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At first I had no idea what to do for this topic; I have no photos of the aquarium we had many years ago. That was way before the digital camera and iPhone existed; in those days we only took photos from our kids or on holiday. But the gardencenter in our village has a decent aquarium department and although it was almost impossible to get a good shot of the fish tanks or aquariums I managed to get something usable. For the background I used "By the stream" from Jessica Dunn and blended that with a fishy paper by Marissa Lerin from her Origonian Fisher kit. On my photo I used cass-CurlyLines script to get rid of the parts I didn't want. Two little fishes also from Marissa were recolored and used to make a banner. The rest of the fish I found on Pixabay. In the new lab 14-07 is a tutorial on how to make an enamel element and I used on a clipart plant. Enamel is a very easy technique and I like the result it gives. The title is made up of the letter A from the freebie alpha that comes with this week's blogpost, and the font for the rest is Impact.

Besides working in the yard mowing grass etc. Mostly I get out and take pictures like this one from my neighbor's yard after the 5" rain we had last night.

I'm still stuck on vectors which I find fascinating. My latest little creature is an owl. The patterns are from FF, the feathers around the face are a'dozi feather brushes. Feathers on body, chest and wings are from feathers from CF made into patterns. Eyes and feet are from Canva.

I have no idea right now... 🤔 I have to go back and do it again to see what I did. But there are always so many things to do after a trip. Probably next week, I will be able to work with PSP.

You did something great with this. I would never have thought of a garden centre with fish to get something! Clever you!

I made a couple of layouts for friends after they sent me some pix of things going on in their lives. Which tells you not much is going on in mine! 😁

Here's a tropical fish I had in my 5 gallon home aquarium 2 years ago. You can only house one Siamese Fighting Fish (Betta) at a time as they would tear each other apart. In this photo, he was expanding his body and flaring his gills out to meet the threat of my finger. LOL This little guy lost his life by jumping into the filter mechanism. They are very interesting and responsive pets, considering they are fish, and I became quite attached to all of them. RIP Wolfie. 😔

Just to let everyone know, the pre-sale will start on July 9th, but I would like to TRY to get to #1 on Amazon, even if only for one day! To help out, I would ask anyone who wants to get the book to order it ONLY ON RELEASE DATE, which is July 16th! The more sales/day will give more chances to reach #1. Sales during pre-sale counts, but would be spread over more days, so hold off until July 16th!

I was poking around to find any layouts I had done for my other Bettas. I found this Quick Page for my guy, Patriot, which is fitting for today, America's Independence Day, July 4.

Donna you did a lot of work on this one, not only the vectors but especially the different patterns to "fill" your owl!

Lovely cards and in your own unique style!

I sent them all on to you Ann. So we here in Ontario would have some clean walkways at the waterfront!😉

These are screenshots from an Audubon Osprey cam. The background I duplicated and blurred the top one and then erased the part over the Osprey.(I could have done a better job of that) I then used the same circle to cut out the head shots from other screenshots so they would all be the same size and placed them all over the place. Font for name is French Script MT.

I took the opportunity to get out and clean off my front porch which was coated with straw from the cat cabin which I have now relocated to my patio. I brought the plant that I just acquired at the garden center, from the patio to brighten up the porch. The porch is where I've been feeding the community cats twice a day. You can see Brandy 2 in the lower left corner of this shot from my overhead porch-cam, thinking she can stalk the birds. They were having none of it! LOL

Week twenty six. Nestling tree swallows waiting for their parents to come with food. I took this shot along with many others of them, even being fed late this afternoon.

Week twenty five, fledged North America Robin siblings.

week twenty four, ground squirrel helping himself to the Robins and Orioles blueberry jam. I have run of my own jam. I have to wait until the new season of Bluberries come into the shops.

Week Twenty two, male barn swallow. Fox cub, around 13-15 weeks old.

I might as well post this for July 7 - Week 26. I saw this little girl near my patio and was impressed with the feather pattern and general attitude. Looked it up and discovered a juvenile female Red-Winged Blackbird. They DO have attitude and I have quite a few here at my feeders. The males clash with the Red-Bellied Woodpecker, who tends to think he alone owns the suet feeder. She stays mostly on the ground.

Week 26 Half way there and I'm still going. Nice to be almost caught up. the background is from Riley B Graphics at Creative Fabrica, along with the fonts Aesthetic Violet Slant and Aesthetic Pattern Sans. Changed the magnet out for a button. Not sure I'll keep doing the button, but it was what I wanted to do for the next 13 weeks. I had to go really thick on the face of the button or it cut the '7' off and looked weird. Also I made it huge so I had to take a chance on doubling or tripling the settings from the video. It's really good practice though to do a button, so I might do them even if they arent great to look at and they are white on a white playing card. Plus the cards themselves were so uneven on the actual deck.

