I love taking pictures of people at our church, especially on celebration days such as Easter Sunday when they tend to dress up a bit. The family pictured is Indian--I am always dazzled by their beautiful ethnic clothing. They are very active in our church and were pleased to pose for my camera. A recent new kit by HFD, "Sassy Pants" needed only minimal tweaking to make this rather formal LO. TFL

Notes: (PS7 for Teachers and Students)

The photo needed a formal looking frame; I used the one in the HFD kit, "O Tannenbaum" (re-sized and de-saturated 80%)

I made hue adjustments to the bright magenta (darker and redder), pale pink (multiplied), and chartreuse (more toward yellow with a bit of orange) flowers to match the beautiful colors of the clothing.

I softened the look of the greenery by darkening it (with a multiply layer) and reducing the contrast between the highlights and shadows for a flatter appearance--this moved it further to the back visually and kept it from popping out and grabbing attention from the photo, which is what this LO is really all about.

I added white stroke to the flowers for a sticker effect.

The swirls (I used one 6x) come with their own shadows. When you rotate them 180 degrees it looks weird because it appears that the light is coming from two different directions (confusing to the eyes and not logical). Solution: merged (2 groups of 3); I made a 2nd copy of the gray BG PP and punched a hole in the upper one the shape of the merged swirls; applied bevel/emboss (outer/up) layer effect to the upper PP, then merged the 2 PPs

I made my own journal mat using the custom draw shape tool.

I used heavier shadows (than I normally do) on every item (except text) in this LO for extra drama (so they each jump out a bit instead of having a flat appearance.