Template Workshop 2025

[Corrie Kinkel]

Lesson 5 and I really want to do this workshop one after the other, just as if I was participating at the actual dates. When finished I can go on to make a photoalbum of my trip and get it printed. 

Again flowers from my trip from different spots, some I took one on a walk around the neighborhood where my family lives and some from a daytrip we took. I used a bright background, very unusual for me but somehow it works. All the papers and the flowers are from DigiDewi's Kumbayakit. Instead of the swirls on the template I used 2 hexagon rows that I made some time ago and I colored them with a gradient just to give that option a try. I kept the 3 horizontal papers just solid, all the attention has to be on the photos. I didn't use a title but just the vertical paper for a list of the names of the flowers. Before I went on my trip I had a conversation with Sue T and some others about having a watermark for my work, especially if I would want to use it outside of the campus and the result is in the bottom left corner.

[Susan Ewart]

18 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Lesson 5 and I really want to do this workshop one after the other, just as if I was participating at the actual dates. When finished I can go on to make a photoalbum of my trip and get it printed. 

Again flowers from my trip from different spots, some I took one on a walk around the neighborhood where my family lives and some from a daytrip we took. I used a bright background, very unusual for me but somehow it works. All the papers and the flowers are from DigiDewi's Kumbayakit. Instead of the swirls on the template I used 2 hexagon rows that I made some time ago and I colored them with a gradient just to give that option a try. I kept the 3 horizontal papers just solid, all the attention has to be on the photos. I didn't use a title but just the vertical paper for a list of the names of the flowers. Before I went on my trip I had a conversation with Sue T and some others about having a watermark for my work, especially if I would want to use it outside of the campus and the result is in the bottom left corner.

that's a neat watermark.  I'd love to see it on it's own so I can get a good look at it.  I have a design I used in the past but it was drawn on the work itself physically.  I must sit down and get to making one of these.  Although, I'm pretty sure my layouts are training some AI somewhere, not much I can do about it.  If only the AI could come and work off using my data by cleaning the toilets and washing the dishes etc.  You, know, doing something really useful to us.

[Susan Ewart]

Template 7 - Diamond

I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out.  The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024.  The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout?  So cool!  The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable.  I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in.  I chose to cut off the rest the one circle.  I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques.  Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare.  I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two.  Which is what you see here.  I used the Lifted Photo Script.  The font for the quote is Banerton.  the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers).  I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper.  Life is like that, so I left it. 

...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

 

Edited May 13 by Susan Ewart

[Corrie Kinkel]

1 hour ago, Susan Ewart said:

that's a neat watermark.  I'd love to see it on it's own so I can get a good look at it.  I have a design I used in the past but it was drawn on the work itself physically.  I must sit down and get to making one of these.  Although, I'm pretty sure my layouts are training some AI somewhere, not much I can do about it.  If only the AI could come and work off using my data by cleaning the toilets and washing the dishes etc.  You, know, doing something really useful to us.

Well your wish is my command 😉. I just had to convert it to jpg, because for obvious reasons I have it as a png and a psp.image. At first I applied an emboss to it but I decided against it because now I can use it on almost any background and bevel or emboss as I think fit. All my photos are shot with my iPhone therefore I searched for a free image of one and found a font that I liked and erased some of the lines with a feathering. I didn't want something that is too overpowering or obvious.

[Susan Ewart]

40 minutes ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Well your wish is my command 😉. I just had to convert it to jpg, because for obvious reasons I have it as a png and a psp.image. At first I applied an emboss to it but I decided against it because now I can use it on almost any background and bevel or emboss as I think fit. All my photos are shot with my iPhone therefore I searched for a free image of one and found a font that I liked and erased some of the lines with a feathering. I didn't want something that is too overpowering or obvious.

I love it!  Very creative.  

