Mary Solaas

Carole - what is the advantage of having that as a plugin?  I already have FilterForge and don't use it as often as I probably should - need to investigate it more, I guess.

I have your script to create enamel elements and have been playing with the various scripts I have bought, not just on your birthday, but through the years.  I'm going to post the best of the enamel elements I made.  The ones I made with a flat element with no contours didn't come out except as a sort of tray, but they are nice too, so I guess I'll post them also.

Thanks, Susan.  Yes, I made the circle paper some time ago but liked it and it worked with the blues in this layout.  The background paper I made some time ago in a lab (I usually make several different colors when doing a paper in a lab.  It's the background that I used for the Aquarium layouts.  I'm trying to keep some kind of theme going in this group as I plan on getting the trip printed.

Back on Chattanooga.  This is about the park surrounding the Aquarium.  Anna and I enjoyed this day - it was full.  The picture Anna is taking of the Aquarium sign is what I chose to be a title for this layout.  I put a Cass stitch around the journaling paper; I made a brad from the Aquarium sign. The background is the same one I used for the 2 Aquarium layouts I did (which were the first layouts of this trip that I did).

Ann, I really like that layout - and I think changing the outline of the title would help it stand out more.

Couldn't find where to post so I'll post here.  

Carole, I hope you had a simply marvelous, happy birthday.  You are so special to all of us in the campus.  Hobbits give gifts on their birthdays, but I know you are not a Hobbit.  Thank you for your gift.

My favorite script of the ones I purchased on your birthday is the folded flower one.  I will post my flowers.

Bonnie - beautiful group of layouts for your basketball team.  Well done!  Way to go!

On 4/19/2023 at 3:27 PM, Susan Ewart said:

 

Ann, that is very cool.  I thought it was two papers.  You are really good with the frames, I love what you make.  I must try and find some time to practice with that tool.  

Mary, that's a nice rich palette.  A good amount of colors to choose from.  I would love to see you in the Double Page workshop, hope you find the time to joing.  I'm behind.  Only just did my lesson 1 and soon off to work so by tomorrow I will be 3 lessons behind.  

I seem to have overlooked those frames in PSP.  Thanks, Ann.  I am going to post my playing with it using a background paper I played with.

1 hour ago, Donna Sillia said:

We are looking for some day trips from where we live in northeast Ohio. Zanesville seems like a good place to visit.

The museum is also a memorial for Zane Grey (obviously Zanesville is his family home).  Zane Grey wrote 3 books about his Zane ancestors which are very good even though they are novels and not biographies.  I was really impressed with that museum which is located off the highway (believe it is federal highway 40).  

OK, Project 3.  I've used photos with less opacity before, but this is the first time using one on 2 separate layouts and combining them in a double page.  As you may see, this wasn't really done well, but as they say, it's good enough for government work LOL.  I'm not going to redo it. 

The subject matter is dear to me.  I discovered this monument when Laurie, Joe and I took our RV trip out west to visit family and extended family members after the Covid lockdown; it is located in South Dakota. I love history and am fascinated by the desire to link various areas of the country by highways.  There is another highway out east that I discovered on a trip with a friend many years ago.  The monument to the road developed from Washington DC to Springfield, IL is located in Zanesville, Ohio.  It is located in a building and the monument is a beautifully done series of dioramas showing its development as time went on.  And then, of course, we now have Interstate 90 which links New York to Seattle, Washington.  Interstate 40 is a very busy highway also and goes from near the eastern seaboard almost to the western seaboard in California.  As I love to travel by car, the history of roads really appeals to me.

Well, I did do Lesson 2.

I've only completed Day 1.  But here it is.

Back to the drawing board!  

Back to the Chattanooga trip.  This is about the bus trip we took the day after we got there.  Unfortunately I didn't take as many pictures as I should have.  Too busy just looking, I guess.  The dragon climbing the sculpted tree trunk really fascinated me.

Woops - the file I saved as 600 px wouldn't load - just over size.  Hold on and I'll change it.  Well - seems I didn't check to see that it was resizing by % and not by pixels - increasing the size to 600% was quite a load!!  LOL.

Another mask I made the night I stayed up and played.  Oh, the background paper was one I was playing with that night also - used a Blossom gradient and effect - colored foil

Just playing one night last week when I couldn't sleep.  Made a mask,  and just leaving the mask group as a group, I played with adding the silver shimmer paper as a  b ackground to the picture, and then still without merging the mask group I added frames on different layers.  Fun.

39 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

Here is Lesson 5 - My husband and I owned and operated the Warwick Drive-In Theater from 1977 - 1997. Frank's daughter Beth and her husband took over ownership and are still operating it today. I do a little work from home on advertising and social media for the theater. It happened to be a panoramic photo I had handy so, though I don't usually "toot our horn" here we are! The title font is Elephant. The background is a gradient with a little grass texture. We are open every night from March through Halloween. We're located in New York's Mid-Hudson Valley, about 60 miles from New York City. Our visitors have been know to drive up from Long Island for the weekend as there are lots of things to do in our area, including the newest Legoland.

