Textures, Textures, Textures How do I Love Thee...

Well this post isn't really about when or how textures entered my life, but more of a display of what I have done since I discovered them! I troll the web continuously for new textures and constantly add new ones to my collection. I don't remember which ones I use on what photos, I am really bad at not writing it down. However, the majority of the textures I use come from Jerry Jones over at Shadowhouse Creations, a great source for quality textures and good tutorials too. So just for the record, I haven't taken on the task of creating my own textures, I just utilize the wonderful textures created by those who are willing to share! The photos I use however are mine.

The thing I love about textures is they transform a photograph into something totally different and give your photograph a different feel.  Yes you could play around with the colors and make a photo look old or antique. However, that is just the colors, if you have the right combination of textures and layer them right you get something that looks like it IS an old photograph. For me textures can sometimes just add that little something to bring a photo, not necessarily to the next level, but, a different level. If fact, I often have trouble deciding which version I like best, the original photograph or the textured one. They both are usually great and each tells it's own story and has it's own purpose.

Here are some of my favorites I've textured! A few are repeats that you can find under my 365 and Creativity Boot Camp tabs, but, I wanted to share them again just in case you don't make it my other pages...

The Rusty Sign...

{Above is the original photo of a railroad sign... the sign is cool and rusted and I like the blue against the rusty brownish red. However I felt it needed something else...I added a cloud texture because I felt the tiny little wispy could in the top of the photo wasn't enough. Then I just added a grungy texture to compliment the grungy rusted sign. Finally I added a layer mask and took away the added textures from the actual sign, this way the sign itself was unaltered. Below is the finished product}

The Sunny Sunflower...

{This next photograph I actually have several different ways, I just love it so much I've textured it, I've played with the color and kept it the same and I love it in all it's forms, but, here I'm sharing it in it's original and textured version}

Yellow field of horses...

{This is one of my first photos I took with  my new camera that wasn't of my children or garden. We were on the highway making our way to the big city for some shopping...we have to travel to shop since we live in the boonies...when we came across this field covered in yellow flowers. I thought it was amazing and had my husband pull over. This was my favorite shot of the that day. After experimenting with textures, I decided to go back to this photo and see what it looked like with some texture...Below is the result}

Well, this post is starting to get long so I'll just add a few more of my favorite textured pieces without a long description...

A before and after...

Last one, another before and after...

As I mentioned before you can get some great textures from Shadowhouse Creations. I hope you enjoyed my mini gallery of my textured photos...If you'd like to visit Shadowhouse Creations just click here and head on over and start texturizing!