[gwen jewitt]

2 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Template 7 - Diamond

I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out.  The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024.  The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout?  So cool!  The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable.  I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in.  I chose to cut off the rest the one circle.  I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques.  Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare.  I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two.  Which is what you see here.  I used the Lifted Photo Script.  The font for the quote is Banerton.  the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers).  I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper.  Life is like that, so I left it. 

...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

 

 

2 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Template 7 - Diamond

I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out.  The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024.  The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout?  So cool!  The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable.  I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in.  I chose to cut off the rest the one circle.  I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques.  Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare.  I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two.  Which is what you see here.  I used the Lifted Photo Script.  The font for the quote is Banerton.  the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers).  I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper.  Life is like that, so I left it. 

...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

 

Beautifully done Susan and thank you for the detailed information on how you achieved your end result.

[Corrie Kinkel]

Lesson 6 where I want to show the beautiful irises I saw in California. I used again the diamond template because of the portret size of my photos. And again Jessica Dunn's bundle Meadow. I love that one it so versatile, especially with flowers which I love to take photos of. For the textured paper I used the blend mode pinlight and the font is Astrid.

[Jeni Simpson]

6 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Template 7 - Diamond

I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out.  The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024.  The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout?  So cool!  The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable.  I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in.  I chose to cut off the rest the one circle.  I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques.  Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare.  I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two.  Which is what you see here.  I used the Lifted Photo Script.  The font for the quote is Banerton.  the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers).  I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper.  Life is like that, so I left it. 

...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

 

Beautiful, Susan, the colours you have chosen give a certain 'mood' to your creations. I love it! I love the lifted paper, too.

[Jeni Simpson]

6 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Template 7 - Diamond

I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out.  The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024.  The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout?  So cool!  The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable.  I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in.  I chose to cut off the rest the one circle.  I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques.  Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare.  I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two.  Which is what you see here.  I used the Lifted Photo Script.  The font for the quote is Banerton.  the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers).  I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper.  Life is like that, so I left it. 

...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

 

i agree, life isn't perfect, which makes for a more interesting life, with big challenges at times, too!

[Susan Ewart]

3 hours ago, Jeni Simpson said:

Beautiful, Susan, the colours you have chosen give a certain 'mood' to your creations. I love it! I love the lifted paper, too.

Thank you so much Jeni.  

[Cristina]

On 5/9/2025 at 10:13 PM, Corrie Kinkel said:

I will post my results here too because I see the thread is still in use. I'm back from my trip, have overcome my jetlag and installed all the goodies from Carole's birthday sale. Now I can start with the workshop amongst a million of things that I have to do as well.

This is a photo from the opossum that almost every night was sitting on the fence in my daughters garden. When they put the garden light on or use a torchlight it will freeze and stay put. This is a defense mechanism of opossums but alas it doesn't work in the modern world. Where I live there are no opossums, it was nice to see one.

All the papers are from the Meadow bundle by Jessica Dunn, the font is Brellos and I gave the little balls a faint color and a little bit of noise with a very small shadow. At first I wanted to mirror my photo but that looked weird, so I mirrored the template.

Hi, Corrie, it's great to see you back here again. 🙂

It's fascinating to observe how animals behave in nature. Typically, they run away, scared of humans, but in this case, he freezes.

[Cristina]

On 5/10/2025 at 1:29 AM, AprilDawn said:

Hello everyone, well i finished the lessons. here is Lesson 7. The sleeping Koala photo from Pixabay and the Koala awake photo from Unsplash. Flower freebie from Chantahlia Design. Leaves from an abr brush set. For the 2 white circle places in the template i replaced them with an element created with the Star Shape tool in Affinity from a tutorial by Andrew Buckle on his youtube channel Graphicxtras.com titled Affinity Photo Create colorful Curved Designs. i have enjoyed doing this workshop with Affinity Photo . will be using it a lot more.

Best wishes  to everyone,

Dawn

 

This is a lovely layout, Dawn, and a very interesting technique that starts with the Star Shape Tool in Affinity.

