Inspired by Music

This week at Shop and Crop the DT has been inspired by music. It could be the artwork on a CD cover, or the lyrics of a song.

This theme is always fun and there are some great layouts in the gallery. Here are my two:

Row Row Row Your Boat
Journaling: "row row...sea...argh!!" you sang, merrily rowing your imaginary boat. You make me smile :)

LOL. I took these photos a few weeks back and had been saving them for this week's theme. One night as I finished hanging our washing over the clothes-horse (yes, our house resembles a chinese laundry in Winter), Jamie jumped into the empty washing basket and proceeded to sing his version of Row Row Row Your Boat. Complete with hand movements. It was the first time I'd seen him do that. I guess this is one of those milestone type pages that most people's albums contain.

Of course, getting those photos took a bit of work. The subject was quite happy to do a repeat performance "for the camera", but kept climbing out of the basket to look at the camera display before I got a chance to get off a shot! After much singing we got the sequence you see here. So much for candid hey?

I've paper pieced a little boat in the bottom RH corner for something different. And it helps to introduce a bit of orange into that bottom corner and balance up the design.

Notice
Journaling: In the middle of Winter, a blue sky causes me to stop, notice, and to be grateful for the unexpected, for the little things that brighten my day.

This was inspired by Massive Attack's "Protection" CD cover:


Can you tell? - corrugated cardboard photo mat; black frame around photo; masking tape effect.

The journaling block has lyrics from Jason Mraz:
"Well open up your mind and see like me
open up your plans and damn you're free
look into your heart and you will find that the sky is yours "

Yeah, I was having a bad week... it was a good thing for me to stop and reflect, and to "open up my plans". Thank you Mr Mraz!

Loved the Hello Sunshine pps for this layout! They were perfectly suited to my new purple jacket.

You might be interested in what I did with the photo too. A bit of manipulation went into that shot. Here's the original:


I knew that I wanted a bit of a darker, edgier look. At first I tried some cross processing and got this:

I really really wanted the black borders they used in the link above, but couldn't put my hands on them straight away and ran out of time. Anyone know where I can find them online? I know I've seen them somewhere but can't remember.

Anyway, after all that work, the colours in the cross processed photo weren't right for the papers I was working with, so I tried another technique - one for getting photos to look like Lomo photography and it was perfect:

Still wanted those black borders though...

Thanks for the emails about the last post. I'm OK. I bounce back :). But I'm just like anyone. I have my down moments. Normally I don't post about them. But I have to keep it real and that was real. I never understood before, about miscarriage and the emotions that accompany it. It's harder than I expected. I hope I help someone else by sharing it. And you all helped me. More than you probably realise. So thanks.

Have a wonderful Thursday and Friday. I'm off to work for the next two days. So I'll talk to you soon.
Kathie