Die cut letters

I've been playing with a new technique for PSE that lets you digitally cut letters out of a digital paper, using any font. I found a tutorial on the Cottage Arts blog, here

http://www.cottagearts.net/blog/?p=4063

it's pretty easy.

Here's a little postcard I made using the "die-cuts"

Darkness Inspiration--Vintage Halloween

I'm not sure quite why, but Halloween has been creeping into my mind lately. It's still in the mid 80's here, so it's not a change in the weather. And Halloween candy is NOT yet in the stores, although back to school is in full swing...I don't know where it's coming from.
But this theme from Darkness Inspirations is very timely.

I love this image of these two women; I imagine them to be sisters. Their faces seem almost devoid of expression, and you just KNOW that there are DARK THOUGHTS behind those eyes.
Thanks to Art-e-zine for the witchy sisters, Graphics fairy for the crow and the ornamentation and to Termin8r and Aqueous Sun for texture and background bits. Filters, layer styles and Photoshop brushes were applied liberally.
Happy Halloween!

SPA-Houses-Taos Pueblo

As I was thinking about this theme, I decided to Google Images for House. After about a million photos of Dr. House, I tried "houses," and was treated with images of everything from igloos, animal hide tents and mud huts to stately mansions, cute cottages and art to live in by Frank Lloyd Wright. I thought about all the different tpyes of houses there are...which brought me to Taos Pueblo, where Native Americans have been living for almost a thousand years. It is one of the oldest contunually inhabited communities in the United States.

The photo of the pueblo is mine. I used a texture by Temari09 from T4L, and the heiroglyphs are from a photo of the Sanders Family Buffalo Robe. Kokopelli is a brush.

Mine is the morning

A piece made for a digital round robin group I've been playing in in one of my Yahoo groups. We've been taking turns adding layers to a background each time and the results have been some amazing collaborative opieces of digital art.

This time, much like some of the other challenge blogs I play in, we were all given the same background to make our own finished digital piece. The background was a beautiful yellow sky with clouds, perhaps a sunrise or sunset. I chose sunrise--it was such a beautiful morning today.

Images are from Google Images and Suzee Que, background texture from a set of digital papers from Cottage Arts,( a really nice site--kits and things to buy; some really beautiful papers here; and lots of freebies--including some really good tutorials.) text piece from the Vintage Moth and Photoshop brushes.

4 x 4 Friday--Kings

Kings! So many different things come to mind...King Arthur, King of hearts, kings of England, king crab...I settled on Tutankhamen, the boy king of Egypt. A fascinating and mysterious figure.

A few years ago I went to see an exhibit about Tut, which included not only the marvelous treasures found in his tomb--and they WERE spectacular, but also x-rays of his mummy and artistic renderings of what he might have looked like. He appeared to be a beautiful and sad young man. Tutankhamen ascended to the throne at the age of nine, and ruled for 10 years. During this time he restored the worship of traditional Egyptian gods that had been forbidden by his father, moved the capital back to Thebes and restored relations with several nearby nations.

While there are no surviving records of Tutankhamen's death, it was widely speculated that he was assassinated. After recent examinations of the mummy. it is thought that his death was the result of infection of a broken leg from a chariot accident complicated by malaria. Tutankhamen had no surviving heirs. He was succeded by Ay, his wife's grandfather.

The images used came from the King Tut exhibit and from Google Images and Dover.

SPA--Patchwork

I used to be a quilter, in the old days, when I was exploring EVERYTHING. I made quilts for wedding gifts, to wrap new babies in, to send my daughter off to college with--even a quilt finished with patchwork blocks made by my grandmother. I loved doing it then, even though, looking back now, I don't know where I ever got he patience.
I really enjoyed making this piece, trying to make it look like a quilted fabric block. I think it does...

Thanks to Dover for the butterfly and Rubyblossom for the texture layer that the applique was "stitched" onto. The stitches are a brush that actually "stitches" as you move it around. Some Photoshop filters were applied for the fabric texture, and layer styles to plump it up.