Too Early for Valentine's?

Valentine ATC

     With most of my homework finished, I had some time to play with photoshop and create a new digital ATC. My mom and I have a thing for hearts, so this holiday always has a lot of meaning for me and all the hearts make me think of my mom. I'll have to make another ATC just for her with lots of red, her current favorite color. Perfect for the holiday, too. This was created with several photoshop brushes and a couple of my own photographic images. I dropped the opacity on one image to let the other details in the background show through. I placed a color overlay effect over the other image, the blue flower, which I duplicated a couple times. Photoshop is so much fun, I do hope to take the Photoshop II class someday, or maybe I'll just work through the other half of my Photoshop Classroom in a Book.

     I should mention that if it were not for the current weather conditions, I would probably have been out and about today and yesterday. But it has been close to 0 degrees and windy, so the windchill is well below zero, no thanks. I'd rather stay home, in front of a lovely fire, enjoy the fabulous brownies my daughter made, and cocoon with my family. And I also get to play Scrabble and Lexulous online with my Facebook friends, my biggest guilty pleasure. I am addicted to word games. However, my family refuses to play with me. I feel like a junkie sometimes, I need my word games, need! If you are one of my Facebook friends and like to play, I'm always up for a new game...
 
And just for the record, I feel creative and I feel wonderful!

Sunshine and Snow

Sun shining through snowfall

     I am not a fan of winter. I don't like to be cold or cold and wet, or chilled or being wrapped up in multiple layers in order to keep warm. That said, I do love the look of winter, especially when there is sunshine involved. This morning, I had to take my son into town and as soon as I stepped out of my front door, this was the image that greeted me. I took a picture with my cell phone camera, but it doesn't quite capture the snow that was falling, which made the whole scene very magical. Sometimes beauty can distract me from discomfort, isn't that wonderful? It was 1 degree outside, 1 degree, a single lonely digit. But the sunshine made the snow glitter and shimmer and it was ok, better than ok. It was the beginning of a lovely day.

Merry Christmas!

     Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season and new year full of art, joy, peace, love and good health! This was one of two Christmas cards I created this year using visual journal techniques. Water colors, neo-color II artist crayons, sharpies, gel pens and Pitt markers. The lettering took forever to get just the way I wanted it to look, but it was all a labor of love. I'll post the other card later this week. Cheers to you all!