Vintage Collage: Pregnancy

And now, for something entirely different...

Seems I've got pregnancy brain. Babies and being pregnant are all I can think about, whether I like it or not. Some say this is caused by pregnancy hormones, and the weighty transition from woman to mother. It's a natural part of being pregnant, and to think about your baby first and foremost tends to put other things on the back burner. Everyday things, like, you know, functioning .

So it would make complete and total sense to be working on a collage using vintage textures, and a pregnancy theme comes to mind. I mean, why not!?

This started out as a vintage-inspired texture collage. I wanted to put some of the beautiful vintage wallpaper textures, floral wallpaper textures, and vintage grunge textures out there to a different use.

So I started out making a background for my desktop, where I would have a collage of a garden, using several textures I'd found. My inspiration for the collage part was from Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." He used beautiful textures to make a wonderful story that much more memorable for me as a child.

So here I am, minding my own business, when I come across a beautiful picture of a vintage frame. I think "OH! I could put a picture in there, and frame out the view of my garden beautifully!!" So I cut the frame out, and continued on my way until I started thinking about putting a picture of my belly in the frame. I was just a little too lazy to do that, so I got someone else's pregnant belly to go in the frame . I kept think how I could update this picture to have a little baby face there when my baby gets here...

And before I knew it, this is what emerged. I'm rather proud of being able to figure out how to get the colors to blend. That's always been an issue for me. I am pleased.

There are a LOT of textures and photos that do NOT belong to me. And in my lovely state of scatter-brained-ness (yes it is a word, I just made it up), I didn't really think to get URLs or names or anything. If you see something that belongs to you, holler at me, and I'll put credit up!

If not, just enjoy. Down-loadable for 1024 x 768 background, which looks magnificent, btw!

Time: Hour and a half, from first texture download to submission.
See Also: I posted a step-by-step buildup for friends on Facebook, so they could see how I did it. I figured I'd make it public and show anyone, if they care to see.
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