Playing dress-up with the Mommas again

The photo montage of five of the Barefoot Mommas Club members wearing Roman Originals dresses last week led me to another brainstorm, setting up this week's "picture."  It's also a bridge between my made-up "reality TV family" and an actual one.

Last fall, Sadie Robertson, part of the Duck Dynasty cast, made headlines for her second-place showing (with Mark Ballas) on the 19th season of Dancing with the Stars.  Robertson, the daughter of Duck Commander CEO Willie Robertson and the former Korie Howard, has also been concerned about the suggestive look of many prom dresses.  In 2013, she struck a deal with professional designer Sherri Hill for a new line of dresses called "Live Original"; these are billed as "daddy approved."  They debuted at the famous fashion week in New York City.

For this montage, I started with this picture taken in downtown Long Beach, CA.  I copied it from the teacher file of Nabawia Oliveira, teacher at ABC Adult School and founder of the ABC Film Festival.  I retained the fountain in the foreground and had Brandy, Annie, Brenda, and Jennifer stand in front of it.  One of the Sherri Hill dresses (found in this file) was made into four different ones, using hue/saturation and curves layers just as I adapted the Roman Original dresses before.  After that I posed them in roughly the circular pattern suggested by the fountain.  To match the heads with their faces, I used curves layers on the arms of the dresses.

The backdrop was replaced by these elements via separate layers:

• On the left is the "Pink House," the home of M. Vinson Barefoot that I chronicled in this post two years ago. (I gave the character one name, then renamed it, so the page title is unfortunately inconsistent.)  The house was originally white and came from a Brady Poirier teacher file; I used hue/saturation and curves to change the color.
• On the right is a continuation of the sky from the Pink House layer, and grass from two different sources.  Above the grass is a farm house and grain mill, which also came from Poirier.  I lightened it up with brightness/contrast.

More Mommas stuff as old meets trendy

Remember the furor earlier this month over a dress because, it seemed, the entire world argued over what color it was?  Although I chose not to participate myself, I did ask where the dress came from.  Well, someone I know on a forum connected to the sports media coverage website the506 (registration required) gave me not only a picture of a dress similar to the one that caused the uproar, but also named the company that made it: Roman Originals.  The company reports that sales have quadrupled since the picture was first placed on Twitter (but of course).

Once I saw "the dress," I sought a way to have the Barefoot Mommas' Club model it.  Well, here it is, with Elma, Jennifer, Brandy, Brenda, and Annie in front of the "bridge too far" creek.  The photo is straightforward, except that I had to use the warp tool in transform to make sure Elma was facing sideways based on the pose of her face.

As for the colors, there are no questions on any of them.  I started with the blue dress my fellow the506 member gave me, then changed the colors of the other four using two adjustments.  For all four of the non-blue dresses, hue and saturation was the basis of the color change; for the yellow and bright red, curves adjustments were also used.

Here it is as the old school moms pay tribute to what's hot online.

Barefoot Mommas Club doubles in size!

Occasionally over the few years of this blog's existence, I have chronicled the Barefoot Mommas Club, a group of women that meet to make crafts, share stories, and have fun.  At first, I limited the group to the four

oldest females who live in the farm house - Brenda, Annie, Jennifer, and Brandy.  As a reminder, here they are quilting.








I then tripled the membership to 12 for a 1920s-themed party; I added Rozelle, Elma, Ila Ruth, Allene, Patsy, Janice, Betty Lou, and Myrtle, as seen here.




That was it for me - until I saw a book in both a local library and at Barnes & Noble called Miss Kay's Duck Commander Kitchen.  It's one of the many literary offerings by members of the Robertson family as seen on the A&E series Duck Dynasty.  On page 150 of that book is a "muffins for moms" group photo.  Among those in the photo is Kay Carroway Robertson a/k/a Miss Kay, wife of Phil, mother of Willie, Jase, and Jep, and sister-in-law of Si. (Here's how an invitation to such an event typically looks like.)

I ended up creating a "copy of a copy" by taking a photograph of that page at Barnes & Noble.  In addition, store lighting reflected off the picture; I tried all I could but every part of the store had that lighting.  All these led to a picture-quality problem that I have to apologize for - and also had to work around.   I did so with the clone stamp tool and a slight brightening of my copy.

Once that was done, I substituted the four original members, the eight from my first expansion, and 12 new "characters" from another expansion for the people in Miss Kay's group.  The new "mommas" are Michelle (someone I identified as "ldbaltimore," but could not determine her real name), Deborah (Anne Marie Dingleberry of Endicott, NY), Lela Pearl (Taylor Barefoot, Four Oaks, NC), Rowena (Jennifer Brister), Mary Lee (Rebecca Matter, CEO of American Writers and Artists Incorporated), Barbara (real estate agent Robinette McLeroy), Pam (Mindy McHorse, professional copywriter and publisher of, ironically, The Barefoot Writer), Rhonda (British recording artist Susan Boyle), Teresa (Diane Dubois, city council member here in Lakewood, CA), Parlia (Mrs. Sam Patton, wife of a Southern gospel artist), Alma (Brenda MacDonald), and Beth (Elizabeth Barefoot).

Here is the splendid result:

This is the largest group photo montage I've ever made, as well as the most challenging.  But as long as everyone in it is happy, I don't mind at all!