Template Workshop 2025

[Susan Ewart]

4 hours ago, bina greene said:

day 5

I was able to read this and WOW! the crocs are scary sounding.  I had no idea there was ocean crocs. I had to read it all because I wondered why there was also a crocodile on the layout.  The shark I understood.  Do the sharks even stay away from the crocs?

[Susan Ewart]

1 hour ago, Deana Davis said:

Where is everyone getting the templates and info?  I have only received 1 email so far with supplies and link.  Thank you in advance for your help.

You should have been getting emails everyday.  If they arent in the Spam folder (where mine go😢 no matter what I do) you are a Diamond member and might be able to get them from the Workshop page in the Campus.  All the workshops are there where you can click on the lessons.  I'm sure the supplies/templates must be with it too.

[Deana Davis]

One thing I think I've noticed with Affinity is that it doesn't seem you can save settings for effects such as DS and IB if you have favorites.

I could be wrong but I am LOVING that you are doing Affinity tutorials now!!!

[Deana Davis]

32 minutes ago, Susan Ewart said:

You should have been getting emails everyday.  If they arent in the Spam folder (where mine go😢 no matter what I do) you are a Diamond member and might be able to get them from the Workshop page in the Campus.  All the workshops are there where you can click on the lessons.  I'm sure the supplies/templates must be with it too.

Yes, I finally thought of checking my spam.  Many emails were in there but I didn't find them all.  I'm a Diamond member so I can get to the lessons.  I just didn't know if all the links to supplies would be with them.  I'm good now and hope to catch up.

[Jeni Simpson]

20 hours ago, Cassel said:

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.

Thank you, Carole. I have re-done the page, removing the shadow from the smaller text and making a larger shadow for the word Tulips, so it doesn't get lost again. I'm afraid I sometimes go back to the graphic designer in me when I put text on top of something, or mess around with elements, etc, forgetting it is a scrap page I am creating...I'll do better 

[Jeni Simpson]

5 hours ago, bina greene said:

day 5

Wow, Bena, that is great information. I have surfer friends on the Gold Coast, and my housemates in Sydney would venture out on boards into the harbour, but I have never realised there is that line, in Australia, of all places, one doesn't cross on a board. Although I have visited Rockhampton, I'm no surfer, so I didn't notice that line. It didn't occur to me why my friends in Townsville never talked about going surfing. Nor did I know about saltwater crocs! Thank you for opening my eyes!

[Jeni Simpson]

Template 6 Affinity 2.6
Ashlee visited Southland with her mum at the age of 4. With the two of them coming down from Christchurch,
we thought we'd show them all over the Southland province.
They were fascinated by the wildlife we have down here, and how close we could come to them.
The Sea Lion behind Ash is safe so long as his mate is nowhere around, so sunning themselves amongst the beach-goers is common. 
With the mate around, just don't come between them.
I have come across Sea Lions sunning themselves on the rocks or hiding amongst the tussocks, as Ashlee did in the lower photograph.

The kit is Jessica Dunn's Coastal Spring, I used her Painted Papers, and the font is Lena.

 

Edited Sunday at 12:21 AM by Jeni Simpson
wrong image

[Rene Marker]

44 minutes ago, Deana Davis said:

One thing I think I've noticed with Affinity is that it doesn't seem you can save settings for effects such as DS and IB if you have favorites.

I could be wrong but I am LOVING that you are doing Affinity tutorials now!!!

You can save settings for drop shadows. If you look in the forum here called "Let's Talk", you will see a sub-forum called "Affinity". In the sub-forum, I created a post that shows how to save your drop shadows in Affinity. They are called "Styles". There are several default styles in the program as well. I also picked up some free styles from a YouTube channel called "Affinity Revolution" that has a freebies available with a free class they offer. The class has several mini-lessons and one of them was on the use of styles.

[Deana Davis]

Sorry I'm late to the game.  Here is Day one for me.  I started in Affinity but some things didn't quite look/work the same so I switched to PSP since I'm very familiar with it.

I should probably download the Affinity instructions but that would end up being pretty much my download limit for the month. So I'll have to think about that one.

 

[Deana Davis]

19 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

You can save settings for drop shadows. If you look in the forum here called "Let's Talk", you will see a sub-forum called "Affinity". In the sub-forum, I created a post that shows how to save your drop shadows in Affinity. They are called "Styles". There are several default styles in the program as well. I also picked up some free styles from a YouTube channel called "Affinity Revolution" that has a freebies available with a free class they offer. The class has several mini-lessons and one of them was on the use of styles.

