A Remarkable Find

It seems to be the season for rediscovering long lost things for me at the moment. As I described in a previous post, I recently had returned to me a little book which I thought I had lost for good. Then, this evening, another discovery from the past came my way, of a different nature.

My hubby and I were watching “The Antiques Roadshow” on BBC TV this evening, and someone brought along a rather intriguing picture from the Arts and Crafts Movement, of a seascape in enamel, surrounded by a repousse frame made of silver, depicting various forms of marine life, and a circular-shaped piece of mother-of-pearl inlaid at the bottom. Embossed in the silver were the first two lines of a poem, “The sea hath its pearls/The heaven hath its stars,” which rather intrigued me for some reason, so on the spot I decided to google this and see if I could find the entire poem.

The first site I visited was “Writing and Ruminating: One Children’s Writer’s Journey.” I discovered that the poem was Das Meer hat seine Perlen by the German romantic poet Heinrich Heine, translated into English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as follows:

The sea hath its pearls,

The heaven hath its stars;

But my heart, my heart,

My heart hath its love.

Great are the sea, and the heaven;

Yet greater is my heart,

And fairer than pearls or stars

Flashes and beams my love.

Thou little, youthful maiden,

Come unto my great heart;

My heart, and the sea and the heaven

Are melting away with love!

On the site, I also discovered a painting of the same name, which had been inspired by he poem, by William Margetson, an English artist who lived from 1861 to 1940. On another site I discovered that the painting was purchased from the artist by The Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1897, where it still resides.

As soon as I saw this picture, my heart leapt. I had completely forgotten about it, but many years ago my grandmother had a reproduction of it in her home in Cambridge, where we spent many happy holidays. She came to live with us in 1963 when I was 10, and I don’t remember seeing the picture after this, so presumably it was among the many things she had to sell when she moved.

It was always said in the family that the young lady in the picture bore a striking resemblance to my grandmother when she was young, just after the First World War, probably because of the colour of her hair. Looking back, I remember now that I always believed that it actually was a picture of my grandmother!

I decided to make a new desktop wallpaper with this. Using a combination of Serif PagePlus (my desktop publishing software) and PhotoPlus (photo editor), I created a blue background on a layout to match the proportions of my computer screen. I took one of the texture overlays I created ages ago, from a photo of some tree bark with interesting swirling patterns on it:

and overlaid this on top of the blue background using the “screen” blend mode, and adjusted it until I was happy that it produced a subtle wave-like pattern in the blue, which would not interfere too much with the visibility of my desktop icons. I added the painting as a new layer, resized it and moved it to the right-hand side and added a vignette effect to it so that the edges would fade into the background. I exported the whole thing as a new image and set it as my desktop wallpaper.

Now I can enjoy it every day.

To stumble across this picture out of the blue like this, is amazing, and I feel as if a long-lost treasure has been restored to me. Isn’t the Internet wonderful? It is such a beautiful picture, and it ties in with my love of the sea, and my own lifelong delight in finding treasures on the seashore – maybe not actual pearls, but certainly many beautiful shells and stones, sea glass and driftwood, and it links me back to the past, with happy childhood memories.

This has quite made my day.

Woven Cane

When we visited my sister yesterday I noticed that she was working on a chair seat that she was redoing with woven cane. In the bin beside it was the old piece, which had evidently split down one side. I fished it out and asked if I could have it and she readily agreed – my motto plays out every day: “One person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure”!! I knew I could do something with it – it’s a very decorative pattern with loads of potential, and definitely too good to throw away.

My original plan was to use it as a stencil, and also to press into gesso or Polyfilla (joint compound) to create a texture, and I still intend doing this, but then I thought I could get some mileage out of it as a digital image, so I started off by scanning it, and then created a texture overlay in Serif PhotoPlus. This file has now been uploaded to my SkyDrive – link in my sidebar – in my Texture Overlays folder (big surprise, that! Shoshi’s nothing if not logical…). If you want to download it and use it in any digital imaging projects, please feel free.

Then I added it to a couple of backgrounds in Serif CraftArtist. I like the pale, washed out greyscale-on-white one but I ended up adjusting the colour balance in PhotoPlus because I wanted it a more beigey-brown colour – I decided I would make a thank you card for my sister, using her woven cane.

I printed these digital images out, together with a sheet of 3-inch square pictures of the piece. These squares have had their background removed, and blended with the beige texture background. The remaining squares can be used in other projects.

Here is the card I made, using the beige texture background.

I cut out one of the smaller squares out, and cut around the edges of the printed design, and inked the edge with a small amount of Walnut Stain distress ink to hide the cut white edges.

I cut the beige background piece in half to A5, and printed the “Thank You” sentiment onto it. I trimmed it down by 1/8 in all round, and then distressed the edges with Walnut Stain distress ink. I took a sheet of plain white card for the card base, and distressed the edges with Old Paper distress ink, and then matted and layered the texture piece and the small square, which I added with foam pads. Finally I added a couple of leaves that I’d made from my stash, and a purchased butterfly embellishment as a finishing touch, and a small splash of colour.

Another Texture Overlay and an Envelope

I have done another texture overlay, this time from a photo of a Romanesco cauliflower – I love these, because they show incredible fractal design. The first time I saw one I couldn’t believe it! Here are the photos I took of the cauliflower:

Here is the texture overlay that I have created.

