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I've been able to make a little extra time lately so I can stop reusing my old pics for the themes my game is repeating. My last two projects show a stark difference in styles that were dependent on the themes. Easter Cuteness: The frame with the rabbit is a freebie by Ditz Bitz that was shared in the FB group FTU PSP Stuff. I added some Easter grass behind it that I think was a freebie from Corel. I found the font, Thanks Bunny, a few years ago on Creative Fabrica. It comes with the cutest glyphs. Bohemian Inspiration: CF has a bundle of Bohemian Girls that I fell in love with. I combined it with one of CF's Spring Grunge Floral Background Papers and various borders/frames from Pixel Scrapper. The font is Baby Boho from CF. I use a lot of products from CF and PS. They offer free products daily and I have subscriptions to both at very reasonable prices.

Susan, look who showed up today. A sharp-shinned Hawk. My resident Merlin has now got some competition. Mind you, there's more than enough House Sparrows for them. Sheltering under the lilac hedge, with the Robins. It's still snowing and blowing. I'm yet to get a shot of the Merlin.

I've had quite a few pets: cats, dogs, tropical fish, guinea pigs, a de-scented skunk, ponies and horses. The most spectacular were the Irish Wolfhounds that we had starting around 1980 and for about 20 years, encompassing one female and after she passed away we acquired a pair, siblings, whom we named Mick and the female was already named "Annie." She was older and we got her to keep the male under control. As a 7-month-old pup, he was a handful. He was roughly the size of an Irish Setter and still had growing to do! I apologize for the photo, the only one I have of them. It was originally black and white, and I attempted to colorize it. The layout is from a Corel freebie template for Father's Day 2023. The background paper is from Melo Vrijhof, the font is Classic Barbershop and the celtic decor is from pngegg.

That is so true. My eyes are alway peeled for ideas, whether I see something on the telly, in the campus or out and about which catches my eye, I will try to replicate it, incorporating it into a page. I will look out for your post, which will also include your exqusite distinctive style. Scripts are awesome, and time saving, but there is something most satisfying and rewarding when you create something yourself. For me that's the beauty of the tutorials in the creative scrap/lab, and of course the masterclasses. It's a pleasure to sometimes be a sourse of inspiration and helpful when I can.

I'm like a magpie. I see something and then I want to mimic it. I guess that's part of the learning process. I loved the Block Photo technique on the robin photo, so I looked up the tutorial. Not as difficult as I thought it must be. So watch out, I'll be posting something with it. And it will be b/c Sue used it so beautifully and prompted me!

I agree, they are fun to make, but I'm afraid not for my layouts. Though I do like them when others use them in their pages. You know that I'm going to expect to see that technique used in one of your lovely pages. lol

Cheers! Several little details, which doesn't over crowd, or make the layout appear busy, to distract from the photos, yet makes the viewer's eye wander, to absorb the whole page. Although the Masterclasses are great, and I love them. I have always and still do prefer the tutorials in what was the creative scrap, and now called the Lab. Even though a greal deal of the tutorials are available as scripts. I enjoy creating my own elements. Even though I rarely use patterned papers, I have created templates for all of the paper template tutorials in the creative scrap and Lab. My least favourite patterned paper is plaid. The Robins are still here, I doubt they will move on until the weather is more favourable.

I'm still playing with my Beach Kit. This is a freebie and I believe it is from Corel some time ago. The font for the title is MV Boli. Summer in March at the Gulf!

Week 16 All the conifers in the garden have new growth. The photo is of new cones on a fir tree - I just thought they were cute.

I got so excited at the arrival of the Hawk, I misidentified her. I have been taking photos of the sharp-tailed grouse, which confused me. She is actually a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

I want to be you! So awesome, and so lucky. I am enjoying the rabbits near work, and I'm a bit miffed someone bought the empty lot and now there is a container on it and stakes in the ground(possible building soon). Don't they know that's the rabbit(hare?) plot of land? yeesh, Humans, what can you do with them, eh? Thank you for thinking of me, very much appreciated!

Sue - but plaids are so much fun to make!!! LOL Thanks for the tip on the block photo. Just downloaded the Block Photo tutorial. Thanks. Interesting. Watched the video.

