I Heart Faces Fix it Friday

This week, I was determined to streamline my blog stalking and emails, rss, etc.  But now I have something akin to the flu.  All bets are off.  I can't sleep, so why not catch up?
Here is my edit for today's Fix it Friday Challenge.  I loooove the one they used at the top of the blog post.

I started with a lightening action.  I ran the perfect portrait, and tweaked that a bit here and there.  I noticed a lot of noise on the right side where I had lightened her face, and in the background.  I ran the no noise action, but it was still pretty noisy.  For the background I tried making what I like to call the Fuzzy Sandwich.  I am sure there are other ways to accomplish it, but here is the Fuzzy Sandwich method:  (PSE8)

I make 2 more copies of the layer.  The middle layer gets the blur filter.  I usually use guassian blur at about 50 pixels.  I had to select the background on this one to keep the red hat from getting blurred into my background.  Now I go to the top layer, and use a soft medium opacity eraser to erase the parts that I want blurred.  (Background, baby skin, etc.)  Flatten it. And Ta-Da!! 
I am pretty sure that if you have a photoshop or the new elements, you can use a mask for this instead, but for what it's worth, I like the sandwich.

I tried another edit by doing an antiquing on the previous image.  I may like it better. 
I will have to check out the tutorials on the website, and see what worked for them :)

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Check out more edits here: