Anatomy of...Grandma's Bed

First off, I just have to give a sincere thanks to everyone who reads my little blog and also to everyone who takes the time to leave a compliment, suggestion or opinion.  I'm honestly amazed every time I get a comment that is from a real, caring person and not a link to a weight loss pill!

The suggestions for the trade show have been incredible and I really appreciate the honest opinions on the video.  I'm still in the process of deciding just exactly what to do....but mixed in those suggestions was the request from Laura saying "...please don't stop posting the before and afters" which reminded me, I haven't done that in a while!

So here ya go!

I was taking photos of this lovely lady...

...when this lovely lady started jumping on Grandma's Bed.

I got plenty of blurry, dark shots like the one above but I managed to snap just the right one in a brief moment of pause.

1.  I opened my original pic in Photoshop Elements 6 for mac.  Can you believe I have the new Elements 8 sitting on my desk for weeks and haven't loaded it?  I've got a good thing goin' here with 6...anyway...

2.  I did some very light skin smoothing with Coffeeshop Powder Room 2.

3. Then I wanted to enhance the dreamy look of the photo so I duplicated the background layer and added a Gaussian Blur of somewhere between 18-25 pixels {forget to check!}.
Next I erased the blur off just her right eye, her lips and the very top of her hand.  Here's my screenshot:

3.  Then of course I added some textures...because I must...I can't not.
Lustre warm @ 23%  {FloraBella}
NicholeV Heirloom 10 @ 32% {NicholeV}
Heavenly Vintage 100%  {ShadowHouse Creations}
Here's a screenshot with light erasing on the Lustre layer:

4. Then I cropped, flattened and saved!  I didn't use any actions on this one ~ amazing!
Here's the final, it's just dreamy~

*I may have ran Reduce Noise in the Filter menu very lightly but I can't remember....you could do it though if you've got a photo you want to create a similar look on.

I also snapped this one too and used the Coffeeshop Sun Kissed action on this...it's the first time I used it and it's pretty cool.
Before:

After:

Also, I've added a direct link on my Fun Photo Products page to animoto.  I know you're all dying to make a killer video!