Success!

oh. my. goodness.  after many hours of wrestling with photoshop, i finally completed my butterfly assignment.  granted, my final class was last night and my professor gave me credit for the assignment because i put in a lot of effort to unsuccessfully complete it.  i really appreciated that, but i couldn't go down defeated... i gave it another try today and.... SUCCESS!!!!  hallelujah!!!  here is my beautiful photoshopped butterfly:

so you can fully appreciate the after, i have to show you what i started with:

and this is an example of one of about 30+ failed attempts to complete this assignment:

seriously... i'm SO happy! now i can rest easy knowing that photoshop did not defeat me. :o)

i can't take all the credit though... my class used this AWESOME book: adobe photoshop cs4 one-on-one by deke mcclelland.  great book.  excellent tutorials. i highly recommend it.  we weren't able to go through every chapter, so i'm going to work my way through it again over the summer.  photoshop seriously blows my mind and i want to learn as much as i can.

all that being said... classes are over and summer is officially here!!! wooohooooo!!!!  i can't wait to jump into some refinishing/decorating projects!!!