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Day 1 The first font I used (Swiss721 BlkCnBT Bold) didn't work too well as the fill part was too condensed so I expanded the fill but it then spilled out around the outline on some letters. I then tried in Arial Black ( a safe bet) but had to reduce the kerning a bit. I used X3 Stars for my Picture Tube. It helped laying a Guide Line at the top level where I wanted the stars to appear and then filling downwards. As far as a project goes to apply the effect, I am thinking of a greetings card for my niece in Africa who is about to graduate.

Here is April. Featuring the Red Squirrel.

And my last two pages – a tree in its autumn colours for November and a Christmas flowering cactus for December

July is Roses and August is Thistle.

I had to put ghosts in this one.

May is a peony in full bloom. June, lilies in the sun.

This is my February (1st set) offering.

Here is my Page 2 of the Text Workshop. Our cat Bella loves to check the bookshelves for some interesting stories. I enjoyed playing with all the different fonts: Anberta, Calisto, Cherly, Black Chancery, Cat Paw, Arienne, Cat Paw, Brush Script, and Hesthia Austine. Some items are from Digital Scrapbooking.The cat and books are mine.

Dang! I don't usually do scrapbook pages, so I forget about the drop shadows. Here's lesson 1 - again! BTW, the filler in the letters of the title is an actual photo of the sea and sky. But it's hard to picture that in such a small space.

Day 1 and already behind.... When I filled the text with green, it didn't fill to the full width of all the letters. I am using 2019. When I selected inside each letter, I could select the full width. But I didn't like any of the tubes I tried, I think I was agrivated/frustrated by the fill not being as I expected it...so I stopped.

Hello everyone. Here is the first day's project. Hard to spot the "wave" in the title at this resolution but it's there.

I am using PSP2021 (not PSP2023) and had the problem with the character width on some fonts so the effect didn't work. I then tried out Carole's 0.1 outline technique but couldn't get it to work. In the end was defeated but had a bit of fun with a character that did work.

I had been playing with Carole's Word-Grid, so I went ahead and used the Lesson One technique on the letters for Hanukkah. The font is Babilonia and the decor is from the internet. I'm not very handy with Picture Tubes and was wishing I could have a confetti in the blue, gold and white of the holiday. The large menorah is the top layer set to Multiply and at 45% opacity.

Here's my July page, as an example. I used the Vervelle font for the month days, because it has glyphs. These are two of my grandchildren, whose birthdays are in July. Their favorite colors are pink and green, so I faded those colors as a background.

September put me way behind and will get a do over. I changed the resolution to 300, and then my calendar was way too big. That will teach me to leave things alone. Then I had a horrible time deciding on a background and finally resorted to Adobe Express. I had to lighten it a little. All the photos are from David. I made a mask for the golden lady and highlighted it in gold using layer styles to make it more visible. Hopefully, I will finish in the next few days.

here is an almost finished October. I made the calendar smaller to fit the days of the week across the top and so I could enlarge the Month. Still playing with placements, month in the centre, month to the far left or centered on the date boxes. So, I'll live with this for a bit. The extra space I had planned on using quotes so i will stick with that. I used a gradient on the background (made of one of Cassel's gradients - sunset), two of them, one with an angle and probably a blend mode to blend them together and the fading white as well. kept a copy of all of them then merged the other layers into one layer. Added a texture to the background and to the boxes to make them look like they are part of the background. Havent changed the numbers yet and decided if I'll keep black text or try something else. I did try to blend the rasterized quote and it looked cool, but not sure the calendar would remain cohesive if I did that with all the months. So, this one isnt all the way done but thought I'd show some progress. Now to go back (and forward to Nov/Dec) to complete them all. I'll post as I get each one done. I might have forgotten to take the blend mode of the first part of the quote (it's a separate layer than the word Flowers), it's looks lighter and not black.

November

My theme for this years calendar is Kentucky. Last year I kept it wide open for just about anything. I established a basic layout and "pattern" that I was going to stick with and I think I was able to do that. Before starting, I looked on internet to see if "months" have specific colors associated with them and found out it is totally subjective LOL. I don't think I found two charts anywhere that matched or were even in the ballpark with each other. I just picked one and used it. I incorporated each months birthstone into each calendar. Fortunately NOT subjective, they are pretty much set in stone (pun intended har har !!). Here are the first three. I'll do three more posts each with three calendars. They are all in the gallery and I'm linking to them there in these posts.

I haven't got around to filling the date boxes as yet on this year's calendars. This one is from a previous year's calendar. It's a nice way to use more photos of the same subject. Anyway, again it is down to personal choice, but I like the recipient to be able to write, or mark the dates, which in my opinion means keeping the date boxes soft. There are always many ways to achieve an effect with PSP, transparancy is one, but may I suggest you try using the blend mode. I would promote the background layer, add the image, then apply a blend mode. I as like to keep the texture, if any on the background paper only. You can also change the promoted background colour etc, to get the desired effect.

I'm currently creating two calendars. This one is my bird calendar, the other is a mixture of landscape photos. I will still have some minor editing to do.

July and August The backgrounds are both from AI modified with FF distortion filters. I know that my backgrounds are fussy, but from what I see in David's pictures, Thailand patterns are vibrant and filled with patterns and colors. All the pictures are from David. One thing that I noticed when saving as jpgs is that the resolution was 100 px. I checked the other templates, and they varied from 100 to 200. Carole, should we be changing the resolution to 300 if we are planning to have our calendar printed?