Thank you so much for the info.  I copied it and will look into that!  I appreciate the helpful tips

[Jeni Simpson]

24 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

You can save settings for drop shadows. If you look in the forum here called "Let's Talk", you will see a sub-forum called "Affinity". In the sub-forum, I created a post that shows how to save your drop shadows in Affinity. They are called "Styles". There are several default styles in the program as well. I also picked up some free styles from a YouTube channel called "Affinity Revolution" that has a freebies available with a free class they offer. The class has several mini-lessons and one of them was on the use of styles.

Thanks Rene, I joined Affinity Revolution, and I've done a few of the tutorials. Also, you mentioned the designer from the Lilypad who has tutorials as well. I'll check out that forum you mentioned here.

[Deana Davis]

Here is mine for Day 2.  Since I'm working on catching up, it is faster for me to do them in PSP.  I'll try to redo them in AP when I have more time.

I rarely work with pics since I'm not typically an avid scrap-booker so I'm enjoying this change.

[Cassel]

Great participation again today. You are all giving me a lot of "work" to do! 😉

@Jean Naumann That fishing layout is stunning: simple yet so meaningful! It might actually be worth printing and framing. I love the little stars that you put in a circle. I would just move the stitching UNDER those stars as it is not a realistic layering with the stitching on top.

@Carolyn Rye It is fun to see art on water towers. It gives it a much more interesting appearance! Did you enlarge a paper for the Anzac layout? It looks like the poppies are very blurred. Or did it happen in the resizing?

@Sharla All the colors match beautifully in your Tea layout.

@CristinaCreating the effect for multiple surfaces in Affinity MIGHT involve masking. I'll search for it and when I have something reasonable, I will turn it into a tutorial to match the PSP one. Using Blend modes can often give such interesting results. It ends up like having completely different images/papers.

@Euka I thought the paper you used under the photo seemed similar to the one used on the flower. I thing you might have stretched it. Is that right? It really looks great for pebbles!

@Bee Kelly The shadows really look large on your layout. What settings did you use?

@Leslie Pugs That Rhino font that you use is quite interesting! I had never seen that one before.

@Sue Thomas I am not at all surprised to see such a colorful title on your layout. That is so you!

@Susan Ewart Maybe I can share SOME comparisons in the Q&A as I find differences. It will take a while to get an exhaustive and fair comparison, but I can start somewhere. I am also watching a LOT of videos on YouTube, but strangely, a lot of what we do in the Campus (as far as creating from scratch) is not covered in those multiple videos, just like for PSP. I guess, what we do is typically NOT covered, even for Photoshop! 

@bina greeneRotating the template gives you such great space for your text! Did you use PSP or AP? I find that wrapped text is more flexible in PSP than AP.

@gwen jewitt Good start with Affinity. I think you might have forgotten to add the shadow effect to the yellow scalloped paper. It is interesting how that black title "Feed me" is so appropriate with the black birds.

@Harmony Birch I have to agree that using templates seems faster in Affinity, especially with the "clipping" ability.

@Ann SeeberOn your Royal Burgundy layout, is it a coincidence that there is an "apparent" dark line across the two white flowers, almost perfectly aligned?

@Donna Sillia I don't often hear of using the Selection to Path script. That is LeviFiction's script, right? It can be used in so many creative ways when you need a path.

@Jeni Simpson You are doing really well with shadows: you know when you add a much larger shadow for much thicker elements.

@Linda Rexford 10 and 11 year old for feral cats? I didn't think they lived that long "in the wild". But I guess if they get good care, that helps.

@Deana Davis As Rene has mentioned, you can save Styles for Drop Shadows. There is an article HERE. For your first project, if you want the bottom element to be very thick (as it is with the bevel and the shadow), you might want to slip the photo underneath it.

Keep them coming. This thread is a real gallery of masterpieces!

[Deana Davis]

Day 3 is of sweetpeas I grew a few years back.  I LOVE the beautiful colors and smell of sweetpeas.

[Jean Naumann]

@fiona cook the stars are an embellishment that I found, and I just placed it between the layers.  As Carole has now pointed out, I need to move the stars on top of the stitching layer though.

[Deana Davis]

Day 4 - Remembering my daughter and her babies when they were all young.

[Rene Marker]

1 hour ago, Jeni Simpson said:

Thanks Rene, I joined Affinity Revolution, and I've done a few of the tutorials. Also, you mentioned the designer from the Lilypad who has tutorials as well. I'll check out that forum you mentioned here.

Angela has a YouTube channel that she has videos of her scrapping. She doesn't use Affinity Photo to scrap but uses Affinity Publisher. But it does have a lot of the same features as photo.

[Jean Naumann]

And here is Day 6.  The blend mode I used for the pink paper was Passthrough.  I rather like it.  It's so good to learn these things that I would never have stumbled across on my own.  And it's fabulous to learn about the reverse shadow.  I used that a lot with PSP and now it's great to be able to do it in Affinity.

As always, we learn so much with Carole's workshops.