Oh so much to look at. Love it. I like both framing techniques. The photo block; is the "frame" part cut out to reveal the background? Same with the S in Snow, it has a nice little separation with the R in Robins. That must've been exciting to have that many Robins all at once. Edit: I see the photo block is a mask, the other comments came in as I was typing the first questions. And the answer to the S as well. Thank you, it's nice to turn the computer on and see such wonderful eye candy. Good for the soul and no calories!

I had to wrap up to go outside today. It was worth it to sit observing and listening to all the Robins out in the trees. Once again I used Carole's punches, and corner punch. Played with some frames around the photo. Photo block technique on the main photo. I replicated Carole's newest Admission ticket. Created my own tokens.

They were forecasting snow for today, so yesterday I decided to take a drive to the areas where I knew I'd be guaranteed to see Native Crocus. As for today, it is snowing with 70km winds, which has also blown in a large flock of migratory Robins, up to a hundred I'd say. Large Flocks of Robins always turn up on snowy days at this time of year. Some will stay, but the majority are only passing through. Thank goodness, as I wouldn't be able to afford to feed them all throughout the summer. 😉 Pulsatilla nuttalliana, known as prairie pasqueflower or prairie crocus. The first of the native flowers to bloom.

I found some gorgeous cakes inspired by the wedding dress, but I liked this one the best. (Dress designed by Claire Pettibone; cake by Homebaked Heaven.) All of the elements and the paper were in my stash. I've had them for so long that I can't give the proper credit. The font is England Hand DB, available for free on many sites.

Well said!

Just sharing a chuckle posted by my Warwick library on Facebook.

Both, I don't have the script. I like to create my own.

Good morning, and thank you. I must admit that I have never used alphas, only fonts. The font is called wooden brench. I applied the impasto script to it, which I won some time ago. In order for the letter S to sit comfortably in the letter R I used from vector shape, expanded, then deleted part of the letter R.

Having the pic on the top right on top of the punched part of the paper is a very interesting twist on the usual.

Yes, that's right Carole, I was careful with publicly borrowed books, but in my own books I have sometimes drawn or written down or underlined something in pencil. Soon I'll make a scrap of one of these book drawings from my youth. That's why I love coloring around in my e-books and PDFs today; you can correct or delete them again.🤩 Illuminations May 1969 Credits: on scrap; Font: Shopie

Hi Sue. What a charming layout! Can you tell me if the title "ROBINS" is a font or an alpha? It's very interesting.

I've had pets all my life. A dog when I was a wee thing, then cats, cats, and more cats. Then in 2004 I got my very own dog (from friends who had to give her up). I was blessed because she was such a good girl. Since then, there have been other pooches, and I presently have three small ones. One is "mine", and the other two are long-term fosters who will be with me till the end. This layout is for My Girl, the first dog I got. Her name when she came to me was Anna, but a friend said, "No, that's not right. She's too glamorous; her name should be Lana, like Lana Turner". And that's what it became. I've had temporary foster dogs, cats until last year (and still missing having at least one), and can't imagine a life without some wee critters. They can be a lot of work, but the joy they bring is worth it.

So vintage and classic.

What a difference in two days, yesterday I was in jeans and T shirt. I did cover up to lay on the ground taking photos of the crocus. I still came back with 2 ticks on me. Today -1c I bet the horses are cursing me for brushing out their winter coats. Crows are very inteligent, and will soon have you very well trained.

That's so beautiful. I'd love to see flocks of robins. I'm happy when I see just ONE! We had snow too, and it was quite windy and blowing...when I woke up I thought it was November again. My crow fam has finally returned. You know how the female crow does the begging behavior when they are getting nest/eggtime ready(to remind the mate to bring her food when she's on nest duty). Well, I think my crow fam does that to me. The scenario as follows: land on wire, caw till silly human slave hears (they are practically deaf!), silly human (me) runs for the peanuts and bark butter bits and heads outside to spread the joy.

