Let’s Blend Challenge – A Bit of Whimsy

Good morning from Arizona! This is our last Let’s Blend Challenge for the year; where did the time go? I was trying think of how to explain this month’s challenge and I could only come up with the word “Whimsy” to describe it. So, I am going with that and will try to explain my thought process as best I can – HAH!

I knew I wanted to blend this photo of our home in Flagstaff. We had gone up January 1 to spend a couple of days in the snow. What we didn’t know, was, this first storm would be the beginning of a record snow season for the city. It started snowing here and really never stopped for any length of time until April.

So, I started off with first creating an 8×10, instead of our normal 12×12 page. I ran my photo through an impression filter in Topaz Studio to give it a bit of a painted look and then clipped the photo to one of my go to masks – Stamped Blocks No. 34. I love how this set of masks can be easily sized to a photo without any distortion. This is how it looked:

I started  playing with background papers and when I placed this one, it kind of extended the trees, in a fun way. The paper was moved around a bit to match up with the trees. The snow was a little bit shadowed, so at the top of the layers panel I clipped a textured white paper to everything below it, added an inverted mask by clicking alt + the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers panel. The paper was then painted back in, and changed to soft light blend mode, at the bottom of the photo where all the snow is. The Santa and his reindeer brush was added at the end.

Here are the products used: Country Christmas No. 2 Paper pack 1, Stamped Blocks No. 34

The idea of extending out a photo can be used with so many types of photos. I can see it working with buildings or mountains also. Katie has generously provided us with a FREEBIE, and you can use all or part of it if you choose. Don’t forget to post your layouts in the Let’s Blend Challenge Gallery, as well as the December Challenge Participation Thread, to earn store rewards.

I hope you can join in on the challenge during this busy holiday season. You are all so very creative with these challenges, and have actually learned some things from you!

Happy Holidays and I’ll see you in 2024!

Joanne