Leaderboard

Using my new layered mask for another picture and layout.

Daughter Laurey came over yesterday and hauled the Cat Cabin from my front porch to the dumpster to remove the old straw so we could refill it for the winter. My little feral colony has grown from 2 black cats (Batman & a youngster (gender unknown, which I dubbed Robin) with the addition of 4 black half-grown kittens, for a total of 6 black cats! The littles are slowly becoming brave enough to approach the porch when I go out to feed everyone. Our temps have not been overly cold with occasional mornings under freezing, but these kids seem quite hardy. I try to feed them enough to build them up for cold weather. Here's a shot from my porch cam that shows the whole crew eating. That's Batman on the doormat, supervising. 😉

Hi Everyone! Thank you, Carole, for the Humble Bundle heads up! I never knew it existed. I did buy the whole bundle offered. I have lusted for the Draw and Painter software for some time, but never had the money or the Gbs on my old computer for such an indulgence. Everything seems to have downloaded and I have watched some Corel videos. I am now warily circling the programs and poking at them with a sharp stick.🤪

This is a screenshot of my multi-layer mask pspimage

Playing around again. @Donna Sillia you inspired me to create a multi-layer mask also. This is what I came up with

I might need to borrow your stick! Glad to hear you took advantage. Reminds of of the old Ikea commercial where a woman is running out the store. She thinks she's gotten a "steal" of a deal and she's running and yelling, "start the car, start the car." (to make quick get away before she's found out).

YIKES! Thank you for noticing. I would not have noticed it. Even though i've looked at many times. The funny part is when i started posting them, I wondered how many spelling mistakes will come to light. Thanks again, for having my back and for your kind words (that made me very happy).

I'm a rebel. hahaha. The flower made me do it.

I came across a Challenge on O Scraps using a technique they refer to as Creative Photo Treatments based on the Adamski Effect (which was new to me). I browsed through the layouts in the gallery and was really impressed, so I thought, "Why not?" Playing and experimenting are good for us, right? PSP does not work the same as PS so I had to tinker and adjust and replace some tools to get even close to what they did. There is a link somewhere on their page that takes one to the video on YouTube that shows how to create the Adamski Effect. I'm posting the original photo I used from UnSplash or Pixabay, and then the layout I made. Mine is not like the ones in their gallery, but I just really wanted to try it. The photo effect took way too long! Link to Challenge: https://oscraps.com/community/threads/november-challenge-5-creative-photo-treatments.40747/

Week 44 I used a PSP floral pattern, selected the background color and inverted and promoted the leaves to a new layer. I added a negative shadow to recess them into texture (which was tin foil), which looked to me like the tree trunk outside my window. the blue in the background came from two gradients with different opacity. the fonts are Fleur De Leah (yes, that's the spelling of it), and Federo from CF or Google(via FontBase).

Week 43 Started with a PSP floral pattern, turned it gray and did a high pass sharpen and added noise. Then added a gradient paper above and used a blend mode and lowered the opacity. The vectors are all filled with the pattern, cass-steel, and I added a tiny bevel and shadow on all. Fonts are Dustin Hunk and Arial (CF and Windows).

My husband was never happy when he had to climb on the ladder and did it only when absolutely necessary. I had to be home as well in case something went wrong and to hand him stuff he needed so he didn't had to climb up and down. I could give him what he wanted from the first floor window because we have a flat roof. Since we have solar panels there is a company coming to check on those and they remove the leaves when needed, but there are gutter guards. The only gutter that must be cleared is the one on the shed and that isn't very high up, it is single story. Besides that we now have moved the garden chair cushions inside and the chairs are in the shed. The table stays outside during the winter and I put some baskets or pots with for instance cyclamen on them to watch from the living; our winters are mostly mild with not much or no snow. It is a nice spot to have some X-mas decorations as well, but that is for december. Not all the leaves are already from the trees or shrubs therefore we have to sweep the path and the patio regularly.

I've registered! I learn something new every time!

In October I bring in the cushions from the patio furniture and put them in the basement and put the lawn chairs/table on the front porch away in the garage. I have a wind chime that was given to me when my father passed away that I only have out from April to October. It still looks like new since it hasn't endured the harsh winter weather (unlike my other wind chimes that end up falling apart). I also have 2 garden hose reels that are stored in the garage during the winter. That gets done in October before the temps hit freezing at night. Within the next couple of weeks, my neighbor will put the snow poles along the driveway that will guide him when he plows my drive when we have snow. I don't do holiday decorations outside, heck, I don't do much inside either! As far the your story about your husband and cleaning the gutters in the newsletter, I have never had to do that. Many years ago my father had gutter guards put on the gutters when he fell off the ladder and broke his wrist or elbow (don't remember which) while cleaning them out. Thankfully this is a one-story house so the fall wasn't that far. After putting on the guards he never had to clean them out again so it isn't something I've had to have done either.

