Today's Tangle - Flair

"Flair" is by Deb Myers CZT and the step-out is posted HERE on her blog. Melinda Barlow CZT has a YouTube video HERE.

DIGITAL GRAPHICS OR WHAT I USED TO DO IN MY PREVIOUS LIFE

While drawing the lacy tiles that I blogged about on Sunday, they reminded me of some of the digital graphics that I used to make. Before beading and tangling, I used to make a lot of greeting cards and calendars and enjoyed using digital special effects on the pictures that I used in my projects. I even made digital lace that looked a lot like the kind that I have been drawing and blogging about lately. I thought you might like to see some examples of the digital projects that I used to make.

First, here are two of the lace tiles that I blogged about HERE on Sunday:

Now, keep in mind that none of the images below are "real". They were all created or enhanced using special effects on my computer with Paint Shop Pro using vintage graphics that I have in my digital image collection.

Here is an example of some "Battenburg lace" that I made using only digital graphics tools:

Doesn't it remind you of my tangled lace? The image below is some "lace" that I created using fancy Victorian clipart and digital special effects.

The picture above was created using a faux Wedgwood technique. I have a tutorial for this effect HERE on my other blog. This is the clipart image that I started with:

Here is another example of my faux Wedgwood:

Below is another picture where I used the same lace technique and the same clipart image:

This is another digital image using the same technique:

Below are two pictures from one of my calendars where I used a cut-out lace effect. I also used an embossing technique to make the frames around both of the photos.

I also used to make a lot of digital collages like the one below. You might recognize this image from the header on my Facebook page.

Another thing that I loved to do was repairing and enhancing scans of vintage postcards and other old-time graphics. Below are some before and after examples.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Below is the same picture placed a lacy background. I used it on a greeting card. I came up with a method for removing the backgrounds behind photos of real lace that I found online by using a mask. It would otherwise be impossible, or extremely tedious, to manually cut out every single hole in the intricate lace without using a mask. I actually only had to remove the background of a single section or motif of this particular lace because I can tile the image as needed to make borders with it.

I used a digital embossing technique to create a border around the pretty Victorian image below. Below that is a greeting card that I printed using that picture.

Below is an example of another digital technique that I came up with for making digital objects appear to be translucent so that you can see the background through them. I have a tutorial posted HERE on my other blog that explains how to do this using a special translucency mask that I created. For this example, I started with a photo of an antique brooch that I found online. First I had to manually cut out the background from behind the brooch in Paint Shop Pro. After that, I selected only the gem and applied my translucency technique on it.

Below is the result after applying my technique then placing the brooch image on top of another vintage image.

If you look closely, you can see the text on the background through the gem in the center of the brooch. Once I have applied my technique to the brooch image, I can move it anywhere that I like on the background because they are on separate layers. I also applied a drop shadow under the brooch to make it look more real. Below is a close-up of the gem so that you can see the translucency better:

Simply reducing the opacity of the gem in the brooch image wouldn't work very well because it would just fade out the image. My special mask makes every other pixel become translucent and leaves the remaining pixels opaque. If you go to the tutorial link above, you can see the mask. It looks like a microscopic checkerboard of white and gray pixels.