Mary Solaas

And these are my 2 November pages.

I'll post the rest of my calendar in this forum. October - both sets. The Halloween picture is from CF of course - a watercolor. The photo was taken by me in 2020 at an RV camp in Alabama.

Today I finished September - both calendars.

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

And now August. The Lighthouse is a watercolor from CF. The picture I took up at Caboose Lake RV Park in Indiana.

Well, with only 2 calendars, I guess I'm in good shape!?! I'm only on July, but here goes. The poster for set 1 is one I made in a lab some time ago.

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

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

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.

YES, YES, YES. New class! Yay!

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!

This is my May for the 1st set. I created the photo with a CF watercolor of the jumping fish, and added a background using one of my papers I made with AbstractCurves and adjusted it with HSL, and then added PSP Instant Effects - Watercolor. Then I worked with it to get the softened effect (think I used those extra tools with brushes - push, smudge, etc.

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.

This is my May for the 2nd set. This pic was taken at my daughter's and my favorite city park on a May day. The Memphis (Canadian) Geese were taking their youngsters out for a swim.

Marvelous !!

This is my other April (1st set). I had to work a square pic into a rectangle.

I'm obviously not going to finish this workshop anytime soon, but Carole, this is my first time and it is wonderful. You suggested that we look ay the QP Workshop tuts for ways to deal with the template. I guess that's what I've actually been doing as I had done that workshop several times. This is my April #2. The picture is one I took on a walk in our neighborhood the end of March 2020 - just before 'lockdown". Spring is always the most colorful time of year in Memphis. Fall has more muted colors, except for the sweet gum tree, the dogwood, and the bradford pear which have brighter colors. That particular year, the colors were really spectacular!

@Julian Adams I like both pictures, but I like the darker mask doodles the best.

@Cassel Yes, I had merged the white background with the dates.

Sharla, that's a fantastic shot! WOW!

In the 4th lesson we learned to colorize dates that are important on the calendar. Since I was putting a white background on my dates so that I could still keep it white to write on while I had a different background paper, I had to use a different technique for colorizing the dates. In February, we have Valentine's day (pink) and I have 3 birthday dates (gold); I had to use a different technique. I isolated the 14 date with the magic wand (set to RGB) and flood filled the selection with pink; then I isolated the 4 birthday dates with the magic wand and flood filled them with the gold. I'm not sure if I will use this February page or use the original with no dates highlighted, but it was fun.

I'm keeping with the white background for the dates since they may be used for writing in after it's printed. Also keeping with the Arial Black for the font. But love what everyone is doing with their calendars as far as font, background, etc. which are in the tutorials. So, I decided to play around with background, fonts and whatever else the tutorials tell us to do. This is one of the background papers I made (looking forward to the upcoming workshop). This is some of the fonts I played with (but not the glyphs since I seem to have chosen ones without extra glyphs. On the paper, I played with blend modes on both papers and on the smaller one I used the layer style of outer glow.

Whoops! I noticed that I haven't put my Tolkein button on the last couple of pages. So I went back and added one to each that had been skipped. But I'll only post the last March one I did.

I finally finished March 1st calendar. The picture I developed from 2 AI pictures from CF Spark. The background paper is a gradient. I guess I'm playing with gradients because I need to practice making them.

Well, I changed all the January :& February layouts (& the pspimages) so that the days of the week are abbreviated and centered. Works out well. The Arial Bold font that I am using doesn't show the small i very well. This is the March 2nd set page. I'm having trouble with the March 1st set since I am using St. Patrick's Day for the theme.