No horses over here! The only place where I could see a horse was on the weekly cattle market on my way to and from school. At that point in time there was still a cattle market in the center of Rotterdam! When I was in elementary thé thing to collect were sugar packets and I think I just went along because it was fun to exchange the double ones and those from abroad where the rarest you could have. My 3 aunties were already travelling abroad and brought back lots of them because they didn't used sugar in their coffee or tea😉. The sugar packets are long gone but the hobby that always has been a part of my life is photography. It must be in the genes, my dad was a keen amateur photographer and made me enthousiast as well. For this layout I used a couple of Anna Aspnes goodies, the font is Gill Sans MT and I made the aperture of a cameralens to substitute the letters O in the title. I used black, gray, white and a bit yellow to make the background in honor of the old photos!

true, songbirds can't swim and usually have shortish legs. 🐦

The one on the left is mine; the other is my upstairs neighbor. Yes, they use the Cabin. Batman slithers out in the morning all covered with straw! Sometimes, if all the littles get in there, Batman sleeps on the doormat. I've seen a large pileup of "black blobs" where they're all cuddling there. 😄 He's their mentor and probably the Baby Daddy from before he was neutered. I hear I'm getting a heated floor for the cabin for Christmas! There's a plug right behind it. I think it keeps the heat a little over 40F/4.4C to keep it comfy.

Same here, I group and ungroup and regroup as needed I will often duplicate and keep the original group hidden and convert the duplicate to raster if I am testing ideas but don't want to lose where I started from. And especially any vectors if there are a lot of separate ones I will throw them all into a big group. I subscribe to CYA (cover your %#&). You all know how good I am at spell-checking.😅

We do much the same. Move the cushions and lawn furniture in one of the garages. I have an extra step of taking my herbs in to the little garage (which is also part of my second workout area, with equipment too tall to fit in the house). The herbs are parsley, thyme and rosemary and it smells great in there right now. they are happy with their lights and the warmth and there's even water in there so I don't have to lug water around in the winter. The bird baths in early October (very late for me this year) get washed and sanitized, dried and put away for the winter and the winter bird bath comes out. it's just a big plastic dog dish with a big rock in it so the LBJs don't drown. Hubby does the leaves with a special something-or-other on the lawn mower which chews up the leaves so small it fits in the organics bin. No more hours of raking and putting it the back of the truck to take to the organics dump. I put light outside only if it hasn't snowed or isn't too too cold yet. Or sometimes not at all. I love Christmas, but I'm not outside so I decorate inside. It's a lot but contained only to the living room and dining room. I'm finding it a big job these days and I am contemplating not putting anything out this year. I have a 12 long wall unit that I have to UNdecorate before I decorate. It's two full days of work if I do it all. However, I also don't want to have regrets because of the greyness of winter I love the warmth the warm white and colored lights and I like to see my decorations once a year. I have been known to take everything down on the 25th. Yes, I love Christmas, but only up to the 24th, my favorite day, after that, I don't care about Christmas anymore and usually want it gone and get on with the new year. I am a weirdo.

This is a cool shot. Is there two doors into your unit? I like the little Cat Cabin. Are they using it yet?

None of the trees in our yard were that close to the house at the time Dad had his accident. We still got leaves in the gutters.

Yeah, that is something I have considered. Typically, it is not really bad but there are some leaves accumulating on the back side of the house. On the front side, the trees are further away from the house so very little gathers in the gutter.

Hi Cassel I downloaded the plugin Bridge and I can now use more of my plugins, you were right to say only try 1 plugin in at a time. It did allow me to see if they worked or not and if they did was I really going to use it, once again many thanks for your help. I am getting to know my way around psp version 2023 I love some of the new things such as the gradient fill tool other tools will take a bit more practise. My workspace is set up just how I like it nice large icons and text, everthing is so easy for me to see.

I'm with Rene in this discussion but I have never so many groups that I want merged at the same time. However I can understand that in some occasions it would be a fantastic timesaver.

That poem is appreciated by we cat lovers! Love those faces.

Great work!

Template 258 by Lady 22. Photos taken in August, Sandbridge, VA.

Background paper by Jessica Dunn, Into the Woods, Grey Wood Paper, 142072. Paw prints by Janet Kemp, 98588, small doodle shape mask template 038. Everything else is mine, except the poem.

It's actually a plug in Julie, so it inserted itself into my current PSP 2023. I do have the search bar and use it, but totally forgot to use it that night...it was late and I was running on about 4-5 hours of sleep.

me too, cant wait to try it. did you see some of those brushes, they look so cool.

Well, I did do it. Now I'm in Neverland. I've got all this stuff. ??????? Oh, my!!!!!!

Week 44 The colours of autumn in a single tree.

I've been hoping to see this technique presented for a while. It was covered in the March 2024 Q&A, so I had to give it a go. I haven't posted anything for some time, just so bloody busy! Too many irons in the fire, as the saying goes. And no inspiration at all! Every layout I have tried, I have deleted as not worth posting. I do work a lot with old photos, not just my family but others' too. This one is a favourite of mine, from 1910, not my family. The styles, the looks on their faces, the general joy of the moment - are just captivating (to me). So what better material to work with than something I have worked with? Not entirely pleased with the result, but I feel I can post without cringing. It's a start with that split frame effect.