1) I am trying to express a magical feeling. When ever we read anything we absorbed into a new world, forgetting what’s around us. I chose to create that feeling I always have of being transported into a new world when ever i read. 
I did this by desaturating the background and gave it a gaussian blur giving it a gloomy atmosphere. Then I created the magic book and leaving it in colour. Then I took added the picture of my hand and desaturated it and gave it a gaussian but I left a part of my hand in colour. This gave the apperance that the book is putting colour into the picture it self. Lastly I added the flowing magic, which are actually a set of brushes I downloaded from the internet. I finshed by adding a few filters to the magic and adjusting colour levels (image->adjustments->levels).
2) I used the follwing filters:
Gaussian blur: background, forearm
Sharpen: the book
Noise: the magic
3)I used a hard light on the book pages
4) The special brushes I used is the “magic”Each is a seperate brush I downloaded from the internet.
