Mary Solaas

Bonnie, Minka and Ann - lovely pages.  Ann thanks for the hint on using brush in the corner and an underlayment in the same color to give a border to the whole page.  Also loved your paper.

 

Minka, that is a really lovely page.

 

Bonnie, love the colors you used and the double frame with 2 small pics in frames.

Well, Day 7 is done.  Yes, I agree - much learned.  Saved this new mask which I found interesting.  May use it again some time.  Really liked the paper and saved it.  Used Curlz MT for the Title and Segoe Script for the description and of course Arial for the date.  Had fun playing with Carole's Music picture tubes.  Music is a love in this family and we play with friends as well.  Thanks, Carole, for the teaching.  I think I will play around with that plaid for more paper.  Actually, I am sorry the Challenge is over, but I will go back to the Labs.

Day 6 - I'm doing Sammy again.  This time it is Family Christmas party 2017.  Sammy loves the camera.  Enlarged the photo with 2021 AI.  Softened the paper.  Used the Paint Brush snowflakes and didn't put them on a separate layer (that's a baddy).  Drew the frame with a paint brush (vertical line) and added a smaller snowflake in the corner.  I did do the frame on a separate layer.  Used Mama font for both title and date.

 

Sure do love seeing all the pages in this challenge.  Everyone is so creative.

 

Euka Euka - so glad to see you back.

Carole, I did and this is the result.  The problem was that the original photo was so large and we were just a small part of it.  So, using PSP2021 and AI, I cropped us out and enlarged the crop.  Took out the original and inserted the crop.  Then I enlarged the photo and the mask and it does look so much better.  This is the result.

Day 5.  I decided to pick the picture of my sister-in-law who is also named Mary Lou.  Earlier today I had almost finished it and then DELETED IT.  Accidently of course.  So I had to go back and re-create it.  The circle mask went better this time and only has the flower brush used.  I found the font (comes with PSP) called French Script MT.  The other font used is Arial.  Still like to put dates inside elements!  Tried a tube, but it made the page too busy.  Used the paint brush to make the inside frame.  Had fun doing this.  Again, another way to create a mask.

Well, Minka, the RV is Joe and Laurie's.  They take me along sometimes and this time was in Alabama at a remote mountain RV park - beautiful.  The stars were awesome that night and so awesome that I forgot to get my camera out to take a picture of the night sky.  My travel through the lower 48 was done by car - my Blue Baby and Blue Baby 2 with nights in motels.  Still fun, but the ability to "camp out" with an RV is really great.

Love everyone's explorations into labs and stuff.  I have to agree with Minka.  If you don't use it you lose it!  That's so true for me, also.  There is just SO MUCH!!!  Isn't it wonderful????

 

 

OK - Day 4 - I know I am slow.  Enjoyed this session.  So you can use any object as a mask.  Hm.  Anyway, I did choose a watercolor brush from the freebies and put the picture in the lower right corner.  Played around with white and black brush strokes.  Love putting a background around the picture so you get a better ides of the mask results.  I have to play with picture tubes - I've restrained myself in the other days.  I like putting the date in something so I chose to do it in a circle of leaves.  Had fun.  Masks are becoming easier and I do not have to look at the cheat cheat to remember the previous training for days 1, 2, 3.  Think I will remember this process for using brushes or shapes as masks.

 

I love seeing everyone's take - I, too, love travel - so have enjoyed the travel pages.  And, yes, I do love children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and have used them in previous pages.  Love seeing your pages as you focus on yours.  The dress group of pages, Barbara, are really good - love the way you have showcased the dress differently in each page.  Love using the old and the new relatives also.

Day 3 for me.  Had fun with creating the paper - actually saved several papers as I was trying to decide on the one I would use.

OK - it took me all day and a few innovations, but I finally completed Day 2.  The plaid was interesting.  Saved the plaid image in order to add the borders and then put it in the pspimage as a paper.  Decided to add the date to the clip.  Added shadows to the elements (which I had filled with color) and the borders (after I figured out the French word for border) of the 2 pictures at the bottom.  Really has been a learning curve this time.

 

 

Lynda - Always enjoy your take on a Challenge or whatever.  My 2nd son and his wife also chose the Carpenter's rendition of We've Only Just Begun as their song.

Shirley - I just have to tell you that I love your 1st day with Johann

P.S.  I forgot to tell you that I used the eraser tool to remove some of the mask covering the faces of my 2 sons on the right and left of the picture.  Also used the eraser tool to soften the edges of the photo - which Carole had told one of us to do so that the edge blended in to the mask.  This has been work - but it has been fun!

