Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I put a little more energy into working on this project today. However, I was more confused than usual and had to watch Carole’s Day 2 video several times before I could figure out just how to get the result I wanted. This isn’t quite what I had planned originally but it came out OK enough for me to post it.
Thanks to all for the great ideas!
Thank you for your feedback, Cassel, which I just saw. I played around with the blend modes on the Day 1 project and turned it from Normal to Color (Legacy). This represents so much better the effect I was trying to produce. Now you can see the delicate love artifacts. Thanks so much, Cassel!
I’m really enjoying seeing everyone’s creativity! Thank you to all for the great pages and inspiration.
It’s amazing how much I’ve forgotten since I went through the Love Story challenge a year ago, but that’s what makes it useful to take up the challenge again. Today was much easier and more fun making my own mask. Here’s my Day 4.
That’s Cassel’s Date Stamp #6. Once again the font is Baroque Script, this time with gradient Deep Stills. Paper and frame are from Pixelscrapper’s bundle The Good Life November 2019. They are a great resource. Thanks for turning us onto them, Cassel!
Here is my Day 3. I love making these kaleidoscope tiles for flood-filling a background. I often use Cassel’s trick of duplicating the background and filling the underlying layer with white. That way I can adjust the viability of the kaleidoscope tiled background to get a faded, but colorful effect. Font is Baroque Script. Circular date stamp is one of Cassel’s scripts. Flowers are from Corel’s flower picture tubes.
Here’s my Day 2. I’m having a little problem with the template. When I use the eraser brush to try to erase some of the template artifacts, the brush is dark, not erasing. So I left it the way it was; it still doesn’t look as good as I’d like it to, though.
I’m off to a slow start on my second time at the Love Story Challenge. Here is my first page.
I spent quite some time trying to get the underlying greyish “pattern” that was part of the initial background paper to show. I turned that into a mask but I could not see any of the artifacts, either leaving it white or trying to negative image that layer. I have gone over the instruction video many times trying to suss out where I’ve gone wrong, but after trying this process 5+ times without seeing the results I gave up on it. Too bad as I really liked that pattern. Guess this will have to do for now.
Paper and elements are from PixelScrapper’s Love Birds bundle.
Annie, we here in California must have received all your rain. There has been so much of it lately, day after day, night after night, that it wiped out our drought conditions for the state; now we are on alert for mudslides. I hope the wet weather pattern shifts soon and that you too will be enjoying the soothing and nourishing rains at last. And I really like your Bokeh effect on the parrots “Love in Blue.”
Shutterpixi, you did a nice job on the Bokeh effect for “The Boys.” Both you and Annie got great results with dark backgrounds using Bokeh. I get nervous when considering a dark background for Bokeh, but you guys made it work well. I must keep this in mind the next time I have misgivings about using the dark with Bokeh effect, and just go for it and see what happens.
On my page for the paper, I used a heart stamp (Touch My Heart Lite) arranged in straight lines instead of a circular dot shape, then played around with the Pattern effect set at 4 columns, 3 rows, and 90% rotation angle. It made an interesting pattern like little bouquets of hearts. I spent a good deal of time working with the wire text effect but my phrase was just a bit too long, and when it was resized to fit on the page it wasn’t as readable as Cassel’s “Our love is forever” wire text, so eventually I ditched the phrase I was working on and went with Cassel’s wire text instead. I liked her idea of the gold frame so used that on my page too with an interior bevel effect and thin frame drop shadow. Thanks for taking a look!
My gratitude to Cassel for another fantastic challenge! Now I know how to use masks. Thanks also to everyone who participated — for me that is at least 50% of the benefit of these challenges; I come away from them with so much inspiration from everybody’s creativity.
Barbara, that is a great shot of your granddaughter jumping off the diving board, and a creative layout that puts the focus right on her. Very nice!
And I love Cassel’s photo for the Day 6 tutorial — what a beautiful bride and pleased groom!
I like the Bokeh effect and have a set of tubes from Corel for it in different colors but haven’t used them much. I wanted to try Cassel’s Bokeh tutorial for this page however. Once created, I had to further blur the merged Bokeh layers and place them above a light pink background layer at 50% opacity or else it was too busy-looking for the photo. I used the Touch My Heart Lite brushes I got for yesterday’s project, this time with no rotation, and added extra hearts in different sizes in salmon pink in addition to the hearts around the perimeter of the mask (which were stamped with 20% rotation). The font is Baroque Script from 1001 Free Fonts. Thanks for looking!
Sue, I love your photo of the fox with the snowflake layout, very nice.