Week 15 - Ran across this photograph of a hunting Osprey on Bored Panda. The photographer is Chen Chengguang from Vietnam. He specializes in artistic shots of birds. The Osprey, like the Bald Eagle, hunts fish.

I’m only privileged to the presence of Warblers during Spring and Autumn, as they don’t nest here, only pass through. Warblers offer wonderful diversity, with more than 50 species in North America. They also offer interesting challenges , with completely different patterns in Spring and Autumn. ID ing them in the Autumn can be a real challenge. This one is a young Autumn Myrtle’s Warbler which I took on the 26th Sept last year. The Myrtle species has a distinctive white throat. The bird you have showcased is a Spring mating male. I have never used the Merlin app. I’m sure it can do a good a job, but it’s not infallible. I believe it knows which birds are near to you, based on sightings submitted by bird watchers. The app can be helpful, but it’s not diagnostic. I’m not saying that it didn’t correctly ID the bird. To use it in order to create lovely scrap pages, with interesting information, it has served your purpose. The bird groups I use, doesn’t allow any comments, where the Merlin app ID’d the bird. They say it’s not a proper or acceptable documentation.

We went to the Indiana Motor Speedway to view the eclipse. I just used a point-and-shoot Canon camera, but it has a 40x zoom. I got this during totality. (It's not as good of quality as the original, so I could post it here.)

I used the grid from the Workshop with my photos, Beth's photos and photos from my hairstylist that he gave me permission to use. I have used the quote in the doublepage workshop. The butterflies are my own extracted with a few that I made into tubes. The font is Ambidexter, an olf. I separated the letters and filled each vector with different flower patterns from my own flower pictures. Since there were so many letters that I would have had to rasterize, I used the layer styles for the bevel and the shadow (not as good as if the had been rasterized). The background is one from some gradients downloaded from Deviant Art and called Kaiharii.

Hello, my dears, I hope I'm making this announcement in the right place. Perhaps the rose-loving German or European members of the campus would be interested in experiencing a parade with a rose queen elected every two years and many themed floats made of rose petals. We already experienced this in 2006, here is my current Alphascrap from the DS forum. I have the link to Steinfurth for you in English, but you can also set it to German at the top right. https://www.bad-nauheim.de/en/discover/festivals-and-events/rose-festival There is also a memorial stele in Bad Nauheim for Elvis Presley, who was stationed there as an US Army soldier in the late 1950s.

These are my pictures of the 2024 Solar Eclipse

I just cobbled together this layout using my template from the webinar's grid format. Photos by (daughter) Laurey Keller of 2024 Total Eclipse, Matamoras, PA SI-Star Gazer kit / Elements = Light (overlay @ 50% opacity) + Nebula-1 (Does anyone know who "SI" is?) Font=Distant Galaxy Outline (which was an offering by Star Wars creator Lucasfilm) / White Sand gradient

Image taken Hammond Indiana using solar eclipse glasses placed directly over the camera lenses,on the samsung galaxy cell phone lenses using manual shutter speed and ISO adjustments. Worked in a pinch

We had cloudy weather but it actually worked to our advantage. It was possible to see the eclipse without constant use of the special glasses. I even took a few pictures with my unprotected cell phone. And it got so dark that solar powered night lights switched on. And as an added bonus, it got dark enough that a star was visible in the sky. That is it on the lower right. I looked it up. It turns out the star is Sirius (AKA The Dog Star, an Easter egg for you Harry Potter fans out there.)

No scrapbook pages yet but I did get some photos. My cousin is going to get some more to me that she took with her phone. We had an awesome time, just sitting in my driveway. It started cooling down 5 to 10 minutes before totality then warmed back up after it was over. I saw today that we dropped 8 degrees Fahrenheit during it. We had almost 4 minutes of totality. My solar lights in my flower beds came on but luckily I had remembered to turn the motion light above my garage off but the video still recorded! So I have video of us watching and our comments during the totality! Many of my neighbors had lights come on during the darkness. The weather was just gorgeous with very few clouds in the sky. Temps were in the low 70's which is unusual for this early in April. I live about 1.5 miles north of the county fairgrounds. They were open for camping all weekend and had entertainment, food stands and vendors all weekend. Then viewing of the eclipse on Monday. We could hear the crowd screaming, yelling and clapping during totality. We also saw a couple fireworks off to the southwest during totality, not sure who did those though. This is the one and only eclipse I will probably see. The next one in Ohio is in 2099... I would be well over a hundred years old so doubt I'll be around for it! Not even sure I would be around for the big one that will cross the USA in 2045 and if I would be, I don't think I'll be traveling to see it. I am so glad that I got to see it and very thankful that we had perfect weather since Ohio weather in April can be hit or miss. We had clouds on Saturday/Sunday and today has been cloudy with thunderstorms tonight. Monday was perfect!

