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Correction: Photo was posted on FB by Love Scotland, not the name I mentioned. I also grabbed a pic by Mark Hewer that I plan to use for a layout. The image comes from Mark Hewer Photography, and I saw it on FB. It looks so inviting. Would love to visit there. It's a 12th century castle that is still inhabited! Owned by a descendant of Clan Malcolm. Here in Canada, if a building is 40 or 50 years old, it well might get torn down. The gate posts entrance was used in Skyfall, as James Bond's childhood home, were modelled on these.

I don't remember how I got interested in tatting in my teens but I did. I asked my Aunt who was great at crocheting and many other crafts if she tatted. She said no but her Aunt had tried to teach her when she was about my age, but said Aunt Stella finally threw up her hands and said she made more knot mistakes than Aunt Stella could undo. I talked Aunt Stella into showing me how to do it, and bought a how to book. When I picked up on it pretty good, Aunt Stella gave me the tatting shuttle that was her Mothers. That would be my Great Grandmother's. I used it for a long time and then it broke. I still have it wrapped up in my jewelry box with a note saying who it belonged to. I haven't done any tatting in a few years, partly because no one I know would have any interest in what I created. Here is a butterfly I tatted for my Sister.

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!

I love this layout as well as the story. I too left photography for holidays only when I quit working in the photo business (as a photo lab supervisor), it was too expensive. It wasnt until I was doing warm/hot glass work and silversmithing that I needed to get a record of what I was doing that it revived. And then I really found my passion when i joined the Campus and needed to have photos for layouts.

This is so neat. I was never good any kind of needle or crochet/knitting works. I'd be begging you to make my snowflakes for my tree. I have crochet ones from my mom and I love them. She tried to teach me crochet but I'm a lefty and it was hopeless. Later, I would learn how to bead crochet and make bead crochet necklaces with sterling silver endcaps/clasps.

Love this! The touch of the photo apertures as letters works so well!

I too bit the bullet and downloaded what I wanted. Now I'm looking at a very deep rabbit hole to disappear into! Oh my!

@Donna Sillia OK - bought the RasterToMask Script. Saved my MultiLayerMask and converted it to a mask with that script and saved the script. Called the script forward into a layout and this is what I came up with using the mask from the saved masks.

Susan, it's good to break the rules occasionally, right? 😂

I don't know this Adamski Effect either, Julie, but I am already curious and want to learn about it and try it someday. 🙂 Your layout might not be like the others ( I still have to check them), but I like what you did very much!

I just picked this one to comment on, but all calendar layouts are beautiful, Susan! You put a lot of work into it, and it paid off. The dark ton of the pages just fit the photos perfectly.

Beautiful layout, Julie. The detail of the poppy flower and the red element over the soldier is very touching.

Wow, great work, Donna!

My friends just moved to Scotland and they said there is castles everywhere and ruins that you can go walk around for free. If you look on a map they are in Nairn right across the land to the coast on the the other side from the castle. I wonder how far that is. I really like the elk (?) statues. Can you imagine wandering around that castle?

That's wonderful news. They will be all toasty warm and you wont have to worry about them. I'd say they must be the cutest black blobs ever!

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.

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).

Using my new layered mask for another picture and layout.

The cards look great, Susan! I am sure you're having lots of fun creating them. 🙂

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.😅

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).

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.

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).

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.🤪

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

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/

Wow, beautiful! Gee, I didn't know we were allowed to have the light source on the top right... 😉❤️

December At least I got green in the right month. And the word "gift" in the quote. All done. Love this workshop and trying something different each year. thank you Carole.

October I posted this one before, the only change was the color of the weekend days

Home from work now, continuing on July

Thank you, Susan I made all the squares separately as vectors so that I could lower the transparency on the outer square, then converted to raster. The I added a layer for the brush under the rectangle and merged. I used raster to mask script to make the finished mask. My AI patterns had to be converted to brush before they would work. I haven't tried any preset shapes yet.

