.lilu103

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All the stories have been told, Grimm tales and bold, with their seemingly happy endings, sometimes kind of cold~ but Ever After still lives on in a forest far, far away... ... ... ... How many fairy tale characters can you find? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...... ... I have been putting this image together since before the tree contest images were due because originally that's where it was going to go. But I had the idea too late to finish in time so when I saw that "Fairy Tales" was likely to be the next contest, my image took on a bit different personality and eventually escalated into well over 60 layers in which 43 layers made it in the end (not all of them the characters) I very much appreciate the loan of so many great images! This little project just seemed to keep escalating with the hours I spent scouring your galleries, (as will this commentary because of it, lol! Sorry it's so long!!) It's a grimm tale but it's true that all the animals were harmed in the making of this picture, so know that the originals were of much, much better quality :) In the attempt to make them appear that they belong here each one has been cut, shrunken, clone stamped, mirrored, desaturated, blurred, lightened, darkened, burned, dodged,smudged and/or whatever it took to make them blend before being resaturated and final touches added until I was nearly satisfied with the results. I did my best but it was very challenging for me to get all the blending the lighting issues corrected in every character but still letting them stand out in that somewhat surreal essence of fairy tales. I will let you decide which characters belong in which fairy tales because they sometimes doubled in different roles ;) Let's see if you can find them all! Most are obvious but some are a little more difficult to find like Gizmo1's big scary spider (tarantula). Because I wanted to use several different birds in honor of popular princess tales egggray has the most images including the Blue Jay, 2 blue birds, a red Cardinal, flying sparrow,and another bird in flight along with the runaway deer. Although the owl is EJ's (100k_xle) and the hungry little yellow bird is mine. ~oh, the cricket is EJ's too! The wolf was from Nigel Moore and gerryp shot the peaceful deer. The cute little hungry squirrel belongs to J-E-F and the excited tree squirrel is from rahto. The chipmunk is from jb2174 and samarn provided the mushrooms and handsome fox. Papa Bear came from wikipedia and was a free image donated for anyone's public use. Momma Bear and Baby Bear were taken by Igor Shpilenok (yes that's spelled right!) cynlee's frog now proudly wears a stock image crown but the 2 oversized toads are mine. The apples were a free stock image multiplied and distorted.The basket generally sits in my kitchen filled with my own goodies. The butterflies and flowers are mine as well. The disgruntled Gingerbread Man is from Zelda-lily recipes and the white rabbit is by Francesca at Female Imagination. The raven was a taxidermy piece by Dunamis. Oh and the fairy is my friend Angie's daughter Tonna that I made from her prom photos which Angie took. I THINK I covered everyone! (Please send me a personal message if you notice anyone I may have missed and I will correct it!) Again~ A BIG SINCERE THANKS to all of you for the participation of your amazingly captured animals and bugs! Whoever views this should check out their wonderful galleries and leave them some comments! They are very talented photographers! There were so many images I came across while scouring the site and would love to have included but ran out of room (and patience with Photoshop) lol! It was very fun to do none-the-less :))) Thank-you very much for any comments! edit: (except Owd Bob's! :P ;) lol!