Before and After ART rePLAY No 7

Today, Creative Team Member, Laura is sharing her Before and After ART rePLAY No 7.

In this series of tutorials, the aA Creative Team are reworking older layouts to show you how they made improvements.

Before and After ART rePLAY No 7

I made my original page in March 2015—exactly two years ago—and it did not stand the test of time.

• The elements aren’t cohesive and don’t really support the theme of my son and daugher-in-law attending a wedding only a few months before their own.
• I liked the silhouetted couple and word art, but the word art seemed random.
• The linear flow is lacking, and while I do love a vintage, grungy look – sometimes it’s not a suitable approach for every theme.
• The photo seems like it was just ‘hanging there’ and not integrated into the design.

It’s  challenging to blend some photos, and I have zero patience for extractions.

This photo has a cluttered background, which poses a problem when blending. I had to blend close to my subject and is a difficult to achieve a seamless blen.

The intention in this redesign was to keep the things I liked (the silhouette, the word art, a flow, a soft blending), while improving the composition.

In my experience, starting with the right Artsy Paper can make a world of difference.

The ArtPlay Palettes by Anna Aspnes designs provide such beautiful, varied paper designs that it is often hard to make a selection.

It’s helpful to narrow your choice using the following criteria.

The paper should:

1. Have a slightly formal feel to match the subjects cocktail attire.
2. Work with the photo’s gold and blue tones.
3. Have defined areas into which the photo can be blended  and  minimize the distracting background, especially the big brown grid.

I selected three options, from the ArtPlay Palette Aspera, ArtPlay Palette Fare and ArtPlay Palette L’Amour.

The photo was quickly blended onto each background to find the best fit and make my final paper selection.

I like to use the Inverted Layer Masking technique on photos with cluttered backgrounds because it allows me to work from the center if the image outward.

The masking process is reversed in which the Layer Mask is BLACK and the Foreground and Background Colors are inverted.

 I chose  Artsy Paper #3 from the ArtPlay Palette L’Amour from the 3 initial selections.

The designs on the paper aided in hiding the brown grid in the background of my photo.

The photo was then enlarged and re-positioned.

This fortuitously guided the other design changes.

The addition of several files from ArtsyTransfers L’Amour ‘jazzed up’ the background and contributed to blending the photo.

Ironically, they also hid the designs on the Artsy Paper that had drawn me to the paper in the first place.

To finish my new layout, I shifted the silhouette, added a WordART from Love WordART Mix No. 1 and a string of hearts from Multimedia Hearts No. 3.

And when all was said and done, I was much happier with the ‘after’ than the ‘before.’

Mission accomplished.

Click on the above image to see digital supplies used in Before and After ART rePLAY No 7.

Stay tuned for more Creative Team insights to be shared in the Before and After ART rePLAY series.