Michele

Way to go, Bonnie! Congrats to you and your partner.

Playing with layers, cutouts, shadows, and Gaussian blurs. Sometimes creating something in the right dimensions for FB takes some work. The original painting is by Anna Ewa Miarczynska. The font is Black Chancery; I've had it so long that I don't know where it came from, but you can find it for free as it's in the public domain.

I always keep a pspimage file with all the layers. That way I can edit the font to reflect the new name.

I use 3000 x 2000 as the current FB posting size.

Those dinos are too cute!!!!! We want to see when everything is decorated.

I found a wonderful editorial beauty photo shoot that I felt was perfect for the theme; model Kristy Kaurova and photographer Jamie Nelson. The font is Spac3 tech. I had a happy accident while making this. I originally created a frame with the background paper and added a cutout layer. While playing around with the layers, I hid the frame and ended up with this look. I'm probably not the first to use an effect like this, but I learn a lot from my happy accidents. When I find more time, I'm going to experiment with it more.

B = Beef as in "Where's the beef?"

V = Vegetables. I absolutely adore grilled vegetables.

This theme is another rerun from 2016. I had originally found the title back then; I removed the background and tweaked it. The closest I could come to matching that font was, believe it or not, neon machine from Dafont. I was lucky enough to find a watercolor silhouette of Africa from Seekpng that shared the same colors on the background for the dancers.

I = Imu. In Hawaii, an underground pit lined with hot rocks. Kalua pig, a whole hog, is cooked in an imu. It is wrapped in leaves and/or wet cloth, laid on the rocks, and buried by covering the pit with dirt or sand. And, yes, I Googled it.

I went a lot less "razzle dazzle" for this one. I made the framed one back in 2016. Unfortunately, I didn't save it in layers and only had about an hour to change it up for this year. I managed to find the original stars and stripes and background in my files ~ probably downloaded from a free wallpaper site. Added a few solid papers with a bit of texture and the stars scatter (from Janet Kemp at PS). The fonts are Amaldemo (a free version of Amal) and Arista 2.0 Alternate Light (a system font).

C = Cajun Seasoning

W = Wood chips to add that delicious, smoky taste to the food.

Thought I would have fun with the theme today. I applied the mosaic weave effect to a plain background. The font is *TINTIN*; my Windows File Explorer is being finicky tonight so I can't search for it to tell you where I got it. Ron Payne posted a link on the FB page to a cool batch of seamless glitter patterns from CF. I used one for the text; it came along just at the right time! I found the flapper girls years ago by, I think, Mallory Carlson.

I absolutely adore this. I fell in love with him when I was a child watching the Ed Sullivan Show.

N = Napkins and plenty of them, especially if we're grilling ribs!

I think it might have looked better if the layer with Lennon on it had a slightly lower opacity. I had already merged both of the images onto a new layer so even though I could have fixed it, I didn't have enough time to do it over. (OCD can be an asset or a liability! lol) I was really at a loss for the background I was going to use because I wanted the flowers to be the only colored elements. I played around and finally used the Mosaic-Antique texture effect on a recolored watercolor background and darkened it using a Levels adjustment layer. The font is Lucida Bright, a system font that mimicked the original mosaic.

I used various elements from my stash of freebies. Gotta love blog trains and free sites. The sun image was originally an outline that I filled with the reddish/brownish color. To do this I used the magic wand selection brush in Add mode on all the empty spots, increased the selection by a few pixels, and flood-filled it on a new layer beneath the sun. I also used the Change to Target brush to recolor the two hanging elements. The font is Dream Her, free from DaFont; I applied an inner bevel and some texture to the text to try and make it look like the sun.