What are you working on (in April 2023)?

[Cassel]

It is a new month and new projects.

Show off what you are working on in April, be it a scrapbook page, a collage, a tutorial, or anything else you want.

We are curious and want to see, learn, and get inspired.

These threads are quickly becoming a fantastic source of inspiration, support, and friendship. Keep them coming!

Remember to size down your image to about 600x600 pixels and save it in .jpg format before posting it.

Here are a few guidelines for everyone:

• when you post a project, give as much information on your sources or techniques used. It will help others who are curious and would like to do the same.
• if someone uses something that you like on their page, ask where they got it. Sometimes, you can go get it too and it will be better quality than trying to extract it (as it would have been resized to post in the forum anyways).
• if it is something that they did from scratch, ask how they did it. It would be so helpful to everyone!
• if you like a photo and would like to “play with it”, ALWAYS ask permission. Sometimes, there are some limitations and the person is not allowed to let others use it. Don’t get them in trouble. Usually, people are happy to say yes (if they can) when you ask politely. And if you get permission, you might get a better-quality image than the resized image anyways.

[Ann Seeber]

Happy April! Here's my monthly Wild Cat Calendar featuring an unusual cat from Central Asia. I posted the full JPG in the FILES section of our Facebook group. It will print out at 11" x 8.5" landscape. I used Hard Light on the map of central Asia under the calendar format and was pleased with the result. These Pallas cats are about the same size as a domestic house cat but with short legs and long hair. I love their comical expression. 

[Ann Seeber]

Grandchildren Ilana & Maverick sent some photos of their son, Logan, meeting the Easter Bunny this weekend. I was poking around in Lab 13-4 so I used the template. I got some Easter/Spring freebies from Digitalscrapbooking, including the background paper where I applied the Difference blend mode.  The title font is Showcard Gothic. The strip behind it came from a marisaL Easter journal card that I cut apart and stretched across. 

[MoniqueN.]

This project was originally meant for the song challenge, but it isn't a song?

But what a struggle it was!

I always "save as" when I'm working on a project and add a number to every version. This time it was 28 versions!? (Normally about 10/12)

Font ChaseCallas and Beauty night butterfly with a bevel. The instruments are picture tubes on a seperate layer and later on merged. The musical notes on the Staves(?) are from Janet Kemp (Pixelscrapper) Trees and background also from Pixelscrapper I think. Costume I had on my computer.

Edited April 3, 2023 by MoniqueN.
Added second font I used

[Anne Lamp]

Springtime in the MidWest USA.  From a beautiful clear spring day to hail in two days.   Photos are mine, background is a modified gradient, font is Lucida Calligraphy. Frame was modified from on of Cass's freebies.

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Here in Virginia we say, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. It will change."

You can't fool with Mother Nature. She doesn't like it.

[Rene Marker]

13 hours ago, Bonnie Ballentine said:

Here in Virginia we say, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. It will change."

You can't fool with Mother Nature. She doesn't like it.

For some reason Mother Nature has decided that west central Ohio is a nice target this year. After an EF-1 tornado hitting my town, 2 other EF-0 in my county and 3 EF-0 in the county north of us (other areas still be investigated), we are under another tornado watch today. Going to be a long day...

[Ann Seeber]

27 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

For some reason Mother Nature has decided that west central Ohio is a nice target this year. After an EF-1 tornado hitting my town, 2 other EF-0 in my county and 3 EF-0 in the county north of us (other areas still be investigated), we are under another tornado watch today. Going to be a long day...

Rene: Stay safe! ?

[Anne Lamp]

2 hours ago, Rene Marker said:

For some reason Mother Nature has decided that west central Ohio is a nice target this year. After an EF-1 tornado hitting my town, 2 other EF-0 in my county and 3 EF-0 in the county north of us (other areas still be investigated), we are under another tornado watch today. Going to be a long day...

I am in Illinois just east of St Louis Mo.  We have been lucky to not have any tornadoes (so far), just some really strong winds and a few thunderstorms and so far only that one episode of not to large hail. It did put a few pings on my car because I don't have a garage.

[Anne Lamp]

15 hours ago, Bonnie Ballentine said:

Here in Virginia we say, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute. It will change."

You can't fool with Mother Nature. She doesn't like it.

They say the same thing in St Louis Mo.  I am about 20 miles east of St L.

[Rene Marker]

1 hour ago, Anne Lamp said:

I am in Illinois just east of St Louis Mo.  We have been lucky to not have any tornadoes (so far), just some really strong winds and a few thunderstorms and so far only that one episode of not to large hail. It did put a few pings on my car because I don't have a garage.

The tornado that hit us was actually from the front that came through your area earlier that evening.

Raining now with some gusts of wind. Severe thunderstorm warning includes the county just to the west of me, I'm sure it will be here soon. There were 2 tornado warnings in counties west of me in Indiana, possible touchdown in one of them. But looking at the line of storms I'm thinking we won't see the worst of it for another hour or so.

[Michele]

The main pic is from CF. The next layer is from PS (DS) by Gina Jones. I picked up one of the colors from the pic for a background and used one of Cassel's edge punches to decorate. To anyone celebrating, have a sweet Passover.

 

[Susan Ewart]

12 hours ago, Rene Marker said:

The tornado that hit us was actually from the front that came through your area earlier that evening.

Raining now with some gusts of wind. Severe thunderstorm warning includes the county just to the west of me, I'm sure it will be here soon. There were 2 tornado warnings in counties west of me in Indiana, possible touchdown in one of them. But looking at the line of storms I'm thinking we won't see the worst of it for another hour or so.

