Challenge #4 Guest Designer LINDA HARRISON challenges you

I am so honored to not only have Linda as a contributor for When Life Gives You Lemons but I feel so grateful to also call her a friend. She is an incredibly talented scrapbooker and you can see more of her work on her blog. You will also be able to see her gorgeous layouts in a number of idea books and magazines but specifically her OWN book; Starting Points.

I asked Linda to help us with a challenge this week and she stepped right up to the challenge and offered us some REALLY neat inspiration....

Here you can see her "Lemon" photo was a picture of her adorable son, Robby riding his bike. Naturally, you can see that his head is cut off at the top and the movement of the bike made it a tad blurry. Coupled with the fact that her husbands shoe is visible in the lower right corner but no body visible.

I want you to find a photo that wasn't 'framed' properly and use it as is to tell the story behind the photo. Somebody's head is cut off or maybe a portion of their body. Try to use this photo as it is and come up with a great layout focusing on the story of the photo. The other part of the "Lemon" photo is the disguising that Linda did so well of the 'foot' in the photo. Add this into your page as another challenge or use this as the starting poing of your challenge ( A little homage to Linda's book as well!).....

There is still a GREAT story to be told and Linda did a fantastic job of using an embellishment to mask the lone foot and the colors and design add to the energy of movement on this page. Using a photo that isn't framed properly AS IS and telling the story that goes with it is a perfect way to handle a Lemon photo.

Can't WAIT to see what you do

PS: Challenge due in one week! Don't forget, all participants all month long go into a drawing to win a goodie bag and a copy of my book.

Challenge #3 Fixing NOISE in your photo

Before and After

First, let me say... thank you to everyone that has still been checking in here to see if any new challenges have been posted. What a whirlwind September has been. I honestly never imagined the direction that life would take this month or anticipated how time consuming it is to take a trip, be involved in your sisters wedding (next week), finish an online class and try to work with three kids. Throw in a couple of sick days and you have a recipe for a very frazzled me!

But...

I'm back!

Even though I've still go a lot on my plate, I am VERY excited and pumped to bring more challenges here to this blog AND!!! Start doing some incredible RAK's each month for the participants. Each month, I will put all the names of those that posted in ANY of the challenges into a drawing for some scrapbook goodies AND a copy of my book; When Life Gives You Lemons . For the next 12 months! How exciting, eh? We are about a week into the month so there will only be three challenges this month to get your name entered into the drawing and the following month will offer four challenges.

SO!

Here is this weeks challenge:

A very common in older photos or photos that may be too dark and you are able to lighten with a photo editor is NOISE in the photo. Noise is can be referred to as pixelation or a grainy appearance to your photos clarity. Whatever you call it, it makes for a VERY unattractive photo and difficult to scrapbook. There are a couple of different options for how to deal with this troublesome photo problem. Reducing the size of your photo smaller than 4x6 will bring the pixels of your photograph closer together and allow you to gain greater clarity within the photo. Typically this will be a great solution but there is another way that you can deal with this problem. Download free noiseware software that you can load your photo into and allow the editor to process your photo and remove the noise. You will also find that you can fix the problem of noise in your photo in photoshop elements. Go to Filter-->Noise-->Reduce Noise. If you want to take your editing one step further try downloading this freeware noise reducer:

Noise Ware . There are options you can purchase but try the free download to get a feel for the software. Trust me when I say... it works like a charm.

Above you can see my before photo and after photoand the layout that I created about my sister and I. I edited this photo a little in photoshop and then applied the noiseware software to my photo to 'soften' the photo a bit. I really love the result.I would love to see YOUR layout using a photo with noise in it. Reduce the photo OR use a noiseware filter in photoshop or try one of the downloadable version. Can't wait to see YOUR page!