Template Workshop 2025

[Hank Sobah]

[Jeni Simpson]

Template 5, still in Affinity 2.6
The photographs were taken years ago, on different days, in Hagley Park in Christchurch, when I was living there.
I have used Marisa Lerin's Change kit, and the fonts are from Creative Fabrica, Astrologer, and Active School. The paper in the circle was a problem. I wanted something not too strong and tried to darken it up a bit, and with the problems I am having with my laptop, it wasn't working, so I left it alone.
I could probably have opened PSP and fixed it, but wanting to use just Affinity, I didn't.
The ric rac is something I created many years ago when I first looked into scrapbooking, and did a few tutorials.
The duck is a Papango, or Blue Teal duck. The roses were bunched up on a bush, the colours appealed to me. The thrush seemed to be letting me know he had first dibs on that water fountain. The koru, the shape of the fern on the right, represents new beginnings.

[Harmony Birch]

And now for day 3

[AprilDawn]

still using Affinity 2.6.2 and finding it  a joy to use. This is lesson 2,  i am a bit behind though due to some more life issues but i will get to finish. The photos are from pixabay and  created a colour swatch from  it in affinity photo and used those colours on my project. Beige coloured paper created from a pattern, teal blue paper  free from Chantahlia Design, foliage  design is an abr brush imported into  affinity. again  i give thanks to Carole for the templates and the video as they are well explained.   i have been looking at everyone's projects for this workshop and you all have created  lovely work.

best wishes to everyone,

Dawn

 

[Jeni Simpson]

1 hour ago, AprilDawn said:

still using Affinity 2.6.2 and finding it  a joy to use. This is lesson 2,  i am a bit behind though due to some more life issues but i will get to finish. The photos are from pixabay and  created a colour swatch from  it in affinity photo and used those colours on my project. Beige coloured paper created from a pattern, teal blue paper  free from Chantahlia Design, foliage  design is an abr brush imported into  affinity. again  i give thanks to Carole for the templates and the video as they are well explained.   i have been looking at everyone's projects for this workshop and you all have created  lovely work.

best wishes to everyone,

Dawn

 

 

I have lovely memories of the Kookaburra laughing. A wonderful start to the day, waiting at a bus stop in Sydney.  We have the blue Kingfishers in New Zealand, although I have to say, since moving back to the South Island in 1975, I have not seen them.

[Sue Thomas]

2 hours ago, AprilDawn said:

still using Affinity 2.6.2 and finding it  a joy to use. This is lesson 2,  i am a bit behind though due to some more life issues but i will get to finish. The photos are from pixabay and  created a colour swatch from  it in affinity photo and used those colours on my project. Beige coloured paper created from a pattern, teal blue paper  free from Chantahlia Design, foliage  design is an abr brush imported into  affinity. again  i give thanks to Carole for the templates and the video as they are well explained.   i have been looking at everyone's projects for this workshop and you all have created  lovely work.

best wishes to everyone,

Dawn

 

For someone who rarely uses templates, or when I  do, I  tend to change them. I really like this template  over all the  others in this  workshop, as it would be something  I'd  create my self. In my view, he colours, and subject you chose,  has done this template  proud. 

[Jeni Simpson]

5 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

I love this quote.  I'm about to post sunflowers too.  My bizarre sunflowers booked time in the photo studio so they are much different.  the petals on yours are huge!  I also love this particular template.

Susan, they were tall, well above our six-foot-high fence between our neighbours and us. The fence in the pic below would be just below the bottom of the photo. You can see our neighbours shed in the pic.

[Julian Adams]

6 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

I've been scrolling around looking for my Day 4 and it seems I forgot to post it! I may have overdone the silver but what the hey! 

The silver is beautiful. I love the way the orange-gold works with the silver! And the blue works nicely too. If I were to change anything at all, I might carry that silver gold theme over to making the text gold too. I think the text would pop a little more.

[Jeni Simpson]

Template 3 Diamond
When camping near this small lake, we woke to fog. There is something about fog, I think, that gives a mysterious look to the surrounds.
I have used Jessica Dunn's kit River Fog. The fonts are Greater Works and Golden, both from CreativeFabrica.
To give a foggyish look to the word fog, I selected a small scrap of one of the foggier-looking papers and placed it over the wording and lowered the opacity quite a bit.

Edited Saturday at 03:05 AM by Jeni Simpson

[Cassel]

Apologies for not showing up last night for the daily feedback. I am paying for it today as you have been so productive! This is going to be a longer post!

