Altered Image

This is going to be a bit of a moaning post !
A few months ago a new scrapbooking magazine was introduced to the UK called Scrap 365, great I thought,a new mag for the UK, something that we're sadly lacking in this country as far as scrapbooking magazines are concerned. There is only one other which is The Scrapbooking Magazine. Don't get me wrong I actually like TSM but it's always nice to have a choice other than buying US/Australian mags and I'm a bit of a sucker for mags !!
I wouldn't say I'm overboard with enthusiasm for the 365 mag though, far to much messy painting for me personally but I was prepared to give it a few months to settle down so I'm still buying it at the moment.
Now here's my moan ! In the March issue there's an article by one of their design team members Emma Stafrace for STEP by STEP instructions for altering a photo. This caught my eye as soon as I saw it. I enjoy playing about with my photos in Photoshop Elements and I do have a fairly decent knowledge of how the basics work.The LO is a digi one but it also suggests that altering the photo would enable you to use just the photo on a traditional " paper" layout.
Off I go and find a photo to alter. Step by Step say the instructions, for someone with basic knowledge of Photoshop Elements.I spent a few very frustating hours trying to follow the instructions given and in the end just gave up as I couldn't get it to work.
A couple of days ago someone posted a question on UKS asking if anyone had managed to follow these instructions as she hadn't been able to make head or tail of them either. That made me feel so much better and confirmed that I wasn't such a numpty after all :)
With the help of Maryanne and a couple of other members contributing to the step by step instructions in a much more clear uncomplicted way, I finally managed to get some resemblence of what the finished image should look like.
I admit it isn't perfect but with their help at least I do now know how to go about it if I ever wanted to do another.
My biggest moan is addressed to the comment written in the instructions that the designer assumes readers have some basic knowledge of Photoshop Elements. I find that very patronising to say the least, especially that the step by step instructions are a far cry from being step by step and even a digi scrapbooker on that thread in UKS found it difficult to follow so what hope did someone with basic knowledge have !!! If they're going to title an article as being step by step then that is what it should be in my opinion.
Anyhow, moan over and this is the photo that I finally managed to get altered. Not the best photo for the job I admit but having printed it out and cut the excess round it I wasn't going to waste the print so I decided to make a " paper" layout with it yesterday. I have taken most of the design of the page from the digi LO that was featured by the designer Emma Stafrace with just a couple of small alterations.
The photo is of Jack & Charlie at Centre Parks last summer. They had a fab time riding these for a whole afternoon.

Hope you have a nice week-end. I'm off Dance watching tomorrow at Luton!