Sue Thomas

Here is the tag , as I can see it isn't legible in the above page, due to being resized. Yearling male Antelope

Day 3. It's always a treat when any four legged animal comes to visit. Carole used the word adorable to describe my Red squirrel, so I decided to use it in this page. As I do adore these majestic animals. The Antelope are frequent visitors. Males and females are segregated. Here we have some adult males with yearling males, not to far away were the pregnant females and yearling females. I don't use the selection tool to wrap text. It's ideal for quickly typing journaling, but it has far to many limitations for my liking, and for the word art/text that I like to create. Again, I didn't use any outside recourses.

That was an unexpected super quick response! ? Thank you ever so much, I appreciate your comment. The photos I take of everything nature, inspires me to create as natural as possible pages. I'm not one for bright colours, or frill. My pages are also very minimal. You have certainly captured the essence of Spring in your page. Well done!

Beautiful, and ever so entertaining to watch these rodents go about their daily lives. I didn't use any outside sources, not even a script to create the round brad. The papers are also my own. I did use one of Carole's corner punches.

Day 1 A pack of coyotes I have been observing this winter. On this day all five were out, and had their eye on either an old or ill white tail deer, it was skin and bones with it's ears flat. I watched while they slowly manoeuvred the deer into the trees. They keep the herd of over 200 deer healthy. Hunting in the park is forbidden. Here are two of them, I blended 2 photos together. All my own work including the holly and berries picture tube element. I filled the title with pine cones, as there are lots of conifer trees in the pack.

For this one I applied textures, which I actually prefer to the other ones. The textures give depth and substance,

My first attempt at creating a shadow box. I should be able to incorporate these in next year's Xmas cards. At a later date I may go back to tweaking the shadowing.

Easter ecard, a page which doesn't have at least one of my photos in it doesn't sit to well with me. Nuttall's kit rabbits.

I created my own egg shaped offset cutout to be in keeping with the Easter theme of the card. Before the rainbow font: "HOP INTO A"

We have the cuckoo in the UK too. I miss their very distinctive call. Also cuckoo spit, which has nothing to do with the cuckoo bird, but liquid excreted by nymph of the spittlebug

To answer your question Susan, yes they are Native to North America. I'm surprised you have never seen one, being around horses. They used to be called the Buffalobird. They are a smallish blackbird. Related to the Grackle and the Baltimore Oriole. All being members of the Backbird family.

I'm going to come to the defence of the Cowbrid. They are very much underappreciated, and outright hated at worst. They are remarkable birds in their own right. In their defence you don't have to love then but you should certainly respect. Unlike the Starling and the common house sparrow which were introduced by the Europeans, do have an effect on the native birds. I get several breeding pairs every year, that follow the horses around the field feeding on insects that the horses kick up. Trailing cows for ranchers, I"d see loads of them, picking insects, not only off the ground but off the cattle backs. Before the demise of the buffalo, they would follow the buffalo, which meant they weren't in any given area for any length of time to raise young. I see Cowbrid eggs and nestinglings in other birds nests. That's nature for you, it's not my place place to interfere with Nature.

Thanks Julie. Unless I use the corner punches to create labels, or other small elements, it's my opinion and personal preference to use them very large , and not as tiny punches on the corners of large background pages. Making them insignificant. This way they really pack a punch, as they should. Pardon the pun!! Of course it depends the layout and the creator.

It's very rural where I am, wide open spaces in every direction. I'm on a farm surrounded by arable land. I have 25 acres for the horses, the rest is rented out, as we don't farm ourselves. Which I miss, I miss the livestock, especially the sheep.

Good thinking to create the brunt edges on the paper. I love it. As the sky is certainly on fire. Like you we also have incredibly stunning sunrises and sunsets. Which I'm addicted to photographing.

Thank you very much Susan. It's easy to distinguish males from females. These two are mature females, younger females aren't as heavily barred.

Days 6 and 7. Friday and Saturday proved to be productive full hiking days. Corner punches used on both pages, lino paper, and instead of using polka dots, I used 2 different snowflakes, with different sizes. I used 2 overlays on the 18th Feb page. Brushes to create the masks. Pages sized down to 5x7 photo paper. I haven't exactly conformed with what Carole demonstrated. I sort of went off on a whim.

When creating this particular mask I used 2 layers, which meant I can edit each layer to my liking. The white circle I did on its own page, then copied and paste. I used different techniques to what you have been shown in this workshop.

The vector paint script does the same as the vector tube script, follow a vector path. Instead of using a picture tube it uses a brush. Both are free scripts by Levi in Carole's store.

Corrie, another lovely fungi page. I'm delighted to have given you the idea for the framing. I've been doing that kind of framing for years, along with adding fonts and brushes to the frames, and lifting the corners of photos over the frame. It adds a really nice touch to any page. If my memory serves me well Susan Ewart, Carole did a master class several months back, I think it's called dynamic frames, where Carole demonstrates how to create the over and under frames, and other cool frames.

Day 5. I'm burning the mid night oil, after a most enjoyable day hiking in the river hills, in mild weather for the time of year. I used 2 overlays for the background paper. Created a mask using a swirl brush and the vector paint script. All I had to do was apply that mask to the photo. (layers, new mask layer, from image)

I hadn't considered the reason that Carole gave, but it does make sense to me. Sizing down from 3,600 to 600 pixels is such a huge reduction in size. I adopt another way to resize.

I did, thank you! I found it in the store. You lucky girl, winning it!!!! x

If it happens again using a different gradient, it may be a jpeg saving issue. I don't have a clue on how you check jpeg specifications. If you even can.

Out of curiosity, change the gradient you used with a similar one, and see what happens.