Rene Marker

I can sit in my front yard to see it. I'm in Ohio. My cousin that lives in southeast Ohio is bringing her 2 granddaughters up for the weekend and to see the eclipse on Monday. They are so excited about it.

All the schools in the area built the day off into their school calendar. The buses would be on the roads during the time leading up to the actual almost 4 minutes of the eclipse. My town is also expecting up to 70,000 people coming to see it (traffic nightmares for a town of 9,000). Estimates for the county are up to 130,000. The county only has 45,000 in population. The reason my town is expected to be the place to be is because it is the hometown of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. We have a museum in town that is all things space and actually looks like a moon! The town is going all out with various events scheduled from Thursday to Monday. The city and county officials have put out lots of information about what to expect with the influx of people in town. They also suggest that we do all our grocery shopping, getting gas for the vehicles, prescriptions refilled etc before the weekend. Another thing they have talked about is the fact that the cell towers will be swamped with people trying to connect so service could be intermittent. They did say that if you can, we should connect our phones to wi-fi so that we would still have access in case of emergency. It really is interesting everything that the officials have been doing. They've been working on this for over 2 years to make sure they have everything covered.

I can't wait!!!

Here is a layout I did for a challenge at The Lily Pad in January that shows the path through Ohio.

Styles also evolve. 

My beginning layouts were a lot like what is being done in the Boot Camp course. Over the years I have changed but yet still mainly do what I call a "clean style". But the embellishments I add have changed over the years. Even now my style is evolving as I'm learning to put together clusters of flowers/greenery/ribbons/other elements on my own that are pleasing to my eye. They are usually small clusters and/or minimal embellishments. They don't overwhelm the photos and the story behind the photos. Once in awhile I will do a layout that has more clusters that are larger than normal when I feel the photo will work well with that kind of layout. 

It took me years to get to where I am today! My first layout was done on December 30, 2007 and has 3 photos (with rounded corners!) and a title. That's it. Nothing else.

I have not heard about anything like that near me. But then I wouldn't go if there was. I am not a fan of cats at all.

When I read it, I immediately thought that it might have to be 2 books!

I've had 4 dogs in my life. I always wanted one as a kid but since the house we lived in was a rental, Mom and Dad said no. When we moved into the house they had built in 1964, I got my first dog. Patches. Patches was a mutt. The husband of one of Mom's fellow teachers worked at a gravel pit and there was a female dog that lived there. A stray dog got her pregnant and she had a litter in October. We got to bring Patches home the day after Thanksgiving. She was brown with several patches of black on her back, thus her name. What I would give to know what breeds were in her because she actually didn't look like any specific breed.

In 2000, I wanted another dog and knew I wanted a small dog. I found the Havanese breed and fell in love. Some dogs would make my eyes water and itch so I wanted a breed that wouldn't do that. I visited a dog conformation show and met some friends from an online group. One gal let me sit with her dog on my lap for over an hour and I had no reaction so I knew this was the breed for me. The next weekend I went to another show with a college friend and one of the breeders there asked if I had found a puppy yet. I hadn't even started looking since the breed was rare at the time. She said she had a male available. She sent me pictures of "Mic" and I fell in love. 2 days later I drove back to Toledo and picked him up.... he was now "Pepper". He was all black with a small patch of white on his chest.

Within months I knew I wanted another one but waited awhile. The breeder had a litter in January 2002 with 4 boys and 1 girl and I wanted a girl. That girl ended up being mine. The breeder called her "Danielle" and then "Carmen" but she became "Paige" when I got her. I did get many comments when people asked me the names of my dogs. When they heard "Pepper" they would ask if the other one was "Salt"... she was a very light cream color!

I had both Pepper and Paige until December 2015. By the fall of 2016 I knew I wanted another Havanese and told the breeder. She put me on her list for her next litter. That litter was born May 7 of 2017 and was 3 girls.  Their momma was named Luna so she called this litter her "Moon" litter. The girls were named "Ash", "Cosmo" and "Willow". The breeder of the father of the litter had first choice of the puppies (to train for agility). I actually fell in love with "Cosmo" although "Willow" was a cutie as well. I ended up getting "Cosmo" who is now known as "Peyton". Peyton is a great comfort to me and those evenings on the couch while a watch tv with her curled up next to me are so nice. On a side note, Paige's father is Peyton's great-great-grandfather and although not as closely related, Pepper (besides being a half-brother to Paige since they had the same mom), is also related to Peyton. There are times that Peyton does look a lot like Paige even though she is a Red-Irish Pied color in the breed. She has more coloring to her when her hair is longer when Paige was a pure cream color.

Here is a layout with photos of all 4 of my furkids.

40 minutes ago, Michele said:

Is that why you're documenting them now? It's a great idea.

