I was reading Phizhy's diary today, and came across this entry. (Yeah. I read your diary, too. At least, I have been for two days now. I haven't mentioned it until now because those entries you wrote, about how you hate it when people leave notes saying how great your diary is, intimidated me. Silly!)

Anyway, it made me wonder why I chose this layout. Here's the original layout. I've renovated it a few times, as you can see. There's not much of a story behind the original layout, but there is one with the current Marilyn Monroe version.

As most of you know (Or did you all know? Let me know...if you knew or not. I'm curious.), I adore Marilyn Monroe. In some of her pictures, you can really tell how she's feeling just by looking at her eyes and mouth. That's what I look for in her photos. Yesterday, at Borders, I saw a shot of the dress blowing scene from The Seven Year Itch that I'd never seen before. It was the street version, not the studio version. I've heard a lot about how much she radiated towards the crowds that night, and this picture really showed it. She looked euphoric. I wish I could show it to you all, but I've never seen that particular picture online.

Moving on: It wasn't too long before Valentine's Day when someone [Becky?] mentioned that it was about time I altered my layout. So, late as usual, I took that silly original picture, revved up Paint Shop Pro (PSP) and started changing it. Of course, trying to pair up a picture of a pierced butch with a bunch of pink hearts is tough. So, I gave up on the layout. Decided it was my diary and I didn't have to change the layout if I didn't want to [or couldn't].

While I had PSP open, though, I decided to mess around with some Marilyn pictures that I had found recently. I came across the current one. I loved it the moment I saw it because of the genuinely happy look on her face. When I found it though, it was in terrible condition. It had a sandy texture to it. You can still see traces of it in her hair. I fixed it up as best I could, and added the hearts and text.

Soon I'll redo the text and hearts at the top left hand corner of the image. They don't look too great (or good at all) since I had to compress the image so Diaryland would upload it. The edges of her hair on the left side will be softened, since they don't blend in well at all. I'll blur some of the graininess in the photo, too. I'll also try to find this picture in its original state, and the shot from The Seven Year Itch that I told you about earlier.