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Lesson 7. This one goes with Lesson 5. These watches are from my uncle, my father in law, maybe even my dad and my husband. I've had them for years in my craft room to use them from some craft project. I looked at them and thought, wow, some of them are actually quite nice. I think I will keep them. And the other is just some glitter I have, you can never have enough glitter in your life. I wish I had more time to make physical stuff like I used to.

Here is lesson 6. I chose to make two sets of masks instead of all 4. The upper photo is Christmas Seal (sent out by the Lung Association) that I've gotten over the years. And the stamps belongs to my dad, he wasn't an avid stamp collector (his passion was coin collecting - sadly only a few coin sets remain as one of houses we lived in was robbed and most of the collection was stolen). and I forgot to add a rev. shadow frame so you could see the edges.

We do donations in the USA. Let me say that I am proud and grateful to all those who donate blood and/or platelets. This is a kind and selfless act that cannot be overstated in its necessity. Thank you for your lifegiving effort.

I love what you are creating with your magazine, Susan, and the fonts on each page are wonderfully interesting..

Here is lesson 5 and 7 together as I had imagined for the magazine. My big budget mag has two double page layouts - swanky! Now onto the back cover. And then the Alphabet Photo Challenge and then to Build A Kit and then to the Labs 🤪

Susan, the oddity of the fonts you have chosen makes them quite cohesive in your project. They all appear to have the same unusual features, which I enjoy.

Well, I should have done an Egg portrait like I first thought. But then I got complicated and wanted to use this teeny tiny iron pan (was a Christmas gift that had a cookie mix in it that you bake in the little iron pan). I'm no food photographer and I cook eggs even worse. I'm sure there is tricks to keep the egg white from getting air bubbles but I wasn't going to worry about it, and I have yellow walls in my photo studio and I made the eggs a wee bit sickly yellowish green. I should have just made the color green. To salvage this grungy half cooked egg I gave it a grungy background. This is not a win for me, at least I learned what I dont like. I do know I'm going to let these tiny (useless to me as cooking tools) pans get rusty, then they will make better subjects. I only wasted 3 eggs in the making of letter E. And we all know how expensive eggs are these days. I'm also trying to do everything landscape and use only one word. Because, who doesn't need MORE challenges. 🤣

Great pages for your big magazine, it will be expensive too😉 Your to do list is even longer then mine at the moment, but the year is still young.......

Thank you Jeni. I'm having fun, which is probably why it's taking so long 😄. I'm glad you mentioned fonts. Normally I'd stick to a cohesive set of 2 or 3 fonts throughout, but decided this is the Office Of Oddities so I needed to keep it odd. Really, stamps and glitter and what-nots that I've posted are hardly odd but it's fun to pretend.

That reminds me that in the past, we would get two QRCode stickers from which to choose. One was for "you can use my blood", the other would be for "do not use my blood". You would put the correct sticker while the nurse left the station for a minute, and you would throw out the rest of the paper where the stickers were. They explained that, sometimes, some people were "forced" to go to the blood donor clinic or, for some reason, had to lie on the questionnaire but they felt that their blood might not be "safe to use". However, that didn't happen when I went yesterday. It seems that the process often changes slightly, in different ways, over time.

When I donated, there was a box you could check, "for research only." I don't know if they still have that because they check for pretty much all diseases now. When I started donating, back in the 80s, they were very concerned about HIV and didn't know much about it.

In the Netherlands you don't get paid for blood/plasma donations but you do get something to drink and to eat. There are strict regulations about who can give blood to assure that it can be used for transfusions. There is always a shortish of blood for the blood groups that are less common and sometimes people with those groups will be called in for an extra donation. People who have given a great many times get some sort of medal and flowers or a giftcard with a small amount of money on it to thank them. Due to some medical condition I can not donate my blood, my husband had to when he was doing his conscription time and continued for some years after that.

