Playing With Shading

Today was dreary and cold...and NOT good for my joints. Spent much of the day in pain. It's days like these that I either catch up on my reading or I catch up on scrapbooking. Scrapbooking won today. With an entire day to play, I first browsed several galleries to get some inspiration. Came across THIS layout.

 

The color is what first grabbed my attention, then the depth of the layers and the shadows. This type of layout is completely out of my comfort zone since I know NOTHING about shading. And so...today was a good day to do something about it. I browsed through my "stash" and decided to work with...

UNFORGETTABLE by SweetMade

 

Since I also had to complete a couple of challenges at GDS, I figured I would kill two birds with one stone. I chose the TURNING A NEW LEAF challenge, where we were asked to find an old layout, using the same photo(s) and create an entirely new layout. I searched through my old galleries and came across this one...

 

Me with my daughter, Kat...Photo taken in March 2007

KIT: Solitary Meditation, Fur Trim Freebie by Lorene Hill
FONT: Angsana New
LAYOUT DESIGNER: AlabamaStoneThrower Creations©
TITLE: Our Wildlife Outing
CREATED: May 6, 2007
PHOTO: Kat & Me
PROGRAM: PSP9

(EEGAD!! This was back when I was a newbie, and it shows. God bless all of the designers that had me on their CT, cause it is so obvious I had no clue what I was doing back them LOL)

THIS is what I created after several hours.

Ehhh...not bad for my first attempt. (I'm sure I will be redoing this one in a few years LOL) As I was uploading it to the gallery, I noticed that this week's Designer Spotlight was SweetMade, so decided to grab another one of her kits to upload for the Designer Spotlight Challenge.

MY BIG YEAR - January by SweetMade.

 

Several more hours passed. I tweaked. I twisted elements. I played with blending techniques. THEN I tried my hand at adding depth through the layers with the shadows again. This time I was happier with the results, though I still need more improvement.

Eventually, I will learn it. Until then, I will just have to keep practicing.
My time is now up...