JFlah's Blunders

The head of our PreK ministry asked me to help her make a craft for the story about Hannah praying for a baby in 1 Samuel 1:9-2 8 . She brought me a neat idea she found online where only the hands/torso change when the page is folded. Thankfully I had time to sketch up an original version of what she brought me. Click here to download this design for free. Finalized version created in Adobe Illustrator: Preliminary sketches:  Ideas she provided:

It's May. That means I've been buried under photographs for weeks - first for High School Graduate Recognition and now for Parent/Child Dedication. I typically enjoy "fixing" them and naturally, some prove more of a challenge than others. Talk about FUN! Here's one example from this week that needed more than the cursory changes to fit our SD format. Original: Edited (see final above):

Here's the nativity sketch - sketched elements separately, scanned them at a high resolution then compiled them into the scenes. Wish I'd had more time to work on these, but I think I've done ok in the time allotted. I'm glad God's given me a place to work that will allow me to do creative things like this even though I still feel a little funny about being found sketching when the boss shows up at the door and says 'what cha' doin?'

So, last week the title was "Jesus Loves the Little Children" - pastor mentioned that having some hands reaching would be nice. I found some stellar stock photography and added a few things: a sleeve, some filters, and the wound for the adult hand. Also, the child's hand had a finger that looked a bit double jointed and I edited that to make it a little less obvious.  Creating the wound was the fun part. I drew a freehand shape, filled it in, added some grunge around the edges and some general filters and then found a photo online of a wound that I warped to fit the shape I'd created - that additional layer really helped give what I'd done better texture. I'm not sure I pushed it as far as I should but I know what I did was enough to give the impression that the adult hand represented Jesus. Here's the final SD slide: And a close up of the wound without the filters. Sleeve resolution looked fine in final slide but not so much in this close u...