overlays with this one, too. It was a SWL template, that's why it had the funky border. I "funked" that up, too. Marilyn, I remember that you like this one.
Thanks for your kind comments. No, we live in the Midwest. We were just down there for a week last year. It was a pretty community, a good vibe to it. I do have a brother who lives in Coral Springs... And 2 of my uncles were snow birds who owned a home in Lehigh Acres.
I didn't think you lived down here. Delray Beach has been voted the best beach community for many years. It does have a very cool vibe to it. Lehigh is very close to us.
@Cherylndesigns When the uncles were still alive, we visited them and did some sightseeing in Ft. Myers.
Oh wow Cheryl! That processing and playing and "funking up" looks so amazing - the vibe of your layout is just perfection with the scene in the photo! love! And great tip to incorporate overlays as well for these pages!
@mcurtt your tip to add paint layers and various geo shapes with different transparencies/blend modes is fab as well. love it!
Tinting a photo for the background can also be done on a cleaner, artsy style page - check out this beautiful example from @cfile where she tints the flag photo with an aging preset to give it a worn, aging look .... and then adds a smaller cropped version of the photo framed. Love how she used this photo twice on her page. Beautiful
I'm a big photo tinter! It makes scrapping any photo easier! Though I must try blending into the background, rather than framing it or layering it! This one had no read darker colors besides the dock/land. It was all yellow, but adding blue helped. PLus, I did the Plastic Effect. This one was your usually orange golden sunset.... no purple that day.
I adore that sunset one Jenn ... the colors are mesmerizing - and the beach/dock w/the plastic - I would have never thought to use that filter but it looks really cool. Great tip to investigate our filter gallery for this!
This was me just playing around. I turned the photo black & white and applied a glow to it. Then blended a paper to it and used an oil painting filter on it all. It gave it the look of a haunted building from a horror movie to my eyes.