Playing with Textures

Jerry of  Shadowhouse Creations provided 2 raised effect textures on his blog and I could not resist playing with them. I love adding texture to photos! This is the result. The photo was taken many years ago when travelling in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. I remember stopping late afternoon for a meal in a local inn. This is the first time that a foreigner had ever stopped to eat there. We had a plate of mutton and rice. It was good! The tea was served, as is typical in this area,  green with cardomon and cinnamon. This area is the most beautiful on earth. Three mountain ranges collide to provide scenery that takes your breath away.

Click on photo for texture detail and credits.
To achieve this effect I used the first texture with following layers:

1. Lightened texture and placed as Overlay 100%.
2. Original texture Colour Burn 31%
3. Original Photo

Jerry has a great collection of free textures available. They are definitely worth checking out.

Recent layouts

When times get difficult, I always find that it helps to escape and look back through travel photos which is what I have been doing recently. Mum and Dad, you will certainly recognize some of these places.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Credit details can be found in the following galleries:
Designer Digitals
MScraps

Myanmar Album

I have been sitting on around 4,000 photos from our trip to Myanmar in November/December 2009 wondering how to scrap them for an album. We all absolutely love the India album I had made earlier and this was the problem. Set a precident and then there are fixed ideas of what the travel album should look like. For the Indian album, I had a theme for each location which really worked well and Sonia thought this should also be done for Myanmar. I did not want to restrict myself to one or two colours for each location and was favouring a more eclectic album with each double page different. ( ie I had no idea what to do...) Amber was happy with whatever was decided ie the teenage "whatever" which can be wonderful at times but not this time.


I have scrapped some of the photos in layouts but just wasn't inspired to follow through with that style for an entire album. Then along came a free template from Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals last Saturday and suddenly inspiration. I knew what I wanted to do. Photos large and bordering pages with overlayed small pics with white borders. A strip across page for journalling. And that is it. I might add some elements but probably not. Lynn Grieveson has some wonderful double page templates that I can use/modify so now I am set and oh so inspired.

So here is the first double page. What do you think?

 

Now I am set to start working on the album. And just in time as we are heading out for a quick holiday in a month. Here we are waiting in anticipation:

Click on photos for details of kits used.

Change of scene

Life is chaotic at the moment and the more chaotic and unpredictable my everyday life the more I crave peace and simplicity. Translated into real, (digital "real")  life this means that my blog now has a makeover and my recent digital scrapbooking layouts are also simpler and cleaner. If my life ever really became less stressful I'd probably start scrapping like one of those amazing Brazilian scrappers.

Anyway back to my new blog photo which is immediately identifiable if you have ever travelled to this country. It was taken in Myanmar last December. For those who don't know where I am talking about, Myanmar is also known in the west as Burma. But please do not use the name Burma, although this is what our leaders like to use to refer to the country. I think they do this as they believe using the official term Myanmar gives some sort of acknowledgement to the corrupt military regime. This is wrong!

Burma is the name that was given to the country by Britain when they were the rulers and it refers to the largest ethnic group the Burmans. This group however is only one of many ethnic groups so the name effectively disenfranchises everyone else. The people in Myanmar always refer to their country as Myanmar. It may not be perfect but that is the name.

The photo was taken in the backwaters behind Sittwe travelling to Mrau Oo.  The boat trip can take anything from 3 to 7 hours depending on tides but it is no difficulty as the scenery is just wonderful with glimpses into the daily life of the local people. Our boat on the way up had a roof deck with a few deck chairs where we lounged. Here are some more photos.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Travel memories

I'm slowly scanning in the boxes of slides from my travels. Sometimes it really does seem so long ago especially when I look at photos taken in the late 70's and 80's. It is wonderful at times to make a discovery of a photo that really stirs the memories or evokes the time and place. A few I have picked out to scrap in layouts. These will not be co-ordinated travel books as I did for one of our trips to India but more a collection of pages with notes from my travel diaries. I am thoroughly enjoying the trips down memory lane.

Orissa in Eastern India

Beidai He in China

Swat Valley in Pakistan

Central Highlands of Yemen

Bali (as if you couldn't tell)

Photos are linked if you are interested in seeing the credits or a larger size.

Just another 10 days and we will be here....

Some recent travel layouts

Favourite Photos

Work has been so busy that I have not had time to work on scanning in my colleciton of slides but looking through those that I have scanned is always a wonderful way to bring back memories. One of my favourite photos was one I took of a monk in Tibet over 20 years ago. He invited us in and allowed photos. The room (which was his bedroom and kitchen) was dark with sunlight streaming in the windows. The sun is so strong in Tibet in the rarefied air and always gives so much contrast in photos. I took 3 photos and they were all reasonable even though I remember leaning against a wall as I was probably shooting at less than 1/30.

Here is a double page layout of these photos.

Don't you just love the kitchen and Butter tea churner in the corner all in brass and wood.