Mojo Challenge #119

Tonight the guest designer on Mojo Holder was Marjolein Bussink, a dutch scrapper who lives in Canada. Marjolein's style is so very different to mine. She loves vintage, mixed media, freestyle, and stamping. Although I was very much outside my comfort zone doing this weeks layout I did enjoy putting my own spin on it. Here's Marjolein's layout, followed by mine.

Mojo Challenge #118

On Friday the Mojo Holder DT used a layout by Kay Rogers as its inspiration. I was really thrilled that Kay agreed to allow us to use one of her layouts because I am a big fan. Kays layout used Fancy Pants papers. My layout used mainly BasicGrey with a little piece of Fancy Pants too. Here are the layouts - Kays first, followed by mine.





Do drop by Mojo Holder to have a look at all the layouts the DT created.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 13

The final lesson in Jessica Sprague's Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects online course was all about creating a collage/grid using clipping masks, and then adding extra elements with a brush!

I used photos of the day we finally took the stabalisers of Lara's bike.



Then after mastering how to create to create the photo collage we had the extra challenge of concerting multiple photos to sepia tone, selective recolouring and adding type. Here's my second collage with those adjustments


And now the course is over. I really, really enjoyed this and would thoroughly recommend one of Jessica's courses to anyone. Her videos tutorials are excellent and so easy to follow.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 12

Day 12 was all about a technique for framing up a set of photos into a storyboard. Jessica showed how to create a three-panel storyboard, including adding some text at the bottom.

Here are my storyboards

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 10 & 11

I had a busy day yesterday and so didn't get around to doing day 10's lesson until today.

The lesson for day 10 was a culmination of all we had learned so far. We learned how to create our own clipping mask from a shape, then add in our photo, two textures, a type overlay, some type in two fonts, and then finish it off with an edge burning technique. Phew ....... lots to do.

I've only had time to try this with one photo.

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After

Day 11's lesson was about Selective/Spot Recoloring. I had done this before using a different technique so it was good to learn another way.

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Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 9

Lesson 9 of Jessica Sragues Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects online course was all about edge burning - darkening the edges of a photo, while leaving the center of the photo light. The darkened edges are supposed to pull the viewer's eye subtly toward the center of our photo.

I'm not sure if the effect on my photos is too subtle though because you can't really see the difference!

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Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 8

Lesson 8 was all about how to use type on your photos in interesting ways. I was particularly pleased that this was todays theme because I've been trying unsuccessfully to put wording on photos in PSE for sometime, so to finally learn how to do it was great. Here's my efforts. They aren't brilliant - I probably should have taken more time to decide what wording and which fonts to use but having now learned the basics I think I will be able to experiment with the technique further in the future.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 6

Todays lesson introduced a concept in photography circles, called "Through the Viewfinder". To get a worn, faded look, photographers will actually take photographs through the viewfinder of an old camera. The result is a photo with blackened edges, distortion, scuffs and scratches and marks. Todays challenge was to create an image using "Fake TTV" textures and then also add one or more techniques from the previous lessons (png word art, brushes, additional texture).

Here's what I came up with. Really enjoyed this today.

Mojo Holder Challenge #117

Tonight is Mojo Holder Challenge night. Challenge #117 was to lift a layout by Pearl Liu. Pearl lives in Singapore and designs for Di Hickman's Card Sketches and Such Sweet Tierney ( on Etsy ).

Here's Pearls layout, followed by mine.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 5

Todays lesson was all about adding texture to a photo and also combining the previous techniques of adding frames and clipping masks.

Here are todays edited photos







Jessica did suggest not using "smiling at the camera closeup portraits" for this technique, and after using such a photo (last one above) I can see why. I don't think the result is particularly good, so I've learned from my mistake.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 4

Lesson 4 was a nice easy one - Clipping Masks. A clipping mask is basically a shape - any shape - that you can "clip" your photo onto, to cause your photo to conform itself to that shape. For the course we used a rectangular clipping mask with scuffed-up edges, so the photo takes on a worn, aged appearance. Here's my effort.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 3

Todays lesson was all about a technique you can use to create a cool hand-tinted special effect for photos you'd like to add a soft, antique feel to. It was about Adjustment layers and Blending Modes. I had never head of these before doing the course.

As well as adding an antique effect to photos the projects also built on the previous days lessons and included adding a frame and where appropriate some soft glowy stars with a brush.

Here's some of my photos before and after. The photos probably weren't the best for this lesson but I liked the effect anyway.

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 2

Todays lesson was all about using brushes. The only brushes I've ever used have been to brush my hair with or occasionally the floor! LOL. My finished photo.



Nothing spectacular but the video tutorials are so easy to understand that I'm really chuffed that I managed this. I keep thinking of all sorts of possibilities and ways of using brushes on my photos in the future. I'm really enjoying the course and finding it surprisingly easy.

I then found some more brushes on the the net and had a play around and came up with these

Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects - Day 1

A few weeks ago I signed up for one of Jessica Sprague's online courses. Today her course entitled "Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects" began. The two week course promises to show how to use cool Photoshop techniques such as brushes, masks, frames, and special effects with layers and if the first lesson is anything to go by I'm going to enjoy it.

Todays lesson was all about adding PNG frames and word art to photos. Having been shown in the video tutorial how to do this, I can't believe how easy it is and I will certainly be doing this more in the future. This was my first effort using the free frames and word art supplied as part of the course. I know the colours probably aren't ideal for the colours of my photo but as a first attempt I'm happy with it.

And then I thought I would have a go with some of the digital frames I already had. I had downloaded some previously from various online stores but never really got to grips with them and on the odd occasion I had used them I had printed them onto a trasparency and used them as an overlay on my photos. So much easier to actually add them to the photo before printing.