I've always enjoyed your pictures of your Drive-In.  

On 4/6/2023 at 1:32 PM, Cassel said:

So basically, the tutorial is "use this texture and sharpen it a bit". I'll dig deeper to see how to CREATE that texture in the first place.

 

Carole, it seems that we need a "real shiny" texture(?) to use after you apply a canvas texture.  I've played and played with this as you can see with the later posts.  My next take will be to look at Filter Forge for something to use that is "shiny".

I'm posting here because I didn't join the double page workshop.  Sorry - after looking at the postings, I'm sorry I didn't.  It might have helped the kit i'm working on - the Chattanooga trip my daughter and I took last year.  I've been working on it for some time, and after the Build-A-Kit Workshop, I'm finally trying to make it a kit.  I had done a few extractions in some of the pictures, since that is what I like to do.  But, today I decided on a palette (Yeah, I know, it is a little late in the game!)

15 hours ago, Nancy McNamara said:

I got a good start today on day 1 project! Here comes the but...my computer had other ideas, (DISC IS NEARLY FULL). I was able to clean disc and remove some data, so I have a good start on #1. My pics that I plan to use have been decided on, and I have a new computer I have just been dragging my feet on getting it up and running. (I think it's time) it should be an interesting week! Looking forward to seeing everyone's creative work.

Disc is full!  Oh, my disc is not full, but I have an old computer (it tells me it cant handle Windows 11) and my 1T SD Cdrive that my son put in for me is 1/2 full+ which slows down my working in PSP.  Cleaning up unwanted data is a chore I'm in the middle of.  Some pspimage files have a hard time saving and some in opening.  Life is interesting - I'm not ready to get a new mega mega PC.

16 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

Mary, I made a 3600 px page and used your settings without distorting the pattern. I started with 1000 px 300 and resized to 3600. I also used brightness and contrast to lighten the file, but it came out darker than yours. Do you know how I can post a 3600 page?

What you posted is a 600 px.  I did try AI resizing to 3600 and it keeps the shininess but the weave is enlarged.  I could post the 1000 px but we cannot post 3600 px as it is too large for the forum.  I was able to post it in the facebook group so you can look there.

2 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

Oh, Mary, I do love that one. How did you make it silver?

Adjust>Color>Channel Mixer

Output channel: grey; red: 94%; Green: 101%; Blue: -6%; Constant: 15%; Check Monochrome.

You can see how OCD I am!  I played with that greyed pattern with everything I could find: Adjust>Color; Adjust>Hue, Saturation, Lightness>colorize and everything else.  And I even played with AI resize to increase the 600 px size to 700, then to 800, then to 900, and then to 1000.  This was because I couldn't get a good pattern to cover a 3600 px page.  If it takes it, I will post it as 1000.

Donna, I did play with your pattern and colorize and color (RGB) and my favorite is this one in silver.

5 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

I got tired of trying to match the Photoshop shimmer paper, so I made a grayscale one and saved it as a png. It doesn't change color with hue saturation, but colorize works. Another alternative is to create a color layer above the gray and use blend modes.

Donna - may I copy this and play with it????

and while i'm at it -- I also worked with the CF Spark images I showed previously.  With my camillia picture which I ran through pic to painting and CF Spark, I finally chose the one that Susan liked and made a pattern from it in a smaller size and made a paper with it  - playing with it on a 45 degree angle really came out interesting.  I also made a paper from one of the patterns made by another artist in watercolors that was posted in Spark.

This is the black and white one.  I made it on only 1 layer - using the above steps.  I tried changing color with Adjust>Hue, Saturation, Lightness - but you can see that it doesn't work very well so maybe you need to choose the color first and then create it.

I'm too OCD.  I couldn't stop working on that glimmer effect.  I'm going to post the last 2 I worked on last night and took down the steps I took to achieve the result.  Donna, maybe this is what you are looking for.  I did try to do it in black and white thinking that I could colorize them with some of the tools in PSP, however, that doesn't seem to work and keep the shininess we are trying to achieve, but I'll show it anyway.

I worked in a 1000 pixel square.  1: Fill with a light color; 2: New layer: use a darker hue of the same color; 3: Use the paint brush (I chose the cloud brush - used size 50, but you may like a larger size which I used in the 2nd one, hardness 50, step 5, density 100, thickness 100, opacity 100, check Smart Edge - and brush all over the layer; You can merge the 2 layers - I merged visible to a new layer; 4: use a small gautian blur - I used 5; 5: Effects>Texture>Mosaic Antique - I set it with # of columns 75, check Symmetric, tile diffusion 100, grout width 10, grout diffusion 15; 6: effects>texture>mosaic Glass - I set it with # columns 100, check Symmetric, glass curvature 75, edge curvature 3, grout width 3, grout diffusion 0; 7: Adjust>Sharpness  - I did this about 3 times.  I did save as a pspimage as well as a jpg.  Since it won't post at 1000 pixels, I resized it to 600 pixels square.