If you know me, you know that I have this annoying tendency to ‘fix’ things.  I can make it bigger.  I can make it better.  I can make it bigger AND better.  Or, “This _______ (insert basically anything here – furniture, wall colors, curtains, hairstyles … you get the picture) would look SO MUCH BETTER WITH _______!” or (again, insert anything here) “IF IT ONLY HAD _______!”  and nine times out of ten, off I’ll go to ‘fix’ it.  Gotta change it up.  Have to put my stamp on it.

(or the more likely – have to give myself a headache)

So it’s no surprise that I can NOT stop myself from screwing around and editing photos.  It’s like holding out a piece of chocolate cake and telling me it tastes better without the icing.  Ummm … no.

So today, I had the idea in my head of taking a shot of the daughter and photoshopping it up into some sort of vintage-y, artsy-fartsy creation.  I’ve recently started a love affair with all things texture, and I envisioned some aged sort of shot with maybe some faint cursive writing and whatnot.  That was the goal.  But, as often happens when I’m fooling around, my mind leads me in a hundred different directions, trying out this, trying out that, blahblahblah, and before I know it, HOURS have passed and I have not a helluva lot done. It’s a curse.  Seriously.

But fun!

Anyways, here’s my Project365 shot for today :)

and this is how I got there,

The first shot is SOOC.  In the second, I sharpened, saturated and adjusted the contrast.  I think I might’ve ran CoffeeShop’s Barista Action also, but I can’t remember.  See?  That’s how much mucking around I do!  In the third, I ran an ortan-ish action (from gawd knows where but I LOVE it) and messed around with the levels.

And because I can’t leave well enough alone, I played around with textures for awhile …

This one is CoffeeShop’s Grunge Frame, with opacity very low to give it a translucent look.

and this one is from Shadowhouse Creations and I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called but OMG I heart it too.  You should check him out.  He has tons of fun stuff on his site.

You can find my 365 project on flickr or check out the flickr group for Shutter Sisters.
For all daily photos posted here – Click project365 in the Category list in the right sidebar.