Corrie Kinkel

Rene I like your cluster but I hope you don't mind me saying so, but to my eye some of the shadows you used are not coherent with the light coming from the top left. For instance the big red bauble has a shadow on its left side where the light is coming from as well as some parts of the white ribbon and the greenery.

I didn't have to think long which photo would be my photo of this week. This is an extremely lucky shot which I took last Sunday when I was staying with our son and daughter in law. It was taken during a walk in our National Park "Hoge Veluwe" where the heath is in bloom at the moment. I didn't even realize there was a bee in this much bigger photo, only at home when I looked at my photos of the weekend on the PC I noticed it. I was taking a photo of a nice clump of blue harebells (grasklokje) and found a little bee too.

I am not very happy with the results and drawing my own shadows by hand and have them nicely fit with the existing ones is very difficult. Like Rene my hand isn't steady enough to make this into a succes! I'm sorry and will try to avoid using this kind of ribbons unless they are already properly shadowed by the designer. I'll check in the store if Carole has a script for such curly ribbons that have a shadow!! There is a tutorial that explains the making of a curly ribbon with shadows and that is a bit of work but gives a nice result. I did one for the Build a Kit from last year. With using the warpbrush I'm more or less oké now and use it when necessary. What I show here is by no means my first attempt and I forgot how many times I started anew.

Thank you Ann, I agree this DIY wasn't the easiest and it took me quite some time to come up with the idea for the layout.

I have been working on this DIY for a couple of days between the Shadow Workshop lessons and some things at home that needed my attention. But in the end I got there. For me the "paper" stripes and the background called for a symmetric layout and I took my colors from the photos. The background papers and scatter are from a kit called Dandy dandelion from cpjess and for the title I used the Shaped Text script by Carole. It was a bit of a puzzle to get all the elements arranged in such a manner that I can live with.

O = Out of the ordinary

Nicely done and I noticed that you love the Open Book script because you use it on ore occasions.

Michele what a great idea I always use the older materials palette, but it is mainly a force of habit. I'll check on it and see if I like the new one better.

Day 4 and it is very interesting to see the different flowers with their also different shadows; it lets me think a bit more about the shadows that I always tend to use. For the tutorial page I used the shadows with the settings from the tut and the warpbrush for 3 of the flowers. No warpbrush on the dahlia as mentioned in the tut. No warpbrush on the bottom right flower because it looks to me that the petals are curled a bit inwards (I don't know a better way to describe it), so they do not need to have their shadows altered. The flower on the bottom left is already looking lifted and when I tried to alter the shadow with the warpbrush it didn't looked better or right, so no warpbrush in the end. For lack of time I used the practice flowers as they are with different shadows and as you can hopefully see only one has its petals lifted with the warpbrush because I think that it only works for those flowers that have defined petals that can be lifted individually. The pink flower (bottom right): 20/20 - 54 - 24 (blur) with the warpbrush on some of the petals. The lilac flower: 40/40 - 42 - 50 no warpbrush The purple flower: 50/50 - 38 - 75 no warpbrush and the red flower: 40/40 - 46 - 50 also no warpbrush

M = Memories of all those adventures!

Wow Michele, lovely for a gentleman! I have the same "problem" in designing a card for the men in my life, it just takes more thinking in advance.

I = Interrail, in Europe we have the possibility to buy a trainticket that allows you to travel through different countries for a specific number of weeks. It is called Interrail and was meant for young people, although elderly people use it as well nowadays.

I had a busy day so I used the practice paper. Maybe I haven't paid close attention to the making of a lifted corner in the past, but the use of feathering was completely new to me and it is giving a better result. I need a lot more practice when attempting this technique by hand instead of using the scripts. Finally having my new glasses since last week let me see it so much better now. I stayed for the weekend with my son and daughter in law and I was constantly saying "oh WOW" I can see this or read that, for me a little miracle after 8 or so months of misery. Although seeing it better doesn't make my hands less shaky (I'm using a mouse) and it will take more time to get this technique easier. I'll stick to the scripts for now.

I know it is about the shadows and yours are great, but I love the photos and the difference between the first and last day!

I agree with you and almost all of the time I use a "lighter" shadow, but it depends on the background and the object as well. I'm not a fan of those hard shadows. But for this assignments I have done it according the given shadows so I could see if I like them or not.

A = Adventure Park

Lesson 2 For all the papers and photo I used the same shadows as in the first lesson. I assumed that the green and pink are thin ribbons so they got a shadow with an offset of 15, opacity 66 and blur 15. Like Rene I noticed that one layer was hidden and I moved it a bit (the plaid one). For my own pleasure I replaced all the papers with different ones from a kit I have and the photo of the Nigella is by me.

I have my own shadows as a preset and they come from tutorials for different elements. My shadows for papers and photos are the same as in this lesson. I have no shadow on the chalk scribbles because even the tiniest of shadows makes that chalk a bit less opaque and it looses its texture. I noticed that when I shadowed the sequin scatter the shadow only appears on the outside of that scatter and not on the parts that are on top of each other. On the top right blue parts of the scatter there is a shadow on the left side which looks funny because all the other elements have the shadow on the right side. The settings for the string are offset 14,14, opacity 68 and blur 14 because the string is thicker than paper and thinner than the button.

I have never heard about Pickleball over here, but when I visited with my family in the States I noticed immediately several Pickleball courts!

Susan I have been away for the weekend and I see your cards and button just now; you have done such a great job on them! I haven't started on the scrap with me part of The Book but I definitively will after this shadow week.

Michele thanks and yes it would be great if enjoying that cup could become true one day! Unfortunately the flowers are wilting at the moment because of the heat and the rain!

I have loved looking at your photos of the Wren! Will those wrens stay over winter or do they migrate?

It was a joy to look at and it will be again in 1 to 2 weeks if the rest of the buds will open. But just after that downpour it was looking very sad with most of the flowers on the ground. It is in the corner of my small patio and it makes having a cup of morning coffee very pleasant.

O = Open Air Festivals

I'm a bit early with my week 33 but I was very lucky with this shot of my oleander in full bloom. After all the rain we had it enjoyed the warm and sunny weather and had a lot of flowers. I took the photo on Tuesday morning and in the evening we had a sudden downpour and a lot of the flowers were destroyed and on the floor the next morning. Most of the buds survived on the plant so it will continue to flower but maybe not so abundant; we are already half way in August and that means less hours of daylight over here.