I donated blood and platelets (via apheresis) for many years. I received cookies and juice after the blood donations and Tums (for the calcium) during apheresis. Whenever I get blood tests at my doctor's office, I tell them they should supply cookies and/or juice so the patients don't get light-headed afterwards. I bring my own now. lol I live in NY and don't think the blood bank pays for donations, but things could have changed. You could probably get paid if you give it to drug companies or some other studies.

In the USA, you can get paid for blood or plasma, but your donation can't be used for transfusions, if you're paid. However, the American Red Cross does sometimes offer T-shirts or gift cards, to entice donors. I've proudly donated over four gallons, since 1990. (I donated more before that, but a changeover in their recording process lost the older records.) I've had many operations, starting at age 6, so I understand how necessary it is to keep up the blood supply.

I'm watching tutorials in the campus to avoid too much bombardment. I completely agree with you regarding soothing our souls. Thankfully spring is coming and we can get outside and listen to nature, nature is always honest and real.

I found some photos with Humblebees. Picture tube by Cassel and paper my own

I've got 2 old layouts for this time period. Layout #1 was one of the first layouts I ever made (July 2008) thus the weird shadows on the photos! I didn't know any better. I would guess the paper and tags were freebies since I hadn't started buying kits yet. I think I used an old tutorial for older versions of PSP for the title. Layout #2 was a more recent layout. I did it in January of 2019 and the kit is from Kristin Aagard available at The Lily Pad (License to Drive) and the template is from Scrapping With Liz available at Hey Scrapper (Swirl Templates).

I have won this script last Sunday and of course I had to play with it. Although yesterday it didn't worked as it should and after some emailing with Carole we found what was wrong. So this evening I have played with it; I don't have many photos that are suitable for this kind of layout I kept the one of yesterday. It works now but the extraction of the mannequin is not very good, but I concentrated on the script and which of the 3 layers the script offers I wanted to use. When I have time I'm going to look for some flower photos to use with this script. It was fun to play in between the Build a Kit work.

As a nurse, I can't tell y'all how much we appreciate each and every person who donates! THANK YOU!!!

What a cool re-find and a feel good story that we all need.

WOW! This is stunning.

Those stamps above and your story reminds me that we had some too that we placed on cards/letters next to the real postage stamps. We often got them when you donated to a charity, but there were strong protests against this where people said: spend the money on the projects it is intended for and don't do it on such "gifts"! I haven't seen them for quite some time now.

I'm in US. We can donate blood here too but not for compensation. If you donate plasma though at at plasma donation center you can get compensation for your time. Its about $30 per visit for 2-3 hours of time and you can go 2-3 times a week. I donated plasma for a year one time to help pay for a vacation. Put away $3000 and had a lot of fun on that vacation. 😊

I read your comment a while ago, then kept thinking about it. If you like Enya's music you might also enjoy Loreena McKennitt who is quite similar. I used to listen to both of them years ago. I am rediscovering them now since I can't have on radio or TV without being bombarded by events that are too disturbing. My soul needs soothing these days.

Thanks Susan. That's the one that came together more easily and that I enjoyed the most.

I really love the one of your parents. I love them all, but your parents one is just so perfect.

Lovely layouts, Julie! Again, you are mastering this artsy way of scrapbooking.

Anne, another great calendar page. This beautiful mask makes it unique.

Playing with Carole's pixel stretch script.

Never thought of that! That was just the one place I could get a good photo of it.

Here's some layouts I've worked on lately. I have no particular focus, just react to photos I have or get and try something with them. I am dabbling and rather scattered, but I like to work on something everyday. The last week to ten days of each month is a busy time for me, so I am not able to comment/react/post very much. But I do check out the wonderful layouts that appear in the different topics. This place is my "stay sane" place. (However, I have to scroll quickly past the spider pix! 😛) The fellow on the bike is a good friend of my (older) sister from 'way back. I've bugged him for a long time for a copy of that photo. The couple are my parents just after they were married. And the blue layout is about my yearning for Spring which is still elusive here. Photo in that one from Pixabay. The designers whose materials I have used are: Vicki Robinson, Anna Aspnes, ET Designs, Marisa Lerin, Rachel Jeffries, and maybe some others.

