Photo Color Swatch Challenge

My friend Jac Carney, designer extrodinaire here at Club Scrap, just posted a new challenge on the Club Scrap forum. You can read all about it HERE. I thought this idea was really cool, so I decided to play along.

It all started with a photo from 500px.com. Here’s one of the first photos I saw there: http://500px.com/photo/31676911

I not only love the colors, but the overall look of the photo., so I decided to incorporate that photo’s ‘feeling,’ too. I was in one of those ‘artsy’ moods.  I wanted to create something digitally that didn’t look like a typical layout. So I grabbed a photo of a windmill, and two digital backgrounds . . . one from Club Scrap’s Get the Picture collection and the other from Solstice (November 2009’s monthly kit). And I started playing.

I enlarged the photo, blurred it and reduced the opacity so that the Get the Picture background would show through. Then I layered the Solstice background over the right half of the layout and reduced the opacity to get that greenish-yellow glow. I mimicked the broken glass feel with a stamp image of some random text (sorry, not sure which kit it came from, I found it in my brush files!).

Finally, I added the word ‘tranquility’ in white and gave it an overlay style to blend it into the layout a bit.

The result - an artsy looking layout that's cool enough to frame:

I like this challenge ‘cuz it makes me think differently about what I create . And it reminds me that inspiration can come from all sorts of places. So head on over to 500px.com and choose a photo. Then create something wonderful and share it in the challenge thread HERE.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

-Ron