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Yes, the masks are challenging but also, fun!

Week forty four. Whilst the smaller migratory birds have left, the Geese are now congregating in their thousands in our area. They are feasting on what the combines left behind in the stubble fields. I hear them as they fly over head throughout the night. The majority of these are the snow geese. Truly a sight and sound to behold. As seen through my eyes!

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to live with us. One day my mother was not feeling well she was laying in bed and the phone rang....She got up to answer the phone and could smell burning she looked into the kitchen and there were flames, my grandfather had tried to make his own breakfast, (for the first time), he had put the toast in the toaster and had some eggs in a frying pan, but he had left them there and forgotten about them......When I came home for lunch with my sisters, a lady who lived several doors from us told us that mum had said we should have lunch with her that day.....so we were not aware of it till we got home from school and the fire had been put out, and the kitchen was black with soot!!

Yes it does, and I think that is what puzzled some users!

I didn't go to the lengths I did on the last one. However, this one - I developed the picture from a clip art I had from Kissclipart that I had used in my Alphabet Workshop, put it on a background that I had created to reflect grass and sky, merged it into one image and then used Instant Effects - Watercolor and used strength 50%, Color Match 30% and smooth 22%. I cropped the image to fit inside the first (light) frame.

When we lived in Virginia Beach, not long after we got married, my wife went to melt some chocolate for something using the microwave. I can't remember actual times but where she meant to set it for something like 1 minute, she typoed her keypad entry and set it for 10 minutes. Of course, she walked off and got busy with something else until the smoke detector went off. Needless to say, the house didn't smell nice for awhile. We put the microwave outside in back yard on a picnic table. It sat out there for close to a month before I went to work on it and cleaned all the burnt residue from the insides and the bottom circular glass tray. I was positive it wouldn't work after being outside, being rained on, snowed on, etc. We used that thing for another 7 years LOL.

I heard stories of my great-grand-mother who was cooking baked beans in a pressure cooker and suddenly remembered she forgot to put the lard and opened it with the pressure still on. Supposedly, there were beans on the ceiling too!

YES, YES, YES. New class! Yay!

I actually didn't make them. I happened to have them in my stash from many years ago. I thought they were different than the ones we had in previous calendars. I didn't think it would be that challenging though as I just expected that people would just use a large image and the "extra" would simply fill in the outside. I didn't think participants would go through all the lengths you all did to "separate" the main photos from the "extras". But it could definitely become a class or something like that.

Mary, I agree. I found these masks the most interesting part of the class.

This is June for the 2nd set. It was interesting cropping the photo to fit inside the first frame, adding a layer behind it to make the next layer cream (which I saw let in the background layer as well) so I extended it just a fraction so that it made another frame (cream). Carole, those masks are very interesting. I would love to know how you made them - they are intricate!

The cemetery my parents are buried in is right here in town. I've gone there for many years multiple times during the year. For quite a few years I would go 3 times in May -- Mother's Day, May 20 which was my mother's birthday and Memorial Day. Then I would go on Dec 26 which was her date of death. After Dad passed away 8 years ago, I would go once in May, June 14 (his date of death), Oct 15 (their anniversary), Dec 1 (his birthday) and Dec 26. So I pretty much saw all the seasons of the trees in the cemetery. I always take photos when I go. Since a couple of the dates fall in the months that I do a layout for each day of the month, I have scrapped a lot of layouts of the cemetery. I will share a few. My October layout in 2023 was a few days late because I wasn't feeling good after my surgery. In December 2020 we had a snowstorm on the 1st so I went on the 2nd. The last layout is one I did in 2012.

It's a good thing we can laugh about things years later when we didn't necessarily think they were funny at the time. Thank you for all the laughs, ladies.

Once is all it takes! My husband cant remember what I said to him the day before, but he can remember stuff like melting a colander like it just happened.

Corrie, after the pressure cooker incident at Aunt Bess's my husband hid in the living room every time I used mine! 🤣

The mask kind of looks like it is in layers ??? with varying opacity?????

This week I went to visit "Het Depot" of Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. It is a building special build for storage of all the artefacts a museum has and a place where they research and restore old paintings etc. I have been there before and used the photos from that visit in the Magazine Challenge. There are display cases with some objects from the collection and this one is a dress made out of paper.

I'll check that. The one with the map, I am sure it was carried over. In fact, the whole archived threads were carried over. It is only the images that didn't follow, which is why I kept the "archived version" available. OK, I found it in the Lobby:

Tutorials are available at the Corel Discovery Center. You can sign up for the Discovery Center newsletter that gives links to new tutorials for Corel products, regular free templates and links to other offers. I am also looking at the offer and the chance to also get Painter with all the add ins.

When we just had an air fryer, we had my sister in law staying with us for the weekend. On sunday morning I wanted to warm the croissants I bought for breakfast and I had read that you could do so in an air fryer instead of the oven. Yes you can but you have to reduce the heat which I didn't. It should take just a couple of minutes, but in no time at all the kitchen was full of smoke and the croissants turned totally black. It is already many years ago but my dear husband reminds me of it every time we have croissants by asking if I have set the right temperature. I don't know why, I just did it once..........🤣

I decided to print my pages just to see how they looked and am really glad that I did so. Then, I compared the cmyk that I had also saved; the rgb colors printed much more vibrantly, although I had to increase the vibrancy on a few, especially the reds. They look garish on the computer, but printed they are much better. No more going to the trouble of converting them to cmyk.