Just home from work and wondering how you faired through the storm (it's after midnight Mountain time for me).  I hope the worst wasnt as bad as expected.  

[Rene Marker]

7 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Just home from work and wondering how you faired through the storm (it's after midnight Mountain time for me).  I hope the worst wasnt as bad as expected.  

Thankfully, it was just rain off and on all day with some wind. I didn't hear of any tornadoes in Ohio from this storm but it had produced tornadoes west of us the day before. A friend an hour south of me did have thunder and lightning and heavy rains in her area. She has an 80+ pound dog that hates the storms. He was on her lap.

[Susan Ewart]

27 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

Thankfully, it was just rain off and on all day with some wind. I didn't hear of any tornadoes in Ohio from this storm but it had produced tornadoes west of us the day before. A friend an hour south of me did have thunder and lightning and heavy rains in her area. She has an 80+ pound dog that hates the storms. He was on her lap.

that's good to hear.  That must've been a sight, an 80+ lb lap dog.  Poor thing.  I have one cat that watches the lightning/with thunder booming out the window.  the other cat is no where to be seen.  

[Donna Sillia]

Carole, I have been working on making shimmer papers. So far, they can only be made using Photoshop. Although, I am experimenting with PSP, I can't seem to duplicate them. Is there anyway to make this type of background using PSP? I am not sure how the 600 jpeg is going to look.

[Cassel]

30 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

Carole, I have been working on making shimmer papers. So far, they can only be made using Photoshop. Although, I am experimenting with PSP, I can't seem to duplicate them. Is there anyway to make this type of background using PSP? I am not sure how the 600 jpeg is going to look.

How is it done in Photoshop? What I see is that instead of dark "grunge", it might be using "light" random brush imprints. It also seems to have a texture. Not sure if it is part of it or not. Do you have a tutorial for Photoshop I can look at and see what, in PSP, can be used?

[Donna Sillia]

23 minutes ago, Cassel said:

How is it done in Photoshop? What I see is that instead of dark "grunge", it might be using "light" random brush imprints. It also seems to have a texture. Not sure if it is part of it or not. Do you have a tutorial for Photoshop I can look at and see what, in PSP, can be used?

Here is the tutorial. It is rather simple in Photoshop. You can also download the textures, but I didn't like the downloaded textures.

 

[Cassel]

So basically, the tutorial is "use this texture and sharpen it a bit". I'll dig deeper to see how to CREATE that texture in the first place.

 

[Donna Sillia]

26 minutes ago, Cassel said:

So basically, the tutorial is "use this texture and sharpen it a bit". I'll dig deeper to see how to CREATE that texture in the first place.

 

Thank you, Carole. It's a texture using the Photoshop render clouds using the background and foreground colors. Then the glass filter with a canvas texture is applied and then the sharpen or sharpen more. My problem is that I can't find a Filter Forge setting that will render the clouds in that format. Also, the glass filters that I have in Filter Forge don't give the same effect. PSP has a canvas filter, but I don't know how to make it the same as PS. Maybe you can make a script!

[Cassel]

6 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

PSP has a canvas filter,

Actually, PSP has a canvas TEXTURE, not a filter. And as for the CLOUDS, I used to use Mura"s Meister but it does not work in recent versions of PSP. I have been asking Corel/Alludo to add a similar option but no luck so far. Yes, I would love to make a script to add that functionality. On my to-do list!

[Ann Seeber]

14 minutes ago, Cassel said:

I have been asking Corel/Alludo

I wondered about the name "Alludo" and when I looked it up it says it was "formerly called the Corel Corporation." I didn't know about the change. The reference says: "Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo, is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation, the company is known for producing software titles such as CorelDRAW, and for acquiring AfterShot Pro, PaintShop Pro, Painter, Video Studio and WordPerfect." Cassel, when did this change?

[Cassel]

19 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

Cassel, when did this change?

We got the notification in September. I brought it up in the Campus newsletter too.

Corel had acquired several programs over the years that were not graphic programs (WinZip, WordPerfect, MindManager, Parallel) and it kind of didn't seem to match the Corel/graphic association I guess. Now, it seems like the name Corel is staying associated with the graphic programs (CorelDraw, PSP, VideoStudio, Painter, etc.) but the others won't have Corel associated directly. So Alludo is kind of the "parent company" as they stated.

[Rene Marker]

21 minutes ago, Cassel said:

We got the notification in September. I brought it up in the Campus newsletter too.

Corel had acquired several programs over the years that were not graphic programs (WinZip, WordPerfect, MindManager, Parallel) and it kind of didn't seem to match the Corel/graphic association I guess. Now, it seems like the name Corel is staying associated with the graphic programs (CorelDraw, PSP, VideoStudio, Painter, etc.) but the others won't have Corel associated directly. So Alludo is kind of the "parent company" as they stated.

If you go to Corel.com, Word Perfect is still listed as a product. WordPerfect has been owned by Corel since 1996 having bought it from Novell. However, WP has not been updated in 2 years. I had X7 and purchased 2021 just a month ago since it had some features I could use for a project I'm working on. I've been using WP since version 5.1 for DOS in the early 90's. Hate Word!

Interesting bit of information... Corel did not buy PSP until 2004.

[Mary Solaas]

I've just discovered what CF Spark can do.  So I will show what I have been playing with today.  The last 5 are something I just asked it to create with a description.  The others are from a beginning picture.