I was 5ft tall. My "Ace: was 13.2 hands. ( I think), it has been close to 50years ago when I finally sold him to get a bigger horse. None of the others I have had ever had my heart like my little Ace though, He had quite a personality. As far as my collections, most were ell cheap-o's. LOL

Ik heb hetzelfde probleem (gehad) met TFT. Zoekend naar de oorzaak blijkt omdat het op de lijst staat van sites die hun klanten adressen doorverkopen aan criminelen niet meer wordt geaccepteerd door Microsoft (NL) H et programma staat op de zwarte lijst. Tweede mogelijkheid is dat je pc niet de capaciteit meer heeft om het verouderde bestand te accepteren. Wie o wie kan er een nieuwe voor ons maken????

May hahahah, the dark days of May...said no one EVER! Oh, and making it a jpg doesn't help, they aren't as dark in pspimage format (or tif)

The dark really adds to the impact of the overall layout! I love it.

February You might see alot of Magenta (pink) since a lot of the flowers were that color and it seemed to look best that way (to me).

Now that the Calendar WS is over I'll post here I'm starting with the last layout which is actually the first layout of the Calendar. I ended up going quite dark, not like I had started out doing. Kept black for the text/mask and numbers (except the weekends and stat holidays for my province). The font is Daisy and Violette from CF. All the backgrounds are from gradients I have in PSP. Often they are altered (pulled, twisted, stretched, squished, angled, blurred and even stomped on - okay, maybe not stomped on, but if I could have, I would have), blended and I even tried using some masks on them. Oh, and they have a PSP texture added.

Speaking of AI, I created this one in 2023 Ultimate with Vision FX from that same Caboose Lake picture as before, only this time I asked for children playing in the meadow and as a watercolor.

Remembrance Day: To honour those who served and still do. My wee tribute to them all. Based on a layout I saw on OScraps.

I love this layout style. You chose the background and elements perfectly. Great photo, must've been awesome for the that photographer in person.

WOW! Donna! This is breathtaking. to get the opacity, did you lower the opacity of the layers before merging (visible). Super super work!

With all due respect, were you 5ft tall or the pony/horse? As horses are measured in hands. 4 inches is a hand. A pony is under 14.2h, anything over 14.2h is a horse.

As a kid I was totally HORSE CRAZY. I collected anything to do with horses, figurines, pictures, books, you name it. For my 8th grade graduation my dad bought me a horse, well he was at that size right between being a pony and and a horse which was the perfect size for me (5ft tall). Dad built a small one horse barn where he could get in out of the weather with a small corral attached. It was my job to feed and take care of him. I don't think I ever saw him go in that stall except when I fed him. I remember seeing him with icicles hanging from his mane and several inches of snow on his back.

Do you have to download the whole bundle or can you choose which items you want - like clicking separate links from the PSP purchase email?

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

I can show that, for sure. You can also put it in the Q&A for Sunday. Corel does have good tutorials for CorelDRAW (as much as they had for PSP). P.S. sorry, I had not seen this thread sooner!

I found them thanks to your directions. Thanks for the info about the GPU. I believe mine has only 12 GB, have to the ask the hubby when he gets home, he's the techy in the house.

Whew, that is a long install. I took Humble Bundle up on the offer and it went well.The only thing I dont see is the Vision Fx anywhere except when I look in the app and features section where you UNinstall apps and programs. Does anyone know what Vision Fx even is? All the rest that I ran the installers/.exe for showed up on my desk top and in the start menu. the only thing under V is Vector FX, I cant see VisionFX anywhere...hahaha, considering it's name that's kind of funny. Like Carole mentioned in the masterclass today, I did not download PSP2023 and I have yet to do the brushes as it's getting rather late.

Thanks for the information @James Durrant. The only one I was really interested in getting was the Corel Draw.

I have now downloaded and installed the bundle and it is LARGE. Took about 5 Hours to complete the whole process of registering, paying, downloading and installing. (My broadband connecting speed is about 30Mb/sec which give approximately 3.5Mb/sec of data received) . The biggest files are the Fx files , one of them is 9.5Gb . I am posting this as information to any member who is on a monthly limited connection or a connection slower than mine. Now starts the long process of learning how to use the programmes. I normally download the pdf help files onto a memory card and view them on my tablet ( I am 'old school' and like to have a book to follow)