Oh, that reminds me of an awkward situation when I was working as a speech-language pathologist. In the 80's group therapies were kind of new and a way to see more patients in the same time period. I was just starting a group and went to the waiting room, called out the four names I had on my paper. So, kids and parents got up and came to the door. One other lady, with a child got up and said, "Can we come too?". I assumed it was a relative of one of the named patients so I said "Sure". As I started the therapy session, I was obviously concentrating on the four named patients, assuming the fifth child was a sibling (or cousin). After about 15 minutes, the extra child's mom raised her voice and asked "How come X is not part of the game?" That is when we figured out she was waiting for her first session with a different therapist. Oops!!!

Just a question, did you bring a gift 🎁 and who ended up with it? 😉

Fabulous Corrie. The cover is striking and really sets off the beautiful mushroom. I cant believe how red it is.

In the Netherlands there are now a lot more cremations than burials! That is the case in my family and my husband's. Of course I have to attend burials from friends or people I know and go out of compassion with them. When that is the case I do not take photos and I never go back to do so, it doesn't appeal to me. Over here after a cremation you can have the urn put in an urn wall at a cemetery or crematorium or put it in an already existing grave; you can scatter the ashes at a special field next to the crematorium or at sea; you can take the urn home with you. My mom and dad choose the scattering field and as a family you can witness it if you wish to. The children of my sister in law scattered their mother's ashes over a lake where she lived nearby her whole life and another sister in law's ash was sprinkled over the sea from a ship. I always loved the little cemeteries in the Alpes in the tiny villages full with flowers and well tended to, but you can't take photos when you pass by and a burial is taking place.

Wow, what a fantastic sight of so many birds! I love and admire the place where you live and the harshness of it too.

yes, of course. I should have remembered that. I do get the emails. I'm thinking I would only use Corel Draw for making rasters into vectors and finally seeing what the EPS files are.

Thank you! I tried using the search function but couldn't find it.

Here's my November Wild Cat Calendar featuring the Pallas Cat. They are found in Asia and are threatened as a species. Accredited zoos have breeding programs to help species in distress. Granddaughter Jackie's Nashville Zoo was recently working in Botswana with giraffes. This Pallas cat or Manul is being called the new Grumpy Cat. I posted a full size .png on our Facebook page for printing.

I did, it was money, so I went home with it till the next weekend when the party actually was.

that reminds me of my Aunt Bess who tried to make pea soup in a pressure cooker. That ceiling always had a greenish cast to it... 😉

I'm sorry I hit the laugh button, but I did laugh at the picture in my minds eye. My mom forgot her eggs boiling on the stove once. they blew up and she had to scrape them off the ceiling.

I did the same thing. Only the party was in a park and there happened to be a party going on so I thought it was the right party. I couldn't understand why I didn't recognize at least some of the people. I slowly made an exit, thankfully no one really noticed if I belonged or not.

Speaking of fires, I always sauteed the filet of venison 🦌 when a hunter delivered for us. I added a dash of brandy at the end to create venison flambe. Well, this one wouldn't light, sooo... I added more brandy. When lighting it, the flames shot up and consumed my kitchen curtains! 🔥

Your pizza story reminds me of my pizza conflagration! 🔥🔥 Our pizza was delivered but no one was ready for it yet, so I turned on the oven to keep it warm. Put it in the oven, box and all. Next thing I knew, the box caught on fire, so I whipped the door open and flung it on the kitchen floor. Unfortunately, there was a throw rug on that floor so it, also, caught on fire!! Luckily, my sink had a spray attachment!😁

thank you so much Monique. I'm glad to see your getting time to get to your calendar. Mine will have to wait a week or so. I love the rich colors you use.

Love the quote! (And the page 😉

Flowers are alway wonderful to use on a calender🙂

I like the font you are using, simple but with a curl 🙂

Life got in the way again, and when I could work on the calender things didn't work out the way I wanted, but finally: 2 page's ready! 🥳 What was the best way again to resize to jpg-600 ? Save as jpeg and then resize? Or resize the psp-image? And now I will have a look at your calenders! 🙂

It's funny I didnt recognize the texture at all. I was planning on reshooting the garage doors (that's where the texture is) this year with my better camera. Well, you can see how I got around to that. Now it's cold and frosty so i dont want to be out in that.

Most of the gradients I use are preset and I will tweak them depending on the project. Susan has a good outline of that process in a later post.

To complete my calendar: this is the index for my Dutch calendar and I'll change the language to German or English but the rest will be exactly the same. I have enjoyed looking at all the different calendars that are made, or are in the making. It was great to see the verity in styles and creativity and I it has given me new ideas for next year.

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.................

For all the pages I used a clipart from my stash that suited the month, but I kept them simple because the photos are the stars of the calendar.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it, well, I hope I am. but I know I'll be staring blankly at the corel draw screen not knowing how to even start. I have wanted it too and had it once years ago but never used it. 😪

I'm interested also. The only way so far that you showed us was in the vector workshop - how to draw around the raster object, highlight the nodes and make them symetrical to soften and make the curves as needed. Works, but Corel Draw has intrigued me for some time, but the cost was too high.

Great photo and great weather for a hike!