Heart Shaped Box as of February 7, 2010

Heart Shaped Box as of February 7, 2010
Originally uploaded by randubnick

Today I finally got back to this heart-shaped box that I am covering with collage and decoupage designs created from printed metallic ribbons. This afternoon, I filled in the last of the gaps on the underside of the box. This has a brown center and a floral border, and because the center is relatively plain, I think it might make a useful image for February 14. In any case, there is more to be done on the inside of the box, but at least the outer surfaces are now done. I took some photos when I finished today, around 3 PM, and I loved the light in this shot, with the afternoon sun coming through the blinds. But I later realized that I had cut off the very tip of the box when I took the picture. I thought about using a different photo, but kept coming back to this one. So I decided to try to salvage the situation. I opened the image in Painter, copied it, and then added pixels to the bottom, creating a "blank space". Then I used cut and paste as well as digital airbrush to recreate the tip of the box and the small strip of table-top that I needed to make the image whole again. Then I cropped the image, and it was ready to upload. But once I got it into Flickr, I decided the shadows needed to be lighter, so I used Flickr's on-line editor (Picnic) to lighten the shadows. And here it is! That's a lot of trouble I suppose, but to me, it was worth it to capture the light and shadow playing on the heart-shaped box.