I bookmarked it and will watch it sometime later.... I’m not short on PSE and Affinity videos to watch later. 😄 

[Cristina]

15 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

Template 7 - Diamond

I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out.  The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024.  The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout?  So cool!  The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable.  I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in.  I chose to cut off the rest the one circle.  I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques.  Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare.  I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two.  Which is what you see here.  I used the Lifted Photo Script.  The font for the quote is Banerton.  the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers).  I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper.  Life is like that, so I left it. 

...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

 

Love, love this, Susan. It's beautiful!

[Cristina]

14 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Well your wish is my command 😉. I just had to convert it to jpg, because for obvious reasons I have it as a png and a psp.image. At first I applied an emboss to it but I decided against it because now I can use it on almost any background and bevel or emboss as I think fit. All my photos are shot with my iPhone therefore I searched for a free image of one and found a font that I liked and erased some of the lines with a feathering. I didn't want something that is too overpowering or obvious.

Great watermark, Corrie! I really like the font.

Yesterday, I saw an Affinity Photo tutorial from Design Bundles about creating a Watermark Brush.

It was very interesting and easy. I didn't keep the brush file, but I'll go back and create something personal just for practice.

[Susan Ewart]

7 hours ago, Cristina said:

This is a lovely layout, Dawn, and a very interesting technique that starts with the Star Shape Tool in Affinity.

I bookmarked it and will watch it sometime later.... I’m not short on PSE and Affinity videos to watch later. 😄 

Where do you find good PSE videos.  Ones I found aren't so much scrapbooking ones, or they are just doing a layout to sell their products.  I want beginner techniques, like Carole's bootcamp.  Can you tell me if Affinity is as closely related in form to PSE as they say and that Affinity tutorials might translate across to learning PSE.  But first I must face my fear of ON1.

[Corrie Kinkel]

Lesson 7

Yep I made it to the end, but this one was the hardest of all! I wanted to use these photos from my visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the biggest in the US which has a fantastic display of jelly-fish. The lesson was about changing a template with 2 photos into one with 4 photos. I think that by now I understand how to do this and in the end simply ignored it. I didn't use a kit because I have nothing that applies to an aquarium theme but I used bits and bobs from my stash with different adjustment layers, color overlays and a lot of blend modes to get something that gives me a somewhat coherent layout. The fonts are Ally handwriting and Arial.

I have loved seeing all the work and ideas from everyone and I have enjoyed learning some new ways to use Affinity; a big thanks to Carole! I will certainly keep using it and already am looking forward to the coming vector workshop, but in the mean time I now am going to make a photoalbum from my trip.

[Susan Ewart]

13 minutes ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Lesson 7

Yep I made it to the end, but this one was the hardest of all! I wanted to use these photos from my visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the biggest in the US which has a fantastic display of jelly-fish. The lesson was about changing a template with 2 photos into one with 4 photos. I think that by now I understand how to do this and in the end simply ignored it. I didn't use a kit because I have nothing that applies to an aquarium theme but I used bits and bobs from my stash with different adjustment layers, color overlays and a lot of blend modes to get something that gives me a somewhat coherent layout. The fonts are Ally handwriting and Arial.

I have loved seeing all the work and ideas from everyone and I have enjoyed learning some new ways to use Affinity; a big thanks to Carole! I will certainly keep using it and already am looking forward to the coming vector workshop, but in the mean time I now am going to make a photoalbum from my trip.

I did the same (used two photos, 4 would make the photos too small - a challenge for me).  These photos are out of this world awesome.  Seeing it in person would be something.  

[Jeni Simpson]

7 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

I did the same (used two photos, 4 would make the photos too small - a challenge for me).  These photos are out of this world awesome.  Seeing it in person would be something.  

One way of doing the two photos from one rectangle would be to cut the rectangles and place the photo in both, keeping each rectangle close to the other. The photographs can be done so there is no break, as such, in the photographs. I think someone did that in this workshop, I will check.

