After a day full of family and food, I decided to sit down and toy around with holiday ideas in Photoshop. Using the shape and pen tool I made a “handmade” digital snowman complete with scarf and hat. The scarf was designed using the standard pen tool, with the nose using the free form setting. Fun project on a “stuffed” night.

Available for sale in my Zazzle shop:

Christmas Card

Ornament

Happy Thanksgiving!

And a variation:

Drawing from what I knew of Kim personally, I drew inspiration from the rose pins she always wears on her outfits. This rose, is her trademark, and I built the logo based upon it. (Yes it’s an actual picture of one of her rose pins *smile*) Kim has selected to use Blogger at this time, and I went for a minimalist look, built upon Minima. Overall I wanted the site to reflect the classic fonts you would find on formal invitations.

Currently awaiting her to provide her bio and desired business contact info. Site is live!

You may visit her site here: http://littlemisskupcakes.blogspot.com.

Built upon Blanket for Dreamwidth.org users paid or free.

Installation
Download zip image, and CSS text file.
1. Select : Blanket – (used teal and grey) as your theme
2. Select customize your theme
3. Select “Custom CSS”
4. Uncheck “Use layout(s) stylesheets – otherwise layout will not work
5. Paste the below in the CSS field
6. Change the WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM/YOURFILEFOLDER under section /* HEADER + FOOTER */ to your file host
7. Click save.

Download the file here.

Another try, this time using Rose from the scene where she first steps out. Always loved her hat. Removed the background from the original Rose image, made a custom background with brush and blur effects, with hue, saturation and vibrance effects. Built upon Transmogrified base theme. This one is my favorite so far:)

Installation
Download zip image, and CSS text file.
1. Select : Transmogrified by zvi (I used Cotton Candy Dust) as your theme
2. Select customize your theme
3. Select “Custom CSS”
4. Uncheck “Use layout(s) stylesheets – otherwise layout will not work
5. Paste the below in the CSS field
6. Change the WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM/YOURFILEFOLDER under section /* HEADER */ to your file host
7. Click save.

Download the zip file here.

I am happy to announce my first remixed theme for Dreamwidth. Been using Dreamwidth.org for a few weeks and I’m totally in love with their system, goals, and writer base.

Building upon the core system themes I remixed Transmogrified into a Titanic fan theme featuring Rose and Trudy (the maid) in the corset scene. The base file is the same, however I modified the CSS for color schemes and editing the photo using hue and saturation, with brushes. Since this was a movie shot, and not an official movie still the picture is grainy naturally. I left the grain and used radial blur with more focus on the corset than the actual scene. Free to use, must have a free or paid Dreamwidth account.

***INSTALLATION**

Download images, and CSS text file.
1. Select : Transmogrified by zvi (I used Cotton Candy Dust) as your theme
2. Select customize your theme
3. Select “Custom CSS”
4. Uncheck “Use layout(s) stylesheets – otherwise layout will not work
5. Paste the below in the CSS field
6. Change the WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM/YOURFILEFOLDER under section /* HEADER */ to your file host
7. Click save.

Download zip file including JPG, PSD and CSS text file here

Kim wants a website for her bakery. She makes custom to order cakes and wants a place to display her work for potential customers. We are working on setting her up a website, and as she has elected not to pay a monthly fee for hosting, I’m starting her out on WordPress.com. As it’s a free site, I’m restricted to using only the layouts they provide, and basically only allowed to focus on a header for her as CSS is a paid only feature. The cake photo is a mobile photo she took of one of her creations, which I trimmed, and masked. Circles inspired from one of her cakes. Overall I think the header stands out on the layout.

My friend Jani has a personal sewing business, where she makes her own designer clothes for sale. Jani is in the process of building herself a website to expand business and I offered to do a logo for her to help her out. She wanted something edgy but feminine at the same time. She requested a black background, with one font edgy, with a cursive font with the other. She also needed the L’s to be near each other as this is her signature sign for her clothes. I also created a larger picture, targeted towards Facebook or other sites she may use which includes an example of her wearing one of her designs. You may contact Jani for more information about her designs at: llanicruz@yahoo.com

I have found vibrance to be an awesome tool in Photoshop as it enhances the depth of the colors presented in the picture. This example, taken on the beach at Long Beach, WA has vibrance turned up mixed with hard light to deepen the sand and bring out the color of the waves. It was as realistic as I could get the photo, as I just started using my DSLR Canon Rebel, and still have no idea how to get these effects during the shot. (But I’ll get there.)

While on vacation I took tons of photos, about 1700-something to be exact. Most of these were repeat images done on sport mode. In truth, most were shot from the passenger side of a car. While coming back from Long Beach, WA, Jana and I took the scenic Washington State side home. I caught the sun setting, but the picture was slanted, and the clouds around the sun were messy. Using Photoshop I straightened the picture, using the blur, selection and smudge tools, I cleaned up the clouds. Added brush foliage (for fun) and ta-da!

This is actually the first mask I ever completed while in my Image Editing class. Jani and I had posed for pictures while at her boyfriend’s band’s performance in between sets. We were lucky enough to have a professional photog on site who volunteered for “Myspace” pictures for us (before we all went to Facebook hahaha). Below is the evolution of the photo. I was asked to insert at least 1 item, use at least 1 mask and insert text. I was happy to finally use a black and white photo of my mother’s yard and her Madonna.