digital collage 'capable appearance'

I'm slowly getting the hang of Adobe Elements 11, which is the latest release of the non-professional version of Photoshop. So many cool functions, but like most complex programs, I use about 20% of it. One of my 2013 goals is to learn a whole lot more than that 20%.

However, in this collage, I only put the 20% I know to use since I worked on it in bits and pieces during a day at work. It was a really stressful day with (BIG) water leaks, flooded offices, too many customers at once (why can't they show up evenly spaced during the day instead of all at the same time??), lots of my work, lots of phone answering cause the normal phone answerer was out sick.

So... to keep my sanity, I opened PSE11 and began to tinker. By the end of the day, I had this.

I kept the colors somewhat muted and monochromatic on purpose, going for a vintagey, grungy look.

The words are one of the prompts for week 3 of the Art Journal Caravan 2013.

They have nothing at all to do with the background...

If you're at all into digital, AJC 13 is a blast. Tons of prompts, tutorial vids, other people's work to study. This year's theme is a trip around the world. Our first port of call with the United Kingdom.