OK - I finally did Day 1.  Wrapping my head around this "rig-a-maroll" way to get the mask to work.  I guess that the previous training in templates was just sliding pictures into the spots provided.  This, instead, is dealing with masks!  Learning something new!!!  Stuck to the tutorial but had to go over it several times to get my head to accept it!!  Glad I joined this challenge as I am really learning something new.  Followed pretty much the outline and this is the result.  Boy I sure love all the freebies you gave us or steered us to!!  Thanks!!

 

Everyone - you are doing a fantastic job and I love all the different takes on "LOVE"

Finally back to working in PSP Scrapbooking.  New project coming up not in PSP, so other than Love Challenge, I'll have to stop for a while.

 

This page: Papers and ribbon are from Cass_Fire-and-Ice; snowman is from Pixel Scrapper - Rachel Martin; Snowflakes and the holly leaves & berry are also from Pixel Scrapper - Gina Jones; I developed the frame around the picture following the directions from Cassel on creating frames; the frame on the background is PSP grunge snowflakes; the font is Century 725 Blk BT.

 

Whew.  We don't often have snow in Memphis, but this was a morning after a snowy night and I really enjoy the colors - they are calming.

Barbara: How wonderful that you have that treasure.

 

Anne: Love your take on what are the items in so many of our mail boxes now.  I still like "snail mail" even though I enjoy emails and texting.

Dear Raymond,

 

Thanks for your post concerning our political turmoil.  Thanks for your service.  Two of my sons served in the military.  Please keep posting - I love your contributions starting with your redo of your daughter's photo of her youth.  I'm hoping to get back to the forum with 2 projects I am working on, but have not finished.

Love it, Minka.  I am in a clime where it snows occasionally and not usually several feet deep.  I have a picture I use presently as my wallpaper on my pc that I have been toying with using as a scrapbook page so maybe I will go ahead and work on it.  It was a morning after a small snowfall in Memphis and the picture helps me to feel that great feeling of snow in the morning when it is fresh and not dirty slushy.  Thanks for your great snow picture.

Dear Ann, loved each of your takes for the Days of Advent.  I, too, am a fan of Angela Lansbury - glad you included her.  Annie Tobin you always come up with something interesting. Corrie, Silver Bells is perfect. Looks like you did a mask for the photo of the city and then put a silver frame over it to just let a part of the mask edges to show.  Brilliant.  Dorothy, like your take on that song.

Love seeing what all of you created! Annie I really like what you create and especially like your comments!!! And, Trish, I like all of your layouts - that purple lace is really nice.  Bonnie, that was clever placing the pictures as a Christmas tree.  I'm still stuck with the 2012 Family Reunion we had so my celebration is the dinner we had the night before the picnic in the park. All my papers except the large gold one are from Cass_Fire an Ice, the large gold one is from Pixel Scrapper - Gina Jones_Snow Beautiful.  I almost always change the colors of the plain papers so I did that here.  On the gold paper I placed a PSP picture frame.  The Celebration text is Alphabet Soup which I made a raster layer and then filled in the letters.  The description text is Segoe Script.  The balloons and streamers are picture tubes.

Anne - you inspired me!  Your take on Reunions helped me to find a background and to condense all that happened at that reunion into 1 page (I had been thinking several pages).  So - I used a background and overlay that I obtained from Pixel Scrapper (Gina Jones)- I reduced the opacity on the overlay way down; I created a license plate and saved it as pspimage so that I could use it for all the different license plates; the ribbon behind the license plates and the papers behind the pictures and text are from Cass_Fire and Ice; the paper behind the 3 small pictures are from Pixel Scrapper (Marisa Lerin); the car is an element from my stash.  I used the same font from the list (sorry don't remember which one) for both the title and the text beside the 3 small pictures.  I did remember to do drop shadows this time!!!  It was fun.

Maybe I will work on this in January.  We had 2 reunions of my grandparents descendants in their home town in Upper Michigan (Bessemer).  The last one was in 2012 and we had people from Georgia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Nevada, Illinois, as well as those who stayed around in Michigan and Wisconsin.  They were great and I had made a 2 volume album of newspaper clippings and photographs of the grandparents, relatives and friends from my Aunt Lena's scrapbooks which she had kept up from about 1916 to the 1950's.  These were a great hit with the cousins from my generation and the next.  So we shall see what I come up with (know it should be at least several pages).  My daughter-in-law, Laurie, made up a video which we emailed to participants.  Reunions are lots of fun.

OK - I added the shadows - tweaking them a bit from the suggestions Cassel gave back scrap course cheat sheet (I work best with the written tutorials after watching the video).  Not sure my tweaks were good, but this is the final result.

 

 

Thank you, Val.  I'm not sure why, but the shadows which come last I sometimes forget.

Oops!  Forgot the shadows again!