This is the overlay on a purple background.

I also did an envelope for the retirement card I made.

First of all, I inked the edges with Dried Marigold Distress Ink, and then added some Milled Lavender Distress Ink, and then I stamped the leaves and flowers in the same colours, doing multiple stampings with the rubber stamp between re-inking, to give the dimensional effect. I am always amazed what you can do with distress inks, and how you can so easily transform a piece of plain white paper!

Some New Texture Overlays

I’ve created a few more texture overlays which I’ve uploaded to my Windows Live SkyDrive album if anyone wants to download and use them. They are taken from nature.

Tree Bark 1:

Tree Bark 2:

As before, these are available for free download and use from my SkyDrive album:

http://cid-b56d3c83facaf396.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/Shoshi%5E4s%20Texture%20Overlays?client=wnf

All I ask is that they are not used for commercial gain, and that if you mention my name and my blog address if you use them, that would be very nice.

They are all uploaded in their original size and resolution (12 x 12 in, 300 dpi) so would be ideal for scrapbooking projects where you want to print them out.

Here they are again, with different backgrounds using the overlay blending mode, to show how they might look in use. All these backgrounds have come from Serif CraftArtist digital scrapbooking software.

You can get an infinite variety of effects by using different backgrounds and colours, and even by overlaying one texture overlay over another – over and over and over – did I say “over”? OK, you get the idea!

To use them, simply import them into your photo editor and place them as a new layer over your chosen background. In the blending modes option, choose “Overlay” and you are done.

Hope you enjoy using them.

Digital Scrapbooking – Texture Overlays

Last night I was on someone's blog (see below) and she’s got various freebies to download, including some texture overlays, but rather than downloading these, I thought I'd try creating some myself. Whenever we go anywhere I'm always snapping away with the camera, and my hubby is always amused at the sort of things I take photos of – walls, pavements, different surfaces... I love textures and always photograph them, so I've got quite a library of them now. I opened one in my photo editor (Serif PhotoPlus – this software does 90% of what PhotoPlus does, but at a fraction of the cost) and increased the canvas size to make it the standard scrapbooking size of 12 x 12 in. and copied and pasted bits of the image to fill the space, to keep the pattern the same size. I then opened the channel mixer, and desaturated the image so it was greyscale, making sure it had good contrast – some adjustment was needed with the levels control. Then into the filters menu, where I chose Emboss, and adjusted the angle so it looked embossed rather than debossed (i.e. sticking out rather than sticking in!). I then exported it as an image saved on my hard drive. Into CraftArtist, where I put a nice plain-ish background in, and added this image on top. Using the Blending Mode, I chose Overlay. Hey presto! The two images are fused together, and the background has a nice texture on it!! I discovered you do need to use a background with a bit of colour, or the texture doesn’t show up.

This is the original photograph of a typical Norfolk chequerboard flintstone wall I photographed at Castle Acre Priory.

 

Here it is desaturated and embossed – this is what I saved as the texture overlay:

And here it is combined with a background.

Lovely effect, isn’t it! Here’s another one using a photo of some decorative stonework at Waddesdon Manor.

For this one, I made two texture overlays. You can change the angle of the simulated light source, and this gives a completely different effect.

This shows a bit more clearly on the next example. Here is the original photograph, of some crazed porcelain.

Just as you can produce either an embossed or a debossed effect with a Cuttlebug machine, depending on which side of the card you use, you can produce these effects by altering the angle of the virtual light source in the embossing effects tool in the photo editor. This is the embossed effect, i.e. the texture is raised:

and here is the debossed effect, with the lines appearing to sink below the surface.

This one, with a slightly different background, could be made to look like leather.

My final example is of some Chinese calligraphy. My apologies to any readers of Chinese – I have had to do a bit of cloning to get the image to fill the new canvas size, and I did this randomly to cover up the joins, and as a result the characters are not all in the right places! However, this is purely for decorative effect and will be used as a background for images and text, so it probably won’t be noticeable in use.

I have deliberately chosen fairly plain, neutral-coloured backgrounds for these examples, to show you how the principle works. However, you can experiment using different coloured backgrounds, and ones with an existing texture, and even using more than one texture overlay – the patterns combine to give some interesting results. For instance, if you have a striped texture, you can overlay it the second time at right angles to the first, and end up with a checked effect, but it goes a lot further than that. Actually the possibilities are endless.

I have created a couple of layouts using these backgrounds, which I may incorporate into a photo book of our holidays one day. This is the “title” page for Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk, and you can see how I have used the chequerboard flint wall as a texture overlay background, and put the images and text on top. I am grateful to Iris (http://trulytangoscraps.wordpress.com/category/friday-freebies/) not only for giving me the idea of trying these texture overlays, but also for some lovely free downloads that you can get if you subscribe to her blog, including the frames on this layout, which have a gorgeous mediaeval look which is in keeping with the ruined abbey.

Here’s another example of a layout I did, using the texture overlay process. This is made up of photos taken at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, and again, the gilt frame came from Iris – I wanted to reflect some of the opulence inside the house.

One day I shall get round to making all my holiday photos up into layouts.

I am very thrilled to have discovered this new technique, which I think will be very useful, and a good way to create an unusual background for a project, using elements from the same theme. You can also create backgrounds and textures unique to you.