How about something a little different? Two members of my gaming group share the same birthday and I had no inspiration that day. I played around with a “twirl” technique a friend shared (Anne MacGregor, are you in the Campus?). I applied a radial blur adjustment to the original and duplicated the layer. Then I applied a distortion twirl effect on each layer, using corresponding positive and negative degree settings. Changed the blend mode on the top layer to lighten. I duplicated the top layer several times, flipping each one in different directions. When I was finally happy, I merged the layers and brightened it up a bit with Brightness and Contrast. I used that as a base, duplicating the image three times. Then I ran three of Carole’s scripts on them: Accordion, Bow 9, and Punched Confetti. I added all the different elements on top of the base and ended up with this. (Before I ran the Accordion script, I added my text and merged it down.) As you can see from the drop shadows, I’m looking forward to Carole’s next master class on shadows!
