Happy Place

Siberian iris grew in my garden for several years until I changed my mind. Over the years, I have had a policy that if a plant doesn’t behave for me, I dig it up and plant something else. The irises delivered beautiful blooms for about a week each year, but the heavy plants had to be divided every other year. I replaced them. The blooms in the white pitcher above were from my yard.

FotoBlendz

• Place Solid Paper 1 from ArtPlay Palette Veranda on a new blank 12×12 document.
• Place layers of file 1 of Veranda FotoBlendz No. 1 above the paper.
• Duplicate the fotoblendz layer. Clip the photo to the top layer. Change the opacity of the mask to 50%. Clip a copy to the second mask layer. Change the blend mode of the mask to Darken and opacity to 100%. Both photo copies are Normal at 100%.
• Clip photo copies to layers below. Recolor the texture layer.
• To ensure that the handle on the photo shows, extract just the handle on one copy using an inverted layer mask.

Place Paper Overlay 1

After placing the Overlay 1 from ArtPlay Palette Veranda below the psd fotoblendz layers, I worked with the sizing of the photo and placement so that the flowers looked like they were tucked inside the paper envelop.

Build Background

• Stamp two copies of brush 6 from ArtPlay Palette Veranda on the right side using a black brush. Mask out with a layer mask as desired.
• Add color with brushes 2, 7, 11 and 16 stamped in a purple on new layers to add color.
• Place Artsy Paper 1 just above Solid Paper 1. Add an inverted mask to the layer and use a soft round brush to reveal part of the artsy paper.

Embellish

• Place the layers of file 4 from MultiMedia Flowers No. 9 above the photograph layers.
• Reduce the size to about 85%. Place over handle of pitcher.
• Replace the flowers included in the MultiMedia file with the flowers in the ArtPlay Palette. Reduce the size. Add layer masks and use a hard round brush to make them appear that they are tucked inside the ribbon.
• Place word art from Grow WordART Mix No. 1 on the left.

Now, I occasionally buy the blue iris buds available at the market to photograph at home.