Rookie Year [award idea]

Today ends my rookie season as team soccer mom [oh, and Elizabeth’s as a soccer team rookie!] with a pizza party and awards for the girls. It was the coach’s idea to give them a photo (Framed), and this is what I came up with:

In Photoshop Elements I edited each photo. I sized it to 4×6 and “reverse black & white” tooled the photo which means I selected the girl + soccer ball, then de-saturated the color on the rest of the photo to about 30-40%. This made the girl pop – and really become the star!

Then I opened a new 5×7 document and drew a bunch of scratchy lines all over the file background (with brushes). Then I added the photo (4×6), added a ‘scratched edges’ .png that would add grunge around the layers, and added a drop shadow to help that picture “pop” from it’s mat. Finally I used a Varsity font to write out the girl’s name. To add pop to that – I just used my paint bucket tool to add green to the previously transparent thin outline around the letters.

Re-creating for each girl was easy – just the photo + text had to be redone. The other layers I left exactly as-is in that 5×7 document. The hardest part? Searching through photos from 10 games to find a good action shot of each girl – facing me. That took a LONG time.

I had visions of adding their number, maybe decking out that plain black frame more… but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I like it simple. and really – sometimes simple IS best. My work here is done, and it was fun to use my digital scrapbook skills for good in my motherly duties.

I’m retiring my soccer mom chair and being totally ok with my Wednesdays and Saturdays being freed up. For now…