Calendar Workshop 2025

[Susan Ewart]

19 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

So far I have already seen great pages by you all, I'm becoming a bit jealous because just as this workshop started my week planning went topsy turvy and there are a lot of things coming my way at the same time which need my undivided attention. I know it isn't a contest and I have ample time to finish my calendars,

I am behind too.  Unexpectedly busy week as well.  Hopefully some time after work tonight to work it.

[Susan Ewart]

13 hours ago, Cassel said:

Minimalism looks great to focus on those lovely flowers.

Thank you so much.  

[Susan Ewart]

10 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

Gray is not a color I'd normally use but it looks perfect with the purple flowers

I havent added the background yet, but I agree with you, the grey makes them stand out.  I will probably use a desaturated color when I add the background layer.

[Susan Ewart]

5 hours ago, Sharla said:

And for February I have used a photo of some winter aconite photographed on a cold February day in a churchyard.

 

I love your flower photos Sharla, and that January Calendar is outstanding, perfect backbround, I can "feel" the cold.

 

[Ann Seeber]

Here are my May (Flamingos) and June (Screaming Hairy Armadillo-yes, really!) May background is color fill with a citrus peel + noise texture and June is a paper. Is it possible to color the flowery background to the mask and the frame?

Edited October 24 by Ann Seeber

[Sharla]

6 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

February.  These are coming out in unexpected ways!

Often the best way! I always think its fun to see what emerges when we're just creating.

[Ann Seeber]

8 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

 

Lovely!

Beautiful, Sharla! How did you get the green color on the mask? Oops, I figured it out, just add color to the PHOTO HERE layer. 🙃

Edited October 24 by Ann Seeber

[Art Kuiper]

Well I have Day 1 calendar pages done. I used the day 2 Background instructions to liven the pages up. I also highlighted some dates as those are family birthdays that need to be remembered. These first two photos are from my library but were not shot in the wild. Hence the sad face on the gorilla. I struggled a bit this the mask until I realized from all the other submissions that they were designed to show through outside the frame. I like the effect.

[Ann Seeber]

Here are July (White Rhino) and August (Eurasian Eagle Owl). I'm finally figuring out how to play with the mask group to get different effects.

[Donna Sillia]

May     I had to resize the mask since the photo was not a landscape. I merged the group and horizontally centered the image. The background was created in Adobe Express and modified with FF. Changing cass calendar font colors once the file has been merged is not possible. I think that I have saved some of the original files so I will be experimenting this afternoon. The mask for the cement statues is my own. Both photos are from David.

[Corrie Kinkel]

Wow everybody has been so creative! Here are my preliminary pages 01 and 02, I managed to get something done. My theme is mushrooms/fungi and therefore I used cass-CustomCalendar script to make little mushrooms with the datenumbers in them. For the backgrounds I used background/foreground gradients but there will be some sort of texture on them, but I still have to figure out what I will use. My date mushrooms also got a matching gradient otherwise it was too monotone for my liking. The font for the months is Prida01. I have that font for a while now and the video tutorial reminded me of it! I'm not sure if I will change the dates for weekends and special dates; I'll have to experiment if that is going to work with those small mushrooms. I see I still have a black line on Januari and a point on the right top of februari; I'll change that, I thought I had done but it is still showing.

Edited October 24 by Corrie Kinkel

[Julian Adams]

8 hours ago, Sue Thomas said:

I'm not at the  lap top, I  believe it's  called sparky dream. I like clean  legible fonts, not to frilly so to speak. More importantly legible for anyone to read.

I used Sparky on my March layout

[MoniqueN.]

53 minutes ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Wow everybody has been so creative! Here are my preliminary pages 01 and 02, I managed to get something done. My theme is mushrooms/fungi and therefore I used cass-CustomCalendar script to make little mushrooms with the datenumbers in them. For the backgrounds I used background/foreground gradients but there will be some sort of texture on them, but I still have to figure out what I will use. My date mushrooms also got a matching gradient otherwise it was too monotone for my liking. The font for the months is Prida01. I have that font for a while now and the video tutorial reminded me of it! I'm not sure if I will change the dates for weekends and special dates; I'll have to experiment if that is going to work with those small mushrooms. I see I still have a black line on Januari and a point on the right top of februari; I'll change that, I thought I had done but it is still showing.

 

What a fun idea! 🙂

[Mary Solaas]

I finally finished March 1st calendar. The picture I developed from 2 AI pictures from CF Spark. The background paper is a gradient. I guess I'm playing with gradients because I need to practice making them.

