Berry Christmas!

Who needs Christmas decorations when you've got natural ones in the form of berries! These are red currants, the birds get most of the ones on the bushes these days but in the past I've made red currant jelly, ice-cream and even wine!

We'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a peaceful and safe Christmas and holiday season and to thank you all for your support over the past year.

A fairly simple texture recipe today as I've been too busy with Christmas preparations to do much photography or texture work.
Iridescent Brush @ Overlay 100%
Iridescent Brush @ Hard Light 67% with a little removed from the focus flowers
Backdrop @ Multiply 100%
Fly Edge #18@ Screen 41% inverted -this adds a subtle grunge to the image.
Iridescent Brush is from the painterly pack, Backdrop from Tex Box 2
See it on Flickr

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Fresh

These are the berries of the European Spindle or Euonymus europaeus more commonly called the Spindleberry, or at least that's what I've always called it. The name comes from the fact that its dense pale wood is easily worked and was once used for making spindles and knitting needles. For most of the year it's just another green shrub, but in autumn it transforms -the leaves turn a russet shade and it's covered with these pink "fruit" which contain bright orange seeds. I remember the bush my mother had just down the path, it was where the tea pot was always emptied (real tea not the tea bag variety) as apparently spindles loved tea leaves, it always rewarded us with a brilliant display of autumn colour, and rewarded the birds with lots of berries.

I processed this as follows:
Brushed Rose (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Pistachio (Summer Painterly) @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Soft Light 12%
Ming (Tex Box 2) @ Soft Light 100 %
It looked okay like this but was a bit bright.
So I then merged all these layers, on PC press Ctrl -Alt -Shift -E
Duplicated the merged layer and set it at Screen 10%
Then tweaked the toning with Selective colour and Hue saturation blending modes, the settings are a matter of taste and involves a bit of "playing" with the various sliders.

See the photo a bit bigger on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page