It's the Fourth of July Eve (which is really just my fancy way of saying July 3rd), and that means that sometime tomorrow morning I'll be busy checking my photo gear, making sure the camera battery is charged, and getting ready to photograph fireworks in the evening.
Again. :)
Yup, for the third year in a row I get to photograph two fireworks displays! You see, my hometown always does their display on the Saturday before Independence Day, while Huntsville does them right smack on the 4th. I like taking pictures of stuff blowing up, so it totally works for me.
The photos on this layout, posted on the Bella Blvd. blog today, are from last year's fireworks display in my hometown. This week the Bella blog is running with a patriotic theme, and all the designers were challenged to come up with a red, white, and blue color scheme for their pages. It was fun to dig through the older collections and mix and match to make my own perfect patriotic line. Another part of my challenge for this assignment was to use a 5x7 photo and two smaller ones, but due to some scheduling issues with the Bella blog, that challenge actually ended up not being posted. I'd already completed and turned in my layout, though, which is why I've got a much larger photo than normal on there. It makes the page look a bit Lisa Truesdell, no? She's always so awesome with her photo sizing and placement.
My favorite part of this page is probably the chevron treatment on the title. I thought that the red alphas added a bit too much red to the overall layout, so I decided to dress them up a bit.
I started by laying the letters out on my Ranger Craft Sheet- they punched out of their cardstock sheet with the backing still attached, so I didn't have to worry about them sticking to anything.
Once the title was lined up, I stamped it with a chevron border stamp inked with Versamark...
...and then heat embossed with some blue American Crafts embossing powder. You can see where the Os are slightly warped and didn't get inked all the way to edges as a result- I kind of like the effect, actually.
I have to be perfectly honest- part of me wanted to pull out some Studio Calico wood veneer stars and a few other pretties to add to this page, but since it was for Bella I kept it to Bella supplies only (except, umm, for that Lawn Fawn stamp and Studio Calico misting mask I managed to sneak in...). The page is still laying out in my scrap room, though, so I might just add a few things before sticking it in an album.
If you're wanting to shoot (no pun intended) your own fireworks photographs tomorrow, this article at Digital Photography School is full of excellent information to get you started. If you're comfortable with your DSLR and interested in my own personal setup, it's ISO 200, camera in manual mode, f/14, shutter speed on Bulb, camera on tripod with remote release. Works every year.
Supplies (click on images for product links):