Want to know how I created this image? Creating an image like this is a lot easier than you think. If you have a camera (cell phone camera makes it even easier) and a computer, you can do this and it won't take you as long as you think to create this.
Here's how I did it: I took this photo (the roses) on my cell phone-it was a detail from a little girl's dress at JC Penny. I imported it to my computer (I sent it to my email to keep it simple). I then opened up the file in Picmonkey-a free,online photo editing software (can't wait until they have a phone ap version). I actually 'splurge' on the premium part of this for a mere $25/year so that I can use all the features they offer-but you don't have to to get this effect.
I used the basic editing features to sharpen the image a little more and to saturate the colors just a wee bit. Then, I selected, 'overlay' (hover your mouse over all the icons to see what they are) and selected the sparkling stars overlay. I adjusted the overlay to cover the entire image and then faded it back a bit-and selected the stars to have a color instead of being white. The next item I selected to add to the image was the 'textures' feature-under this section, I chose the 'bokeh' and also selected to 'fade' it a bit. The next thing I did was to add the text. The last thing was to add the frame and I used the 'simple frame' here and adjusted the thickness of the inner and the outer frame and changed the color of the outer frame.
That's it! From there, I just saved it to my computer in the file size that I wanted. It becomes an image you can upload to anywhere you want AND you can also print it to make it a real card to give to someone.
There are many ways to do photo editing online with lots of aps to chose from, but Picmonkey is a lot like having Photoshop at your fingertips without the expense and the steep learning curve. Not that I plan to give up using Photoshop-I still do! But, Picmonkey gives me the ability to be my own 'graphic artist' in a very basic kind of way.
Go ahead and give it a try! I'd love to hear how you did (come back and leave a comment here).
