Peggy has not seen these yet, but I asked if it'd be ok to scan them in. We swapped pictues probably two months ago or so and we've neither one seen each other's results yet. She wanted to try something girly so I sent her Mother's Day pictures of my youngest dd. And she sent me a masculine set of her son, who plays ice hockey. It was a difficult challenge in that first I had to work in 8 1/2 x 11 format, which to me is not enough real estate. I'm use to my 12x12's. And second I haven't done anything masculine like that, and don't have a clue about hockey. So I was a little outside my comfort zones. I hope she likes what I've done with her pictures. I thought I'd post them to share and appreciate any feedback.
The background paper was a plain cardstock, which I sanded to roughen it up a bit and give it some texture. I then used white acrylic paint and brushed randomly crisscrossing strokes which lightly touched upon the raised surfaces caused by the sanding. I was trying to get the effect of the scratch marks in the ice of a rink. The title "Images of a Champion" are done in Sizzlits Script, and crystal laquered, again trying to evoke the thought of ice. I repeated the idea of ice with the use of the white snap eyelets with the acrylic squares. There's a few Jolee's items from a hockey packet, and lucky me the jersey was a close match to the jersey of her ds. I used a nice focal photo of her son, sanded around the edges, and again touched 'em up with some paint. I thought this picture gave me an opportunity to point out identifying gear of the game. Hey, remember I'm not real bright in this area. The focal photo on the second page is a side shot of him which gave a different perspective. Around it says,"To achieve your goal of making the 2010 Paro Olympic Team, you must practice, practice, practise and never, ever give up." Around the edges are some smaller action photos. The upper second page was a really nice team picture which I initially wanted to enlarge. However, I felt this would make it too grainy to be real effective. I left enough room that she can go back under this picture and include the team members names. I've got a couple of extra goodies I've made for her as well. But I'm not gonna scan those, so as to not completely ruin her surprise. Oh, and the signature on the second page is her son's actual handwriting. She explained that this was really difficult for him to do so I really wanted to incorporate it in the layout for him. She emailed it to me and I managed to size it and clean up some smudges from the pencil markings and print it on an overlay. I like how it turned out. Here's hoping that she and he both like my efforts. I find her son to truly be an inspiration, and I feel priviledged to have met him if only through his photos.