"Solitary Rose"

So I have a new system for my current obsession.

No photos? No problem! My photos are on my hard drive nested: by year, then by month, and finally by week. I told myself that I had to randomly open a year folder, pick a month folder from that and pick a week in that month without looking ... and I have to choose a photo out of that folder to scrapbook with. I got lucky this morning. It could get interesting since I take a few good photos, but I take a TON of crappy photos!

TOTAL waste of time - but I am learning new things so maybe not. Y'all will just have to continue to suffer and look at these while I try to grow me a creativity gene.

And to justify this crap or if anyone wants to learn any of these things: I created the papers from scratch - picked the color, design and texture. Then 'tore' and 'beat the shit' out of the edge of one of them (official photoshop terminology). Painted on the right hand paper (under the writing) with the brush tool with my pick for 'paint' color. Used a cool clipping mask on my photo to have it blend into the page - plus the faint handwriting is also part of my picture. I took a ribbon with a cool brass do-hickey and made the entire thing gold for the left hand side embellishment (using 'styles'), added the emerald and gold to a couple of other embellishments - apparently today was the day to add 'bling' to your scrapbook page ... -

So this page was made totally from scratch. (Learned new the 'beating' and the 'tearing' part - Jen - this is so I can make a page from old newsprint - you asked if I could do it in a comment and I want the answer to be 'yes').