Personal Photo Challenge - Layering Textures............

I love texture............on anything. 

Paper, fabric, knitwear, leather, painted walls, 

dried petals, Autumn leaves, crunchy cereal, even hair!

This month's photo challenge from Donna is all about 

adding texture to your basic images. 

Click to enlarge and view textures close up.

Above, the original collage of some French inspired 

images I captured in France and here at home.

After further editing ~ this 'touch of France' collage, 

made in PicMonkey, was then boosted with their amazing 

array of fun effects. I played around, adding and 

subtracting different texture effects, in two very 

different versions

Above, before editing, a more recent photo from 

last month's trip. The stunning Hungarian Parliament 

buildings on the Danube River in Budapest.

After editing with iPhoto and PicMonkey

• Photo cropped to remove ugly bridge work on left 
• Retouched to remove crane
• Image set into a vintage frame then added pale green texture with PicMonkey's Time Machine effect to match the water on the left. Only light texture added as I didn't want to harden the misty soft grey shades of the buildings
• Photo taken on the Danube river boat tour using the Nikon Coolpix S6400 set on landscape

You may have already noticed that I love playing with 

my blog banners....just like I love blogging in general. 

I guess the entire process satisfies the creative urge 
remaining from my years working in art and advertising. 

This one above started out a bit blah, so, in 

PicMonkey, I added the Urbane effect and then 

played with Ediface Textures, adding and changing...

.....eventually coming up with this version above. 

I also changed the type to a handwritten style font.

For this second version, I set the banner on top of 

one of my own vintage textures and, for a different 
effect, and added text to the side.

A word about using textures: I have absolutely no idea what 

I'm doing most of the time! I could never make a tutorial 

anyone could comprehend. I just go for it, adding and 

subtracting, changing sizes to fit when using my own 

vintage frames. 

Textures/effects in PicMonkey are great and 
easy to use, gathering a folder of your own is 
fun but requires more work. 
There are fabulous bloggers out there doing 
awesome things with the 'big' programs such as 
PhotoShop - I do not come close to their images.

But, that said, this has to be my favorite 'challenge' 

to date from Donna. Thanks to digital photography, so 

much is possible to each of us now, whether professionals 
or amateurs, when armed with a camera, a simplified 
editing program, and a some time to 'play' with all 
these photos we take!

Be sure to head over to Donna's blog

A Personal Photo Challenge and join in the fun.