Template Workshop 2025

[Euka]

Day 7 - About 8 hours north of Perth, Western Australia is the Shark Bay World Heritage area and the beach is made up of billions and billions of tiny shells  up to 10 metres deep and extends up to 100 kms long.  Not one grain of sand can be found there.  Photos are mine and resized do not do it justice as the beach is massive. The background paper I created with a grunge overlay some time ago and the disk paper is actually a lino paper we made in another workshop and recoloured. The sea gulls were in my collection and the font Carrington Posh. 

Shell Beach is one of only a handful of places on earth where shells replace beach sand in such a dramatic and picturesque way.
The beach stretches for more around 100 kilometres with shells between seven and ten metres deep.  the beach is made up of shells from just one type of animal, making it truly unique. These shells are the remains of the Shark Bay cockle, a mollusk that thrives in the hypersaline waters of the area.
In years gone by, the shells were hard packed, cut into blocks and used to construct a number of historic buildings in the nearby town of Denham.

Thank you Carole for this Workshop, and for the suggestions you have made on my projects.  I am now going back to revisit and make corrections. 

The layouts have all been amazing and  I have enjoyed looking at the photos, reading the stories and being amazed at what has been produced. 

I have tried several times to quote a response to comments on my pages but it freezes up my pc for some reason, so my apologies for that.   

[Cristina]

21 hours ago, Sue Thomas said:

There is a blog post. Type in Selection to path post. And it will pop up. At the time I  debated whether or not to download it, as it needs another soft ware to download in order for it to work. You can either download both or just the script. 

Thank you, Sue
The script is very interesting, but I’ll pass on it because it requires the Potrace program for it to work.
I have too many things on my plate right now.
 

[Marie-Claire]

Hi everyone.
 started a bit late and since the affinity bootcamp I haven't made anything in Affinity, that's why I made these lessons in Affinity.

Day 1
font : Rage Italic, Franklin Gothic Demi Cond

Papers : PSBT-Mar21-Spring-DBMagnolia

[Marie-Claire]

Day 2
font : Tw Cen MT Condensed Extra Bold, Arial Rounded MT Bold

Papers : PSBT-Aug15-A bugs World-DBMagnolia

[Marie-Claire]

Day 3
font : Comica Boom

Papers : CristinaCarabi-Tenebris

[Ann Seeber]

11 minutes ago, Marie-Claire said:

Hi everyone.
 started a bit late and since the affinity bootcamp I haven't made anything in Affinity, that's why I made these lessons in Affinity.

Day 1
font : Rage Italic, Franklin Gothic Demi Cond

Papers : PSBT-Mar21-Spring-DBMagnolia

Hey, Marie-Claire! Hi, Poncho! 👋🐾

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Day 4 We were at the beach 3 days + 2 travel days. I did the entire workshop from those photos + the sketch challenge. 

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Day 5

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Day 6

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Day 7

Of course, a girl has got to eat.

[Bonnie Ballentine]

Day 6, Diamond template. Ann and Maryann came to the beach with friends where they spent the entire weekend being royalty. During our weekend, they were pickleball queens.

[Marie-Claire]

Day 4
font : MisterEart BT
Paper : Digitalscrapbook Blogtrain october 2021 - DigiBrandi Designs

[Julian Adams]

I went to the affinity web site and i see they they have 3 products - designer 2, photo editor, and publisher. It's Designer 2 that everyone's using, right?

[Sue Thomas]

4 minutes ago, Julian Adams said:

I went to the affinity web site and i see they they have 3 products - designer 2, photo editor, and publisher. It's Designer 2 that everyone's using, right?

Nope, it's  Photo 2.6.2

[Linda Rexford]

On 4/26/2025 at 10:26 PM, 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!

Carole, our feral cats get food and a nice shelter.  I can't pet any of them, but at least they don't usually run from us.  For ferals, they are spoiled!

[Linda Rexford]

Day 5.  I have messed with this one a lot, and I'm still not quite happy with it, but here it is.

Trax is my baby, he's 15 now.  He had some issues thru the years and he is deaf now.  Some days he drives me crazy, but he's still my baby!

The butterfly is from MarisaL pretty things kit.  The papers are all from CF and the font is Cat Paw that MoniqueN suggested (Thank You MoniqueN!, I love it).  

[Bee Kelly]

Hi!  I am working in Affinity now.  Have started the lessons over.  

papers:  cpjess-dandelionwishespaper, THD-WeddingBouque(Feb25DESBT)

               recolored background paper and text letters to match blue in jacket

I felt like Affinity was working better for me. 

[Marie-Claire]

Day5
font : hey butterfly - fontspace.com
Papers + Elements: DigitalScrapbook Blog Train September 2024 - DiHillerDesigns_Sep2024_Homecoming + Extras
Photos : freepik.com

[Deana Davis]

4 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

I went to the affinity web site and i see they they have 3 products - designer 2, photo editor, and publisher. It's Designer 2 that everyone's using, right?

It is but you would get all the updates that makes it 2.6.2  I'm pretty sure that is how it works.  There should be a chat you can ask about that on Corel's site.

Mine still says 2.0 but I have all the updates to what is current.

Edited April 28 by Deana Davis

[Donna Sillia]

Day 7 - In anticipation, I decided to use some of my garden flowers from last May. The large background and the flower backgrounds are from Adobe Elements which was use to extract the Iris flowers. The large photo is of one of my clematis growing on the vines in my flower garden.  The scalloped background is my own from the papers workshop and recolored for the circles. The font is called "Bureno Regular" from CF.

[Julian Adams]

1 hour ago, Donna Sillia said:

Day 7 - In anticipation, I decided to use some of my garden flowers from last May. The large background and the flower backgrounds are from Adobe Elements which was use to extract the Iris flowers. The large photo is of one of my clematis growing on the vines in my flower garden.  The scalloped background is my own from the papers workshop and recolored for the circles. The font is called "Bureno Regular" from CF.

So Pretty @Donna Sillia !

I especially 💖the iris. I used to live in an apartment next to a lady who was an iris breeder and planted her lovely unique iris around the parameter of our building. 

Ones like this:

 

Edited April 28 by Julian Adams

[Bee Kelly]

Lesson 2 of Templates class for Affinity

 

[Deana Davis]

8 hours ago, Bee Kelly said:

Hi!  I am working in Affinity now.  Have started the lessons over.  

papers:  cpjess-dandelionwishespaper, THD-WeddingBouque(Feb25DESBT)

               recolored background paper and text letters to match blue in jacket

I felt like Affinity was working better for me. 

That's what I plan to do as well... work through all the lessons in Affinity

[Jeni Simpson]

13 hours ago, Bonnie Ballentine said:

Day 7

 

Of course, a girl has got to eat.

Are you all eating worms out of the Tequila bottles? I don't see plates of food on those tables  

[Corrie Kinkel]

On 4/25/2025 at 7:35 AM, Sue Thomas said:

I must say that I am thoroughly enjoying  the Affinity Template Workshop. Although  I have incorporated some PSP.  The mushrooms are what I had previously created, the tags are what I created some time ago, all I had to do was to add the text. The papers are my own, as like always are the photos, as I only ever use my own  photos. The process of adding all the elements, papers, photos, shadows, etc, to complete the page, is almost effortless using Affinity.  The more I use it the better I will get, providing I can remember all what I have learnt. I added the tags for better legibility. Carole has to take credit for  the effort she puts into doing these workshops.

Sue I agree with you and I can see myself using it more than psp, it makes one’s workflow so easy and fast. Although I shall use much of the things I made before and import them as needed. I have all my abr brushes imported in Affinity too; I always keep the zipfiles.