[Deana Davis]

Day 5 are memories when my husband and I would travel in our motorhome.

I didn't have the kit available for me to download so I used Gina Jones kit from Pixel Scrappers "Love-birds-bundle-KIT"

 

 

[Euka]

Day 6 - On the West Australian coast about 2 hours north of Perth are The Pinnacles of Namburg National Park. It covers an area of 17,487 hectares and provides an extensive area for native animals and bird life.  It is an amazing place to visit.  You can drive or walk among them.

All photos are mine and the papers are photos - the background photo is of a beach totally made of shells.  

[Donna Sillia]

2 hours ago, Cassel said:

Great participation again today. You are all giving me a lot of "work" to do! 😉

@Jean Naumann That fishing layout is stunning: simple yet so meaningful! It might actually be worth printing and framing. I love the little stars that you put in a circle. I would just move the stitching UNDER those stars as it is not a realistic layering with the stitching on top.

@Carolyn Rye It is fun to see art on water towers. It gives it a much more interesting appearance! Did you enlarge a paper for the Anzac layout? It looks like the poppies are very blurred. Or did it happen in the resizing?

@Sharla All the colors match beautifully in your Tea layout.

@CristinaCreating the effect for multiple surfaces in Affinity MIGHT involve masking. I'll search for it and when I have something reasonable, I will turn it into a tutorial to match the PSP one. Using Blend modes can often give such interesting results. It ends up like having completely different images/papers.

@Euka I thought the paper you used under the photo seemed similar to the one used on the flower. I thing you might have stretched it. Is that right? It really looks great for pebbles!

@Bee Kelly The shadows really look large on your layout. What settings did you use?

@Leslie Pugs That Rhino font that you use is quite interesting! I had never seen that one before.

@Sue Thomas I am not at all surprised to see such a colorful title on your layout. That is so you!

@Susan Ewart Maybe I can share SOME comparisons in the Q&A as I find differences. It will take a while to get an exhaustive and fair comparison, but I can start somewhere. I am also watching a LOT of videos on YouTube, but strangely, a lot of what we do in the Campus (as far as creating from scratch) is not covered in those multiple videos, just like for PSP. I guess, what we do is typically NOT covered, even for Photoshop! 

@bina greeneRotating the template gives you such great space for your text! Did you use PSP or AP? I find that wrapped text is more flexible in PSP than AP.

@gwen jewitt Good start with Affinity. I think you might have forgotten to add the shadow effect to the yellow scalloped paper. It is interesting how that black title "Feed me" is so appropriate with the black birds.

@Harmony Birch I have to agree that using templates seems faster in Affinity, especially with the "clipping" ability.

@Ann SeeberOn your Royal Burgundy layout, is it a coincidence that there is an "apparent" dark line across the two white flowers, almost perfectly aligned?

@Donna Sillia I don't often hear of using the Selection to Path script. That is LeviFiction's script, right? It can be used in so many creative ways when you need a path.

@Jeni Simpson You are doing really well with shadows: you know when you add a much larger shadow for much thicker elements.

@Linda Rexford 10 and 11 year old for feral cats? I didn't think they lived that long "in the wild". But I guess if they get good care, that helps.

@Deana Davis As Rene has mentioned, you can save Styles for Drop Shadows. There is an article HERE. For your first project, if you want the bottom element to be very thick (as it is with the bevel and the shadow), you might want to slip the photo underneath it.

Keep them coming. This thread is a real gallery of masterpieces!

I use the Selection to Path script quite often. I believe that I found the script through one of your posts.

[Carolyn Rye]

4 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

I use the Selection to Path script quite often. I believe that I found the script through one of your posts.

 

4 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

I use the Selection to Path script quite often. I believe that I found the script through one of your posts.

@Cassel The Anzac Day layout did happen in the resizing.  Not sure if there was anything I could have done to stop this.

[Carolyn Rye]

Day 4 and I have only use Affinity Photo 2.6, I would like to also sure PSP and I will if I get time. 

We have I daughter and her girlfriend coming to see us this week, so we have been busy preparing. So excited as it has been 8 years since she has been down here to spend time with us.

The photos are more from my girlfriend's tour of the outback.  So many beautiful Water Tower and Silo Art and then there is the wonderful bird life and flowers.

Carolle, the Anzac Day layout on my Day 3, did go blurry when I resized.  Not sure what I did wrong or how I could have done it differently.

[Jean Naumann]

I've just had a play with Template 5 and made the 4 photos into portrait.  I am having fun with this workshop.

[Ann Seeber]

8 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

When you put a full size paper above the shape you want to fill with it, it makes like a mask group (not sure what the correct term is) and you can then move the paper around inside that shape to where you want it.

Yes, I do that in PSP with the script "clip-to-it" and it is exactly the same result.