Texture Tuesday - DO what you can...

Let me tell you about today's challenge for KK's Texture Tuesday. The theme is the verb, "do."

I was so lost when I read this! I didn't have any ideas. Finally, I grabbed a random photo of some water droplets, slapped a random texture on it, and used KK's brush to paint "Do what makes you happy" on it.

I didn't like it.

So I scrapped it. I just deleted it. And I mentally bookmarked the challenge to work on another day.

When I was ready to tackle it again, I Googled "quotes about doing your best" because I wanted an inspirational quote that wasn't too concrete. A quote from Theodore Roosevelt popped out at me right away, even as I clicked through several different pages of quotes. I jumped over to pse with a vague idea of what I wanted, and found this photo of some lavender. This photo has been resting in my "to be edited" folder, just waiting to be rediscovered and processed to its fullest.

Here is my end result:

When I opened this photo in ACR to adjust sliders, I specifically decreased the saturation to -100. I knew I wanted a black and white photo. I then increased the exposure, brightness, and contrast, as well as adding in more blacks. When I switched over to pse8, I adjusted the levels quickly, but then got disgusted by the noise in the background. (I usually run noiseware BEFORE editing, but this noise was created when I increased the exposure in ACR.) After resaving and reopening, I added 2 textures - golden and aurora, both by KK herself. I neglected to write down my blending modes or opacity for these. I do know that the Hue/Saturation layer is a slight desaturation. And then I added the quote, the one that inspired me: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Here are my layers:

And now that I look at it again, I think I switched the possible blending modes. I think the golden layer is actually linear burn, and the aurora layer is soft light. But I'm not positive. I guess I am not entirely 'with it' right now. It took me much longer than I would have liked to get back into the swing of things after the wedding and honeymoon, and I start traveling for work tomorrow. After increasing my travel territory last year, it's been decreased again this year, but I have more in-office responsibilities. As of right now, I'm not sure how much time I'll be able to devote to blogging, although I was able to manage my time efficiently enough last year that I am confident I can do it again this year. Additionally, I won't be planning a wedding!

As much as I love you all, I must end this post sometime today. I'll be back soon!