Ann wrote “Can you describe how you made the part of the image that rests on top of the marbled fabric – are they all layers in Photoshop?”

First, it’s really cool to get comments!

Second, I’m trying to remember all the steps. If any of you are interested in working in detail with Photoshop, look seriously into becoming a member of NAPP – National Association of Photoshop Professionals. There are loads of tutorials on just about anything you can think of, and they are very easy to understand.

This particular piece used marbled fabric for the background from a photo we took. Then I looked for an image in the Photoshop custom shapes. This one appealed – it just seemed like it would work with this particular piece of fabric. The custom shape was on a separate layer. One of the first things you learn in Photoshop is to make sure you do things on different layers, and then you can delete the layers, turn them off, and add more filters and “stuff” to different layers.

I adjusted the photo of the fabric to increase colors, and then I added a gradient layer (I LOVE gradients!). Then the custom image, and I started embossing, adding shadows, and just generally playing around until I had something that really appealed.

One of the things I have discovered is that the lines of the marbling pattern do some very interesting things as they are manipulated. Here’s a piece our foster son called “Ribbon Candy on Crack” – lots of playing around with color and pattern.