@Jeni Simpson I would have expected that shadow to be the correct size but maybe it "disappeared" when you resized the page? If you look at the shadow of the element on the left end of the Tulip, it does have a much more obvious shadow, making it look thicker than the title, but then, if the title is overlapping that paper, it should have a comparable shadow too. When you have text that is not a title, be careful with shadows. If they are too harsh, it makes small text hard to read, but if they are very faint, it makes the text look blurry. It can be tricky to use shadows on small text, which is why I tend to avoid it altogether.

@MoniqueN. You got a great start with Affinity. I know that it feels really odd at first, and you will be searching for the tools that are otherwise familiar, but they will be somewhere else. Over time, you will see all the advantages that Affinity can offer. For the shadow on your Scone palace layout, remember that it shows on the bottom right of any element. If that area is covered by another paper or a photo, then it is not as visible. You can always add a "reverse" shadow in the same way as you might have done in PSP.

@Cristina In the layout At the beach, did you treat both greenery as painted on the background? If so, it looks great except for the fact that a painted element would not overlap the photo or extend past the paper. If you were to offset your leaves a tiny bit, they would blend very well with the watercolor feel of the blue paper.

@Sue Thomas Thank you for sharing the links for the technique related to multiple surfaces (I had forgotten about its mention in the Master Class). I am sure you will like Affinity. But I also know you will not ditch PSP, especially since you can't use my scripts in Affinity! 🙂 I am glad you enjoy those lessons.

@Julian Adams I am glad that you worked on that FB header and you shared it. Maybe others can be inspired to use those extra templates if they don't want to (or have time) to make a scrapbook page. On its own, PSP does not create wordart, but you can use PSP tools to create them. Sue is our "wordart specialist". We also have some classes inside the membership dedicated to Wordart.

@bina greene That is PURRFECT. I hope you add those layouts to the gallery at DS too! 🙂

@Deana Davis Maybe I could add a tutorial for those "wonky" letters.

@Ann Seeber Nice layout about Kosovo. Be mindful of the shadows on elements that should be close to the paper, like stitching. Any element that has thin sections can look like they are floating if the shadow is offset too much. In the last page, it LOOKS like the middle strip of paper has an unexpected blurred edge. Do you see that too?

@Jacques Beautiful photos and lovely layout!

@gwen jewitt There is no issue is starting late. I am sure you will catch up. It is great that using the same supplies, it looks completey different as you have adjusted the color.

@Hank Sobah Great layout Let's play. You might want to adjust the photo used in the background as it looks like you resized it sideway so it looks a little squished. The other ones are fine. The same thing happened in your last layout. Remember that if you need to resize, you HAVE to use a corner handle, and NEVER use the side ones!

@Donna Sillia It is interesting that you added a bevel to one of the branches that overlapped the photo and not the others. That is definitely adding that little touch of realism.

@fiona cook Using templates is a way to save time in creating a page. Using the Brush tool instead of the Fill tool is a great workaround. Maybe this article could help you with the Fill tool.

@Susan Ewart I feel for you, having to work instead of playing with PSP. I don't remember how I managed to do all I did in the store and the Campus while I was still working full-time. The bevel on your title is creative and very effective!

@SharlaBeautiful photos on a beautiful layout. I am a bit concerned about the shadow on the title. It looks like it is in the wrong direction in addition to giving a blurry look. Is it due to the resizing? or maybe not?

@EukaDid you intend to lose the texture on the leaves? I think the color is great but maybe you could add a Blend mode to recover the original texture. Thanks for mentioning FXplorer . I'll look into that too as a possible resource to feature on the blog.

@Bee Kelly Great work. Did you check all the shadows? It looks like one photo is missing a shadow. And for the title, especially since you have a stroke around the letters, it looks like stickers, and would need a shadow too. Although you can surely work on both programs, I wonder how easy/difficult it will be to handle different tools in different places to do the same thing. But it is up to you. We'll be here for you either way.

@Anja Pelzer Wonderful page. all those decorative elements really emphasize your photos.

@Harmony Birch It is never too late to start.

@AprilDawn Great to see your projects. Yes, Affinity is an interesting program and it does have great features and advantages.

To answer Julian's question about Affinity, we decided to add that program to the Campus for a few reasons: 1- yes, the development of PSP has stopped (but there is no indication that it will stop working) 2- Affinity can do some things that PSP can't (we were hoping they would be added to PSP but now, without development, it is unlikely to happen) and 3- Affinity is available on Mac and iPad, unlike PSP, so we could reach out more users. It is NOT meant to replace PSP, but to add to anyone's graphic toolbox.

[Jean Naumann]

Here is Day 4.  I'm enjoying learning new things in Affinity.

[Jean Naumann]

@Cassel I've just tried to download Template 5 for Affinity, and the file seems to be the PSP file, not PSD.