I see it is "tickling the ivories" - apropos for an elephant, of course! 😉

Thank you Cassel, I will have another go. A little behind at the moment as redecorating a room. But will get right on it

E is for Elephant Toy. I got this toy for Pepper and Paige more than likely around 2002/2003. In those days, I was still doing paper scrapping and all my stuff was in the basement. So I would go down there and the dogs would follow me down. This had been made into a family room in 1987 and Dad used to watch TV down there. There was a loveseat couch and some chairs along with the dining room table from their first home. I used that table to scrap. There was also a bed down there that could be used for company. The dogs loved to play on the bed or curl up on the couch. In 2018, I got rid of a loveseat couch that was in my office ( that I had bought used in 1982 from my boss at the time) and had the one from the basement brought upstairs. When I took the cushions off of it when my neighbor and his son moved it, I found this toy. I had stopped scrapping down there after an ice storm in 2005 so evidently the toy was in the couch for over 10 years. It was still in good shape so I put it in Peyton's toy box. She loves it and I'll see it at various places around the house which means she moves it because the only time I move it is to put all the toys back in the toy box before the cleaning lady comes!

My husband got a 3D puzzle from the Eiffel tower and it even has lights in it. It was a bit of a puzzle 🤔 to make a nice photo, but when it was dark it worked fine. The font for the letter E is Puzzle and the rest is fruity cereal outline. Eiffel tower is in Dutch Eiffeltoren and it is pronounced differently the o sound is like the o in borrow and we write it as one word instead of two.

This was from our Text Workshop last November.

And then I was into spiders. The challenge topic was "FEAR"

It seems I was really into bees 2 years ago! 🐝

I used a bootcamp layout for a Bee festival that my daughter was involved with.

A few of my photographs taken over the years

Even though my bookmark says this is still February, I will post my new March Wild Cat Calendar. The template is from our calendar workshop last Oct. '24. They have unusual masks that add to the surrounding frame, and a separate layer which can be colorized. This is an action shot of a powerful jaguar attacking a caiman, which is a relative of the alligator. I get my information and photos from Panthera.org. The background paper is from Marisa Lerin. It started out purple but I changed that with the Change to Target brush using the dark blue color from the caiman's skin. The greens are from the photo. The March title font is Aviation Cocktail. I will post a full size version in our Facebook group Scrapbooking with PaintShop Pro and Affinity that is suitable for printing. I put mine on my refrigerator.

OK, so I am having a go at Lesson 5 from a single to multiple masks and having a problem. The first time I tried it, the top mask layer was ok, but the bottom mask didn't show up. I have tried this now about 4 times, and in each case the black fill is just not happening. After I inverted the selection on the mask, chose black, and the fill tool it looks as though nothing is being filled. I have closed PSP2020 and opened it up again in case there was a glitch, but I am still not getting the desired effect. I have also tried this technique on one of the other templates for masks in this workshop, but still have the same outcome. Can you help please.

I got to know Enya years ago, when the song "Only Time" was playing a lot on the radio. I like her very much.

I appreciate your impactful comment. Ambience, is the word I was trying to achieve using one of my photos. A million feathers falling down, A million stars that touch the ground, So many secrets to be found Amid the falling snow. Maybe I am falling down. Tell me should I touch the ground? Maybe I won't make a sound In the darkness all around. The silence of a winter's night Brings memories I hold inside, Remembering a blue moonlight Upon the fallen snow. Maybe I am falling down. Tell me should I touch the ground? Maybe I won't make a sound In the darkness all around. I close my window to the night. I leave the sky her tears of white. And all is lit by candlelight Amid the falling snow. And all is lit by candlelight Amid the falling snow.