A Beauty of the South

Here in the South we have beautiful Southern Magnolia trees.

The blooms are huge and smell wonderful.

This tree is in our church's cemetery.

While I was waiting for my cohort in the youth room renovation project to show up

I walked around the cemetery trying to find the oldest head stone.

I actually smelled the tree before I saw it.

(Yes, I KNOW they're big trees but my head was down

looking at head stones not up in the air looking around!)

By the way, I did find some very old head stones from the 1800's.

One even had a photo embedded in it of the deceased gentlemen

in his younger years standing in his military uniform.

I really liked that one.  Maybe because I've never seen anything like it before.

My cohort finally arrived so play time was over and it was time to get to work.

I recently downloaded a bunch of free textures from various artistic people

so I decided to see what I could with the following shot of the Magnolia bloom.

This is the latest texture, Victoria, from NClayes Textures

and our Your Sunday Best blog hop hostess, Nancy, at A Rural Journal.

I can't remember the exact formula but I tweaked the colors and sharpened the background layer.

Then, I duplicated the background layer and Multiplied it

decreasing the opacity to somewhere between 40-50%.

I added the Victoria texture and Lightened it leaving it at 100%.

I, then, erased the texture from the flower.

Next time, I'll have to pay more attention to what I do to the image!

Linking with

Till next time,