Following Sue Thomas' lead, I did the grid challenge from the webinar and created two templates. This is the first, showcasing some spring flowers from Warwick. The lower right is just clipart from Jessica Dunn. Very plain, no shadows or overlapping embellishments.

I'm hoping to find time to create something new, but here's something I created several years ago. See how Cass's corner punches can make plain paper look so pretty? The font is Ernesthuge from CF. The centerpiece took many steps, but if you want them, just ask.

kit ciel bleu by Regina Falango

From February 2022 Masks Workshop - Ukranian Sunflowers

It took a while to extract these Roses from photos I have taken over the years. The frame is one of cass-ColoredPetals-SquareFrame. I kept looking at it and decided it needed a frame and found the perfect one for it.

Because I like this theme challenge and I like this mask I made another layout using a photo from a crabapple (Malus) tree in my neighborhood. With a more colorful photo and another background it looks completely different. The background is made with 2 papers and a blendmode; all the elements are by Jessica Dunn and I made a very thin frame and the font is Beladine Gadelia.

After a mild and warm March, we are having a much wetter and colder April so far. There are a few early bulbs out here but they're biding their time. I had to dig into old pix to find one from my own garden a number of years ago. The mask I used is the free one from Jessica at Curio Pantry. I blended a couple of background papers, used some splashes and splatters and some squiggles.

I hope this counts...more like pre-flowers than "flowers". I posted this one because my grid squares are not square (look at the far right column) and I'm hoping the Masterclass will teach me how to make everything square and even. These were the first sunflowers I've ever grown (2023). They were supposed to be 6' tall, perfect fit where I put them (against the garage wall). They ended up being mutants and grew to over 10 feet tall, having to bend around the eves troughs to reach for the sky. Some got too top heavy that they leaned over and that's when I got this shot. My lighting designer/expert was Mother Nature.

Lately on a dry spell I came along a front garden in a street I normally pass by and saw a magnificent rather big Prunus in full bloom. The only problem was that I had to take my photo from the pavement and in that position it was impossible to get a good shot of the tree without getting the front window and door of that house on the photo too. Nowadays you have to be a bit careful when you do that, because most people don't like you doing so and I didn't want the house in the photo anyway. Therefore I took some close-ups and used one of them here. I like the work of Jessica Dunn and subscribed to her newsletter recently. She hosts a mask challenge on digitalscrapbook.com for this month and has a freebie mask and as a welcome gift I got the mini kit dandelion wishes part 2. And I used both the mask and the kit for this layout to make a background from 2 papers with a blendmode. Made a cluster with some elements, changed some colors to go better with my color scheme and made a text frame because the frame in the kit was way to overpowering for this photo. The font is Belinda, a freebie from CF. Just a whole layout using freebies!!!

UK WIld Flowers. I have many favourites. The Campion which flourishes in hedgerows all over the country, can flower almost all year round in some areas. Wales and Cornwall, especially so. I used one of Carole's lace picture tubes, edge magic script on the flower elements, which I created myself, adding the flowers names on a curve, as the flowers are vectors. As for the tile, I went wild using many different fonts, and colours from the photos. Due to compression, some of the flowers names in the flowers may not be legible. Forget me nots, Primroses, Cowslips, Shepherds smock. The main photo is a macro shot of the Campion flower.

Flowers it is. Fonts. Butterline, Bell, Cornish Pastry, Selectric Advocate

I will start with another version of these daffodils that I posted last month. I do play with flower pictures a lot an could really go crazy with this theme.