I = Ice Blue Red Top Zebra (Metriaclima greshakei). Can only be found in Africa’s Lake Malawi. Good Ole Google

I got to playing with the USA States shared by Daniel Hess. I did a bunch of stuff to it including adding Hawaii and Alaska at the bottom and then put it on top of an American flag. Then I got it into my head to create a July 4 celebration using it. The background paper is from Creative Fabrica The text is Microsoft Himalaya from who knows where.

Here is my Wild Cat Calendar for July 2024. The month and year are in Babilonia font. Everything else is in Agency. Someone posted this story and two photos on my Facebook feed a few weeks ago. I have posted the larger version in the Files section at the top of our Scrapbooking with Paintshop Pro group there.

Julie not so clever as you assume because many of the gardencenters over here have an animal department with toys for a cat or dog, animal food, in fact everything you may need for your pet. The one thing that they don't sell are the animals itself with the exemption of fish, at least until now. We go frequently to the gardencenter in our village for a cup of coffee and cake because there is a nice cafeteria as well and I admit most of the time I come home with a new houseplant, a bunch of flowers or something we need for our patio. Just today we went there and I had to ride home with a somewhat larger plant in my bicycle bag. I rode rather slowly because I was afraid the plant would fall out of the bag on places where the road was bumpy, but I and the plant came home in one piece!

Oh, this makes me feel so happy! They are so darned cute! thank you.

The swallows are aerial acrobats, I never tire watching them. As for the ground squirrels, they never cease to make me laugh. Mind you they weren't amuzed to have jam on their faces and feet. They would rub their faces in the grass to get it off, then lick the jam of the blades of grass, once they had washed themselves. I decided to place a spoonful of jam on top of the jar for them. Such great enterainment all around, when one is prepared to look for it. Plus it is free.

Week 26 A marigold flower (calendula officinalis) catching the sun.

Hi , here is my work with the sketch, I used a collab kit from PickleberryPop named Wildbouquets

Week-26, we are already half way through 2024. Where is the time gone, or do I sound a bit old now....... After all the rain of the last weeks this week the sun did its utmost best to let us forget that and not only we but the plants enjoyed it too. I have taken the opportunity to shoot a lot of photos from the plants on my small patio. The gardencenter we usually visit often has a rack with small free plants that are no longer good enough to sell but if you take care of them they most of the time perform later on. This petunia was looking dreary and didn't like all the rain but, look what a couple of warm, sunny days did to it.

I spent yesterday revising my wedding card. Most of the graphics are from CF except the silhoutte which is from Canva. The side font is ruritania. The other fonts are FarewellAngelina and FancyPants(I don't remember where I got them) and starinline(purchased from Deeezy.com). The other font is DDRadford from CF. I made the letters M and J, but stupidly forgot to save the vector so I don't remember what it is, but it's from CF. I also made the gold frame on the inside. The wedding is today so I just managed to get it ready after an extremely hectic week. The card is an 8 1/2 by 11 printed borderless on card stock.

Actually, I'm now feeding seven outside cats twice a day so any hunting they do is a supplement. We just trapped four of them: 3 boys were neutered and returned here. I have a "cat cabin" filled with straw on my front porch where I feed them, so they do have shelter even though the porch is also covered. The leftover female, Brandi, is still too young to spay so they're putting her in foster in hopes to domesticate her as she's quite friendly. I still have 3 more to trap including a surprise twin to Brandi that I'm calling Randi. It looks like i may have been feeding both all along and not realizing there were twins in the mix. Predators are mostly raccoons that do threaten newborn kittens. The rescue moves fast when they hear of a litter. No coyotes, thank goodness! I remember your neighbor's cat with the "sexy tail" from the last vector class! LOL

I agree, and some weeds are quite pretty. I also have a bug hotel (very exclusive!), well, it's just some logs from the dead parts of a tree we had to cut off (now the tree is spindly but doing fabulous). The Magpies keep eating the guests at the hotel! So, it's a stay-at-your-own-risk kind of hotel. I'm lucky my hubby pulls the weeds, I don't because the neighbours cat does his business in the garden 😪. My husband has a stronger nose, and his icky-factor sense is higher than mine.

Here the sketch I did. Pretty much followed the sketch. The three photos are mine (one was extracted- yellow dandelion). The little tag was a vector shape I made in the first Vector Workshop. I made frame by promoting the background layer and gave them a bevel. the lines below the tag are the effect>cutout and i used a vector ellipse shape to have tapered ends. It's the first time I made something I could use "Selection from Vector Object". The background paper is a photo I did of dandelion seeds on a black background. I first did negative image, then used a blend mode, then I think I used HSL and reduced the opacity or something like that. the bottom tiling is a CASS punch (cass-Edge12), then a small inner bevel and small shadow which made it stand out more. Fonts used are Adorn Copperplate on the tag and Amanda Sunshine for the quote. Both from Creative Fabrica. My text tool was acting very strangely today. I couldnt move it or resize it, it would just jump back to where it was. Also I used cass-screwheads picture tube for the screw on the tag. I'm not sure about the quote. I couldnt find any color that showed up well against the busy background. I tried the paint behind technique but I did a dismal job at it so I used a layer style so the quote would at least be readable.

