The Genesis of a Project

Yesterday's Photo a Day Challenge prompt was Lips.

 

 I snapped this shot of a couple of my Vintage Barbies, with my iPhone. I e-mailed it to myself, opened it on the large screen, and immediately knew that I had the pic I wanted to share... except...

I decided that it would be even more striking if I played with it a bit. I uploaded the pic to Be Funky (a free online program that lets you do lots of cool things with your photos. Another one is: PicMonkey. I love them both). I turned the shot into black and white, and then used the *painter* function to add color back to the lips, eyes, and sunglasses lenses. I didn't *color* them, I just sort of erased the black and white overlay on those portions- the colors showing are the originals, not ones I chose.

This shot is the one I uploaded for my Photo a Day Challenge (I used PicMonkey to put an old-style photograph frame around it).

But I kept thinking about this photo. It occurred to me that it might make a very cool needlepoint project at exactly the time that I was casting about for a new needlepoint project. So I went back to the original color image and I turned it into a cartoon (with BeFunky) (it's addictive, lemee tellya).

The Cartoonizer flattens out the shading, turning each color tone into a separate area. I liked this image for itself, but it was a little too stark for a needlepoint. So I went back to the original, and turned it into a watercolor painting.

Ah- much better. It's still a far simpler image than the original, and yet the shading is less starkly delineated. I saved it.

And then I flipped it and printed it on a light tee shirt transfer sheet.

And then I ironed it onto 18ct mono needlepoint canvas and stapled it to the frame.

It's gonna be an adventure.