A new blog banner

The new banner is an assemblage of my February kit for SNL at DSP. I wasn't too sure about the colors when I first saw them as orange is not one of my favorite colors. I did manage to use all the colors in the swatch. This was the first kit I made using PSE. There are certain things that I need to find work arounds for . . . (like not having layer masks!) so its alot different than working with CS2. It took me a long time to figure them out and now that I don't have them, I feel lost!!!

The frame (which looks like tarnished gold to me) was made using certain colors in combination with the render clouds filter and by layering with different blending modes. I really like the way it turned out! I think the rose quartz gems could still use a little more texture or veining in them but I was pretty happy with the way they turned out. I'll continue to try and tweak them as I figure out more on making gems, etc.

This is the preview as shown in the gallery at DSP (just in case and for when I change the banner again)

I also added a slideshow of my LO's in the side bar. I've been trying to step it up and create more LO's. Since it's good practice, I make a LO with my own SNL kit but also with the other SNLer's kits. Since I still had not used some of the kits I purchase from the DSP store I've used them as well and even bought another couple of kits from there as well.

Now if I could just figure out what's going on and why I can't add another animated GIF??? Anyway, I'm off for now, hopefully I'll be able to put together another freebie soon as well.

P.S. I also just entered the DET Contest at DSP . . . so now I have to step it up on the LOs!