2B D12 : Night Magnolia

The 2B lesson this week was about gathering inspiration from magazine layouts.  I admit, this has been kind of a tough one for me.  This lesson came out back in April just about the time I decided to join the class.   At the time, I was already feeling overwhelmed that I was 12 lessons behind from the very start, and clueless about Light Room.  But the other thing is that I just don't really buy magazines, and I usually ignore the ads.  The magazines I have around the house tend to be quilting and surface-design inspired--typically 2-dimensional and flat.  At first I thought I could set up a still-life with one of my quilts, but I never got around to it ...     I work in a medical library, but the images and ads in those types of professional journals are not what Kim had in mind.  Most of them are delivered online now without the ads.  Hmmh ...

In passing a waiting room magazine the other day, I flipped through it and caught a fleeting glimpse of what might have been a perfume ad.   A-ha!   I can work with that!  

Here's the image I started with.  A few weeks ago, we were walking the dogs after the sun had gone down.  I had the camera along, because I wanted some shots of the magnolia trees that were blooming at the time.  At first, I thought the pics would be a loss as it seemed too dark.  When I got home and looked at them on my laptop, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'd captured them in The Blue Hour.  The Magnolia flowers glowed like moonlight ...

Here's the processing layer-by-layer :
Layer 1 : Background image.  Spot-healing to clean up and smooth out the background.
Layer 2 : Text - Night Magnolia - Abbeyline Font
Layer 3 : Text - The new fragrance ...   - Papyrus font
Layer 4 : Text - Quiet Passion - Abbeyline Font with a swirly flourish brush by Obsidian Dawn
Layer 5 : Photo Filter - Cooling Blue

The second part of the lesson, Kim showed us how to add tints with graduated filters.  I did play around with this technique, but in the end, I decided the photo filter worked better for this particular image as I wanted an overall tint.  I'm glad to have the knowledge for using tints and graduated filters to add to my skills.

By the way, Sweet Leaf Productions is my own little production company that I started way back in 1994.  At the time, I was a dressmaker.  Being a production company, the name didn't limit my creative pursuits.  As The Sweet Leaf Notebook blog can attest, I've made lots of stuff over the years under this moniker.  It's been a fun journey!