[Corrie Kinkel]

19 hours ago, Susan Ewart said:

I did the same (used two photos, 4 would make the photos too small - a challenge for me).  These photos are out of this world awesome.  Seeing it in person would be something.  

Yes you are right, my photos although I have more, were way to big. That aquarium had lots of great display tanks with all kind of fish but the jelly-fish were the highlight! 

[Corrie Kinkel]

11 hours ago, Jeni Simpson said:

One way of doing the two photos from one rectangle would be to cut the rectangles and place the photo in both, keeping each rectangle close to the other. The photographs can be done so there is no break, as such, in the photographs. I think someone did that in this workshop, I will check.

I thought of that too and I know how to do it but decided against it because I didn't want to tamper with my photos in this occasion. For another type of photo or layout it can be a great way to show photos.

[Jeni Simpson]

2 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

I thought of that too and I know how to do it but decided against it because I didn't want to tamper with my photos in this occasion. For another type of photo or layout it can be a great way to show photos.

Your photographs are so clear and crisp - really quite beautiful, Corrie. I can understand not wanting to slice through them, or to make smaller photographs where they wouldn't have that impact they do.

[Susan Ewart]

17 hours ago, Jeni Simpson said:

One way of doing the two photos from one rectangle would be to cut the rectangles and place the photo in both, keeping each rectangle close to the other. The photographs can be done so there is no break, as such, in the photographs. I think someone did that in this workshop, I will check.

I like this way too.  I have done it before with some Lemurs up a tall tree at the wildlife park I visited often.  It really looked good as the masks were a bit offset and it followed the not straight tree so fittingly.  I have forgotten about this technique though, so I'm happy you brought it up.  

[Cristina]

On 5/14/2025 at 5:40 PM, Susan Ewart said:

Where do you find good PSE videos.  Ones I found aren't so much scrapbooking ones, or they are just doing a layout to sell their products.  I want beginner techniques, like Carole's bootcamp.  Can you tell me if Affinity is as closely related in form to PSE as they say and that Affinity tutorials might translate across to learning PSE.  But first I must face my fear of ON1.

Susan, all the PSE and Affinity videos I've been watching have nothing to do with scrapbooking.   They're more about teaching various techniques using different tools, like what I posted before: Mandala, Typography Effect, Light and Shine to Anything, etc.   I have been watching not only Affinity Photo videos but also Designer and Publisher videos.

A few months ago, I watched Melissa Shanhun's scrapbooking video tutorial, "Make a Digital Scrapbook Page in Photoshop Elements" (2023). I recreated the layout and posted it here.

YouTube doesn't offer many suggestions for PSE Scrapbooking videos, and the one I saw not long ago is this: Getting Started with Digital Scrapbooking in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I don't know the person and haven't watched the video, so I cannot say if it is good.  

But one thing I know is that it's very difficult to find anyone like Carole.

No matter how many videos I’ve watched, I've only started to learn the programs, which takes time.

[Donna Sillia]

On 5/14/2025 at 11:40 AM, Susan Ewart said:

Where do you find good PSE videos.  Ones I found aren't so much scrapbooking ones, or they are just doing a layout to sell their products.  I want beginner techniques, like Carole's bootcamp.  Can you tell me if Affinity is as closely related in form to PSE as they say and that Affinity tutorials might translate across to learning PSE.  But first I must face my fear of ON1.

Susan, I found this YouTube site for some videos on both Affinity and PSE "HTG Photo." He also has some online learning courses that have a fee. There is also a forum for PSE called Photoshop Elements and more that has a lot of good information a tutorials.

 

[Donna Sillia]

I used a PSE action for the layout, but had to finish it in PSP since I didn't know what to do in PSE. It has been such a horrible spring here near Cleveland, OH. I am featuring photo that I took last year of my Japanese maple, my oakleaf hydrangea, my clematis and my lilac. The second layout shows how my plants look after a horrible spring that rained and never became even warm. My landscaper has advised me to wait until the beginning of June to see if anything blooms. I don't have a photo of my clematis since I can't even find the roots.