[Julian Adams]

7 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

Thank you, Julian. I am attach the bevel settings that I am using on the calendar squares. 

Thank you for your help Donna. I find sometimes when I use that the image gets much darker than I wanted to. Do you have any suggestions how to control the darkness of the image?

@Cassel Do you have any suggestions Carole?

[Julian Adams]

2 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

May     I had to resize the mask since the photo was not a landscape. I merged the group and horizontally centered the image. The background was created in Adobe Express and modified with FF. Changing cass calendar font colors once the file has been merged is not possible. I think that I have saved some of the original files so I will be experimenting this afternoon. The mask for the cement statues is my own. Both photos are from David.

How do you get those frames on the main picture tilted like that and duplicated?

[Julian Adams]

3 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

 I had to resize the mask since the photo was not a landscape. I merged the group and horizontally centered the image. 

 

Thank you for that suggestion,  Donna. I was wondering the same thing since I had a square image. I took your advice on the inner bevel also and modified my March calendar to this:

 

 

Edited October 24 by Julian Adams
Updated image

[Corrie Kinkel]

1 hour ago, MoniqueN. said:

What a fun idea! 🙂

Thank you! I got the idea because in the photo of this script in the store is one item depicted as a leaf. Besides that I didn't want the normal boxes because the people that are going to get the calendar never write in those tiny boxes! However it is convenient that you can see with day of the week it is. It took me several tries to get it the way I like it.

[Mary Solaas]

Whoops! I noticed that I haven't put my Tolkein button on the last couple of pages. So I went back and added one to each that had been skipped. But I'll only post the last March one I did.

[Anne Lamp]

My April   after lesson 4

[Anne Lamp]

My May after lesson 4

 

Edited October 25 by Anne Lamp
wrong file

[Cassel]

@Julian Adams I would suggest to go less with the bevel so the mask effect can show more (more obvious on the January page). For February, did you put the image only in the "center" of the mask? If you have a square image and a rectangular space, you can either crop it rectangularly, or do like you did and "fill in" the sides. If you want to resize the mask, you CAN do it, using the Pick tool, but make sure you will brush in black, the areas that will become uncovered on the sides. For the bevel, I tend to keep the Ambiance at 0 so the lightness stays as close to the original as possible.

@Ann SeeberSince the mask creates a partially transparent section, that is why the layer below will show through. Maybe you can tweak it by brushing, with a solid color, where you don't want the pattern to show (or where you would want to add color). To adjust the Kerning, you highlight the character and reduce the Kerning value to narrow the space or increase it to spread them apart. It can be also very useful when you use dingbats, like stitching fonts. Adding color to the outside of the photo area is not something I expected, but all you, users, are so creative!!!

@Sharla The white background might sound boring for some, but on your pages, it makes your photos stand out!

@Sue Thomas Maybe someday, you could share "not-so-photogenic" models, just for a good laugh maybe?

@Mary Solaas The days of the week abbreviated look so much more balanced! These pages are the perfect opportunity to work with gradients!

@Art Kuiper Those masks are called "artsy". There are some designers who create great masks of that style. Maybe I should make a tutorial (or a class) on that type of mask.

@Donna Sillia I guess you answered Julian's question about modifying the format of the mask!

@Corrie Kinkel It is so great to read how you see "errors", and can fix them yourself with PSP. And experimentation also yields fantastic results.

@Anne LampIf you follow what others have done, you can add a color that matches the photo on the layer called PHOTO HERE, and it will add some colors around your photos, through the masks.

 

[Donna Sillia]

6 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

Thank you for your help Donna. I find sometimes when I use that the image gets much darker than I wanted to. Do you have any suggestions how to control the darkness of the image?

@Cassel Do you have any suggestions Carole?

Julian, I only use this bevel on the squares. I have a lot of different bevels as presets for different items. Most of the presets are from Carole's tutorials, e.g. I have presets for different types of flowers, glitter, fonts, frames, etc.

[Julian Adams]

19 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

Julian, I only use this bevel on the squares. I have a lot of different bevels as presets for different items. Most of the presets are from Carole's tutorials, e.g. I have presets for different types of flowers, glitter, fonts, frames, etc.

Do you select the squares individually?  How do you do that without selecting the numbers too?

[Art Kuiper]

Thanks, Cassel for your note about the Artsy masks. They certainly make the area around the image more interesting. Also I learned a lot from your Day 3 video. The information on using the Character Map will be useful in other programs too. Day 4 you introduced the Transparency Lock, so great. I am waiting expectantly for what will come next. I am learning so much. Merci.

Here are my March and April projects with elements from all 4 days.