I used the same photo as in Day 4 with four free heart brushes from Brusheezy, called Touch My Heart Lite. Using Cassel’s suggestion, I made the background paper with Kaleidoscope, this time seamlessly tiled it, reduced the size, added a Gaussian blur of 20, and made the pattern 75% opaque with a taupe-colored base paper layer. The white paper frame really made the photo pop! Font is still Gunter Hund, like yesterday. The quote is from a poem by Rumi which was made into a song called “Love Dog” by the group TV On The Radio. I’ve really been enjoying practicing mask making and feel so much more confident about the process. Thanks for the great tutorials, Cassel!
Annie, I didn’t know about Cassel’s script “Scribbles” — that’s a really great effect! I’ll have to put that script on my wish list — thanks!
This tutorial on making your own mask is so useful. When it came to making a frame, I blanked out on how to make a simple white frame so went to Cassel’s element creation page for frames and found instructions on how to make a rustic wooden one instead. Once I had finished my page and checked out everyone else’s creative efforts, I realized just how easy it would have been to make that simple white frame, and the page probably would have looked better with it too. Oh well, I couldn’t waste the wooden frame I worked so hard on so left it in the project anyway.
The background paper pattern is from Pixelscrapper’s Paper Templates #18 Dog Overlay. The paper tag is also from their Puppy Dog Mini Kit. The font is “Gunter Hund” (Good Dog), a free font from DaFont.com.
I’m really enjoying seeing everyone’s creations and have gotten some good ideas from them on how to improve my work. Thanks everyone!
When I saw Carole’s Day 3 page with Bob in jester costume, I was totally inspired! Our friend Phil wore a jester costume similar to his which I had gotten for him to attend the Renaissance Faire with our family. So many people like to play at being royalty, but it takes a very special man to wear a jester costume. I must have spent half the day looking for a photo of that but unfortunately to no avail.
What I did find was my friend dressed as a fairy for a Halloween party, so I went with that instead. I found two fairy quotes, the “pixie dust” one from Peter Pan, and the “joy to be loved” quote from The NeverEnding Story. Both fit my friend very well, and the second quote ties in with the Love Story theme.
I’ve had a lot of fun playing around in the past with the Kaleidoscope tutorial through the Diamond membership. This time I had to tone down the effect somewhat to put the focus on the photos, otherwise the page looked too busy. I found the wooden fairy in Pixelscrapper’s Enchanted elements kit. Thanks for looking!
This template made me think of a good friend of ours who is crazy in love with tea (must be the mug ring layer). I had fun with the plaid paper but it still looked a little bare so I also added gold heart scatter and elements from Pixelscrapper’s English Breakfast and Sisters Always Mini Kits.
Sue, I love your deer and robin page. I’ve always been intimidated by masks, and hope this challenge helps me get over that. I probably will have to follow the instructions a few more times before it becomes second nature for me like it is for you.
Dee, like you I at first resized my photo to fit inside the frame exactly but after studying Carole’s example page I eventually expanded it somewhat to take more advantage of the mask. I didn’t make my photo fill the mask full-size though, as I couldn’t get both people composed inside the frame the way I wanted to.
I love the different linoleum effects so much at each stage that it’s hard to decide when to stop and choose a specific pattern. It’s one of my favorite tutorials. And to think you discovered this all by accident — how cool is that?!
For these last two I made papers using Carole’s Plaid Paper #1 and Gingham Pattern tutorials. I really enjoy her tutorials!
I had so much fun with Carole’s Linoleum Pattern tutorial I didn’t want to stop playing with it! Here are two pages using it twice apiece. The colors were picked from the fillings.
I have layouts of some of my baking. This page with homemade Danish uses Cass’ Custom Kit Ribbons Script and her
Donut Script.Z = Zabaione or zabaglione (Italian custard-like dessert or sometimes a beverage, made with egg yolks, sugar, and a sweet wine)
Here’s November and December. I went a little overboard with the colors on these last two calendar pages.
Here’s May and July.
I have long loved the photo on the May page but this is the first time I have been able to use it, all due to a trick Carole showed in another lesson for isolating the main figure and adding depth of field to the photo via Gaussian Blur on the background. I was so pleased that it worked — thank you for the idea, Carole!
All the decorative elements on my calendar pages are from various contributors at Pixelscrapper, a superb resource suggested by Carole.
Here’s January and February:
Here is the 2019 calendar of our dog Hawkeye. He is a great favorite of the neighborhood, and has numerous dog buddies who come by to visit him during the day. This calendar will make a nice gift for his many friends, both canine and human. Thank you, Carole, for this fun challenge, and thanks to DeLoris as well for the calendar preview template!
The font used is Hair of the Dog (appropriate, n’est pas?).
I recently got around to checking out this module and had a lot of fun with the cut-out word, which I used in the below layout. Also used were Cass’ Photobooth script and Pixelscrapper’s The Good Life – October (Frenchy) paper and elements.
