November Personal Photo Challenge: Layering Texture

It's time again for Donna's Personal Photo Challenge. I missed it the last two months so decided I should make the effort this month to get on it! This month's topic is Layering Textures. This is definitely a challenge for me as I have never done this! Nope. I don't play much with my photos - pretty much what you see is what came out of the camera, except for perhaps just a little lightening or darkening and the occasional slight sharpening. I don't own Photo Shop or any other editing programs. I use Picmonkey, a free online service. So this is all new to me, but I decided to give it a shot. Why not? It's fun to play! And play I did. Any suggestions or constructive criticism is welcomed!
First of all, to choose photos to work with... How does one choose just one or two when you have thousands???  With Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the US) just 2 days away, my thoughts turned to poppies so I found a simple photo of a single blossom, taken in July in Deb's garden.

  This is the original - poppy against blue sky. Pretty simple. Not a stunning photo.

First I looked at the exposure and decreased the brightness just a bit to darken the background slightly. Then I added a Picmonkey Paint background. I increased the saturation somewhat, then faded it slightly. Then I added a Bokeh effect and softened it a little on the blossom itself. And here's what I ended up with...

I liked it at this point, but it still was a little light for my liking so I went back to "Exposure" and decreased the brightness then brought up the contrast, shadows and highlights just a smidgen. 

 I like it better now. What do you think?

That really was fun (thanks Donna!) I guess it's good to give yourself "permission" to just play and see what happens. So I thought... why not do another? So for my second attempt I chose a simple sunset shot taken this summer at a friend's cottage at Maquapit Lake. Below is the original.

Again, nothing fabulous. It's not even in sharp focus. So I went to work. (I think I could really get into this.. it's fun. Donna, have you created a monster?) First I sharpened a bit. Then on to Exposure. I decreased the brightness and increased the shadows and contrast somewhat. Then I added Picmonkey's Water texture. Wow. All of a sudden, I had a more interesting sky- where did those "clouds" come from? Even though it's a "water effect" I think it worked in the sky as well - don't you think it looks very natural? The texture added more color to the water too, and perhaps at sunset you would not see as much blue and green there, but I don't think it's unrealistic, do you? In this case, I don't think the average viewer would even know I have added any "effects".. I've just used the texture to enhance the photo...

Be sure and drop by Donna's Personal Photo Challenge here and see what others have done this month. Thanks again Donna. I think I'll be playing with Textures more often!!

Peace,
Linda

"Texture is the most enduring and ubiquitous underpinning of form... certainly a calming, meditative and appealing world for both the eye and mind. " ~ Lynda Lehmann