Musings on Grunge

Grunge is SO not my usual style. Yet in digital scrapbooking I've been doing a lot of it for some reason. I think coming to 2Peas and being exposed to so many new styles has been a big part of it--and I've also fallen head, hook, and sinker (or however that expression goes--did you know I'm from Switzerland, originally?) for Rhonna Farrer's swooshes, flourishes, and style in general. I think the reason grunge works more for me in digiscrapping than it does with my cardwork is that -- for me at least -- scrapping is much more about telling a story, whereas a card is more like a snapshot. Grunge is ultimately very emotional and allows many nuances--and is also much more forgiving when you make a mistake. =)

I've also been reading a really useful book that I'd completely forgotten existed in my library, the Photoshop 7.0 Wow! book. In my "So Fleeting" layout that I worked on today I experimented a lot with layer masks, especially using gradients to help mask a layer gradually. You can see this at work with the sunset photo, and also, faintly, with the little yellow clock faces on the left bottom (that clock image, which I promptly made into a brush of course, was taken in City Hall in San Francisco. It's amazing what things you can find in old photos to make into brushes!). The gradients work really well with the whole grunge feel, and they do it much more smoothly than I ever could with just a dodge or eraser brush...

Anyway, here it is. I was in a melancholy mood for some reason today. Fonts: Selfish and Dauphin.