Once again, I’m going to link up with Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday — what a fun link party that was! I didn’t get a chance to comment on nearly as many pictures as I wanted to but all the ones I did see were just lovely! Sweet Kim’s textures are just beautiful. Which almost makes me feel bad about what I did to her “Love” texture this week.

My 7 year old is going through his skateboard phase. My two older boys did it as well — right around the same age. The old skateboards were starting to rot from being left out in all types of weather and so my husband took him to the sports store and let him pick out a new one. He came back with a bright turquoise Tony Hawk model that had him beaming from ear to ear.

So here’s what I did.

Tip #1: First I did a quick and easy bleach-bypass look to try and up the “urban” in this very “suburban” shot. Easy to do this one: simply duplicate your layer and set the blend mode to overlay. Next add a hue/saturation adjustment layer and pull the saturation down to somewhere between 45-60. Finally, add a levels adjustment layer, bring in your black and white points in a few notches toward the center, and lower your mid-point arrow toward the black. You can also do a couple of curve adjustments to add cooler tones. I did this knowing that Kim’s texture would warm things up a bit.

Tip #2: PSHero. If you don’t read it, you should. Great photoshop stuff there. That’s where I got the frame — and the somewhat convoluted, but in the end, really cool technique — that created the film transfer look.

So, as grungy as a sweet 7 year old little boy learning to skateboard can be.