 

[Euka]

@Cassel I have the same problem as Jean - both templates 5 are pspimage files. 

[Susan Ewart]

6 hours ago, Jeni Simpson said:

Susan, I am enjoying all your templates, your photographs show a great sense of style, and the colours you choose are perfect.

Thank you so much.  Choosing the elements and the colors are the hardest parts.  I read others also have that problem, we are good company here.

[Susan Ewart]

6 hours ago, Jeni Simpson said:

Template 5, still in Affinity 2.6
The photographs were taken years ago, on different days, in Hagley Park in Christchurch, when I was living there.
I have used Marisa Lerin's Change kit, and the fonts are from Creative Fabrica, Astrologer, and Active School. The paper in the circle was a problem. I wanted something not too strong and tried to darken it up a bit, and with the problems I am having with my laptop, it wasn't working, so I left it alone.
I could probably have opened PSP and fixed it, but wanting to use just Affinity, I didn't.
The ric rac is something I created many years ago when I first looked into scrapbooking, and did a few tutorials.
The duck is a Papango, or Blue Teal duck. The roses were bunched up on a bush, the colours appealed to me. The thrush seemed to be letting me know he had first dibs on that water fountain. The koru, the shape of the fern on the right, represents new beginnings.

I love the pictures.  I hope you use them again in layouts so we get to see them bigger.  The koru looks so cool, the roses are beautiful.  I always love animals so seeing them is pleasure to the eyes.  

[Jean Naumann]

@Euka I ended up opening the PSP image in Paint Shop Pro and saved it as a PSD, that worked.

[Jean Naumann]

And I'm caught up now, here is Template 5.  I think I'll redo this one, I like to have more space taken up with photos so I'll probably have a play with it, but it's always good to follow along with the lesson.

[Susan Ewart]

2 hours ago, Jeni Simpson said:

Susan, they were tall, well above our six-foot-high fence between our neighbours and us. The fence in the pic below would be just below the bottom of the photo. You can see our neighbours shed in the pic.

These are just like the regular ones I planted too.  The package said 6-7 feet, they topped out over 10 feet and were above my garage roof just like that.  We had so much wind and breezes last year that photographing outside was near impossible.  Nothing stayed still.  

[Carolyn Rye]

Day 2 and I am slow at catching up 🙄.  This one is using Affinity and I have enjoyed doing this.  My friend loves the outback and all the beauty that can be seen there. I do love the colors in this.

[Carolyn Rye]

@Cassel Yes, the blue was a paper I got from Rachel Martin 405499 Blake Solid.  The wood look was also one of hers.

[Jean Naumann]

I just had another go at Template 4.  I found these old photos from when we visited Australia Zoo just before Christmas 2003.  We were very lucky to see Steve there that day.  Sadly we'll never get to see him again.

[Euka]

2 hours ago, Jean Naumann said:

@Euka I ended up opening the PSP image in Paint Shop Pro and saved it as a PSD, that worked.

@Jean Naumann  Ha - I  returned home and thought to give that a try, when it worked I came here to tell you but you already had it figured out 😃  Love your photos of Australia Zoo - you were lucky to see Steve!!    I have not been inside there - I have been past it several times but friends I was staying with refused to go and being their guest I missed out.  

[Ann Seeber]

10 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Lesson 3  -  Template 3-Diamond

I should have titled this "Blend Modes" because every paper or photo mat, and the two pieces of foliage have blend modes and some with 3 or 4 papers in the blending group.  I did group all the blended stuff and duplicated the group, hid it, then merged the end result for the shadow part.  I used elements/papers from Digital Scrapbook (Marisa Lerin, Brooke Gazarek, Gina Jones, Jessica Dunn, Kerri Dempsey and Janet Scott). 

The foliage I used the tutorial with the filled duplicate layer above, took me awhile to get the right color fill.  I still found it was too bright on the layout so I merged the blend group and blended them into the blue paper (already merged blended group).  I even attempted to make a cluster from 6 separate elements.  

The fonts are Creative Fabrica; Madelican and Matona ('S')

Photos are mine and they aren't really looking at the real sun (like fake news, there is also indoor fake sun 😲).  These were my surprise sunflowers I discovered at the back of my very small garden that I only noticed because I needed to go into the little shed.  I thought they were mutants, cute fluffy mutants.

I think we call them "volunteers" when they spontaneously seed themselves away from the garden.

[Carolyn Rye]

Day 3 using Affinity Photo 2.  I decided to theme the Anzacs.  The Mural is from one of the many murals that my friend had photographed during her outback of Australia.  

[Ann Seeber]

5 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

I think the text would pop a little more

I agree and I'm going to try it...see what you think, Julian