I got some pretty good moon picks a few nights ago and combined two of them and then put it on a Starry Night Sky background (probably from C,F.

@Jeni Simpson Glad that you are learning. Vectors will be less intimidating with practice. @Michele Take care of yourself. The lessons will wait! @Cristina Those multiple checks will become second nature. How are you getting an outline through both sides of the mug? If you make a cutout, it should not show a line through the handle. @Trevor Andrew Yes, it requires practice to switch like that quickly. Over time, you will do it automatically, without getting frustrated. And yes, the forum only takes jpg images 🙂 @Jnet Allard That is a good start! you are really doing good. @Ann Seeber You are catching up well! @Gerry Landreth Great practice. I like that leave that you outlined from a photo! @Cindy Sheets You will get there. It will get easier and easier with practice. @Louyse Toupin Great work. Was it getting easier? @Bonnie Borntrager You are getting the hang of it! @Donna Sillia Yes!! It looks great for that re-try! @Jen Brown There are all kinds of "wonky hearts" and many of them are available as fonts. Why not as preset shapes? @Alicia Garbelman It is great that you are persevering! @Corrie Kinkel Great work. Those little holes on the eggs are fine the way they are! As you say, you can always tweak them if needed. @Anja Pelzer That is a really cool composition! @middie Your shape did survive the kiln here! 🙂 Do you know that there is a way to "simulate" some of the layer styles? Using the Sculpture effect (yeah, not the most obvious). @Emerald Jay That is good. Do you still have to read the steps one by one to do the cutout? Keep it up. You are all doing great. I hope you are getting more comfortable with the vectors and the nodes now.

Day 4. I had trouble with this one, even though I had cut and pasted the handle into the cup vector layer, I still had no hole between the handle and the cup! However, when I exported it as a shape, that hole was there! So I then saved to a raster layer and filled the shape with a gradient, and I had a handle again!

wow you all have done a great work, here is my day 4 , a cup , a pot , and a table , all saved as shapes this time is was great to work with the knots, no problem with the cut out, last year it works also , but not so nice

Thanks for the suggestions from a manager, I note everything Here is my lesson 3

I redid my leaves using the pen tool and the nodes. I filled the first one with the photo of one of my leaves. I made wonky veins with the pen tool, added a gradient and filled with the fine leather texture. The stems were isolated--one filled with a gradient green and one filled with a brown gradient. This time was easier than the last time.

I have used KeePass (free) for many years. Same idea as LastPass, only one p'word to remember. I also have a portable version on a USB so I can take it with me.

Day 3 and 4. The cats are napping, allowing me some alone time to concentrate.

Jnet: I wish you the best on the move. The stress can take a toll on you, so take care. For the passwords, yuk and double yuk! When you can, check into password managers. There are several free versions of the more popular ones. Also, current browsers have built-in managers. I use one that can store information in the cloud and access it from anywhere and on any device. Good luck!

Have a good trip, "see" you when you are back!

Lesson 4 Quite a bit going on here, the cut and paste failed first time around, not sure what I did wrong. Keep on trying……. I tried attaching a .pspshape file to share but only jpegs

and Lesson #2 -

Week 24 We have a couple of broad based planters filled with water and pond plants. The birds like to drink from them and I get to enjoy the flowers. This year the Yellow Flag Irises have done really well – this photo is one of them in the rain.

I used a photo of my patio in this week's chitchat and it had my hortensias in it. I had made a couple of photos and for Week 24 I used one that is a more close up one in which the hortensias are better to see. Thanks to the constant rainy weather and low temperatures they are very lush this year. Oké that's the only plus 😢 of this weather ☔

I forgot to post this while waiting for the Campus to stop having a nervous breakdown! j/k My Chippy is quite photogenic. Now he wants to come in a play with the cats. (I don't think so; Eve would dispatch him handily 😞 )

Canada geese are very common in Europe. In the UK they were introduced hundreds of years ago and you can find them in most places where there is inland water like ponds and lakes. In the winter the numbers increase as some migrate here but even without them we have many thousands. To us they are a common sight - its other types of geese that are interesting!

I had to drive around this very scene yesterday returning home from an appointment. Usually, the geese hang out around my condo complex, but they've been missing lately so now I realize they're off raising families. I do have one male goose (gander?) who sits alone outside my kitchen window. He appears to be waiting for his mate, who is among the missing this season. She (and he) came around a lot the last two years. She was noticeable because she limped and had a band around the affected leg. Last fall I named them George and Gracie and then, suddenly, she was gone. I hope I didn't jinx the fine couple. 😔