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.

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

I’m using photos I’ve taken of flowers and plants. The dates have been created using Caroles Custom Calendar script – I’d already produced a calendar using these for 2025 so I saved a set as png files and am reusing them in this workshop. I have changed the colour of the days and will colour bank holiday dates blue. The month font is Century Schoolbook, Gautami for the dates. January: The photo is of frost on a small conifer in my garden taken in January of this year. The background layer is a colour from the photo with a very light watercolour texture applied.

Here is May and June

Here are my preliminary March (Andean Bear) and April (Red Panda). I'm on a roll with papers as backgrounds...

Here is March and April. I'm not sure what type of background I want to do, I'm trying a desaturated hue and using the fading foreground with white. If I stay with this idea I'll add some kind of texture to it as well. I have not decided on a font yet.

Here's my lesson 3. The words appear to be off-center, and it's because Paintshop takes the spaces between words into account when centering. I could use a return instead of a space at the end of each line, but that would defeat the whole purpose of the text wrapping.

This time, instead of creating new layouts altogether, I decided to complete the Workshop that I started years ago and had never finished. I tweaked the first layouts a bit. The layouts are all about the visit to see the "Making Van Gogh" exhibition. Credits: DiHiller PS2020Mar My Tribe mini kit freebie / Cassel Admission Ticket & Confetti Tube (Lab7-M09) -- Flair Button Lessons 1 and 2

Day 2. Our tour of Amsterdam Cheese & Clog Factory back in 2014. What a great day we had. I feel a bit happier with this project that Day 1.

Here is my text for day 2. I am still working on the project where I added this text and will hopefully finish it this evening.Used some kerning. This text class is fun. Fonts used: Anberta, Calisto, Cherly, Black Chancery, Cat Paw, Arienne, Cat Paw, Brush Script, Hesthia Austine, and I added drop shadow.

My first atempt at a layout .did the backgrounds using different textures and effects added a photo a frame, tube, drop shadows,finished with the day 2 text/

My niece's engagement/proposal. Template by Tinci Designs #116. Word Art by Rachel Martin, Hilary Word Art. Green and blue papers by Janet Kemp, Boehmian Love Solid Papers Kit.

And this is the cover for my calendar. When I was trying some colors for the background I got this nice result with a blendmode. Originally I had a very light color with a darker layer with my mushroom as a pattern. For the pattern I kept the outline of the mushroom without a fill and with this dark color it looks fine, at least in my opinion. Now I only have to make an index with all the names of the mushrooms , but that is more or less a text file with some sort of frame around it. I will print that on the backside of the cover and I need the Latin names as well otherwise my recipients in another country do not know the Dutch names and I don't know the common German or English names. Besides that I have to change the names of the months to German and English. So I'm not done yet.................

This is my May for the 1st set. I created the photo with a CF watercolor of the jumping fish, and added a background using one of my papers I made with AbstractCurves and adjusted it with HSL, and then added PSP Instant Effects - Watercolor. Then I worked with it to get the softened effect (think I used those extra tools with brushes - push, smudge, etc.

I changed my mind about my pages ie: I moved the photo from January to the front cover since I also have another topic I want to feature for the zoo, their adventurous zipline ride and the dinosaur experience. I will make a back cover also since I need two new areas to fill. Here's my front cover.

Hurrah, I'm back in business! Today I was able to go to the shop and buy a new mouse. I have all my months done and am resizing for posting. As it is almost midnight over here I will post some now and the remainder tomorrow. I didn't want the month names to overlap the masks because I know that some of the recipients of my calendar will cut the photo from the page as the month is over and use those later for making cards. This is my 5th year of making a calendar and over the years I have used different ways of doing the date boxes, like bigger with a photo underneath, smaller with all the special days with colors or small elements, completely colored etc. I also know that the recipients do not want to write on the calendar and besides that not all the special dates are in different countries on the same date and not all have a second X-mas or Easter day. Therefore I made little mushrooms with the dates, just to have something different for this year; I only colored the weekend days differently.

And the Cover. As always, it was fun to participate in this Workshop. 🙂

And here are the last three, October thru December.

I had a bit of extra time last night because we went to wintertime and can now at least show what my calendar is going to look in a more definite way. All the month are going to be in the same style. The only thing I haven't decided on yet, is what to do with the extra space and if I'm going to give the weekend days another color or not. When I'm finished I will post the whole calendar. I'm super impressed with all the different calendars, you all are a creative lot. There is so much going on with all the posts that it is almost impossible to give a reaction on each.

I will finish the rest over the next couple of weeks. This gave me a chance to practice techniques I hadn't used in a while. The pictures are stock images from the Morgue File, and the font is Samantha Upright.

I changed June

It's starting to come back to me. I went for a much simpler, cleaner look this time.

Here I have two versions. One I'm playing with the date box - I just stretched it to see if I wanted it bigger (I do). I will watch the YouTube video Sue T mentioned and think about trying a different style. and I played with the frame/mask which I added a texture to and then a different texture to the background. since I'm wishy-washy on what I want to do, I'm going to try different things and live with them for a bit and hope a good idea comes out of it by the end. You'll notice my photos seem darkish, it was intentional, I seemed to be into the darker moody stuff when I photographed them over several months. They dont look great at this resolution though.

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.

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.

My finished (for now) Jan and Feb calendars. I changed the font to Royal Thailand from CF.

I have done day one and two for my January page.