Over 20 years ago I took photos of every single Precious Moment figurine that my Mom and I had collected from 1983 to 1996. I did pack them away in their original boxes and now most of them are in plastic tubs (organized as well) in the basement. I have sold a few of them throughout the years as well. But I have them documented. I don't have digital layouts of them but the photos with all information are documented in a traditional scrapbook. I only have 4 special ones that are displayed all the time. And, I have an ornament tree and a small shelf unit with ornaments that are also displayed. But I just didn't have the room to have them all out all the time... I needed the China cabinet for other things!

9 hours ago, MoniqueN. said:

Traitors is originally a concept from the Netherlands, it was a great succes over here. We loved watching it. Are there famous people on your version of the show? We now have, I think, the 4th season, now for the first time with "common"people.

 

Dutch version

Season 1 was half reality TV personalities and the other half everyday people. There happened to be one reality star that most of the everyday people knew and they were fans. They ended going along with everything she said they were so starstruck by her. The final 4 ended up being 2 of the reality stars and 2 of the everyday people. I've heard about drama post filming between the winner and the other 3 because the 3 all felt they were betrayed. Don't want to give away too much though!

Season 2 is all reality TV personalities and I'm enjoying so much. Watching people from competition reality shows (Survivor and Big Brother) go against those from other types of shows (like several "Housewives" and a couple others from other shows under the Bravo channel umbrella) and a few from other shows (including a former Bachelor and a pro dancer from Dancing With The Starts) has been interesting. Heck we even have John Bercow, former House of Commons speaker on this season (he is hilarious at the roundtables).

Yes, I do like reality shows. Over the years I have watched Survivor, Amazing Race and all variations of the Bachelor shows.

I haven't watched Survivor for several seasons. The last full season I watched was #41. I watched the first episode of #42 and quit. Season #46 premieres next week. It just doesn't appeal to me any more.

Same with the shows from the Bachelor. The problem with it is that the producers use the same storyboard/formula every season and cast the contestants to fill a character they need. Then they create drama instead of letting it happen organically like in the original seasons. And, it seems all of them want to be "influencers" so they play to the camera. It has gotten quite boring to me.

Amazing Race is still good and I can't wait for the next season to start in a couple weeks. Production still finds ways to keep the show fresh for the viewers.

But recently a show has come out that I absolutely love! The Traitors. Season 1 in the USA came out last year and Season 2 is airing now. Evidently there are other English speaking versions from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Peacock has the 1st seasons for UK and Australia. Season 2 for UK and Australia will be on Peacock in March and New Zealand season 1 will also be added then. I watched UK Season 1 and now I want to see them all!

For the last 2 years (2022 and 2023), I have done a project in October of taking photos of the fall foliage every day of the month. In 2022, I was able to scrap the layout within a day or two. But with surgery the beginning of the month in 2023 and then getting the flu at the end of the month, I only got a couple of pages done. Then with another surgery the week before Christmas and a 3rd surgery Jan 18th, I never got the project finished. I made it a goal to get it done by the end of February. I'm happy to say that I got it done today!

I used templates from Fiddle-Dee-Dee at The Lily Pad. She has 3 sets that are autumn themed so I selected from them according to the number of photos I had for the day. I also have a lot of kits of the autumn theme (I love the colors) so tried to use the ones I had never used. And, Days 1 and 2 were made using the kit I made from the 2023 Build-A-Kit workshop along with the title page. I used the same kit for the 2 pages that will be next to each other in my album (for example, days 1/2, days 5/6 etc). Day 31 was on its own. I also used Cassel's Date Stamp on every page to show the date.

Here is the Day 31 layout: Kit is Evening Autumn by Kristin Aagard with some additional foliage from her CU Fall Foliage kits #2, #4 and #5. All available at The Lily Pad.

Day 5. I again used the retired Christmas Cheer kit from Bella Gypsy. When I put this layout in a book for my cousin, it will right after my Day 2 layout, so I coordinated them. I also used some foliage from a CU Foliage kit (#1) from Kristin Aagard which is available at The Lily Pad. And, I used a guitar from another Kristin Aagard kit "Faithful" also available at The Lily Pad.

19 minutes ago, Susan Ewart said:

 I also do that Rene, where I will open a template or image and if I do do shift D (because I'm too lazy to re-type the name when I do "Save As"), I'll just do Save As right away and usually I add WIP (Work in Progress) to the end so can find it right away.  When I'm finished I take the WIP off or I'll put FINAL in it's place.  I really enjoy seeing how everyone's work flow, flows, it's quite interesting to me.

I never save the templates with the template name which is what save as does! Each layout gets its own unique name that is quite different than the template name and I save them in a folder specifically for my working files so I have to change folders as well.

8 hours ago, sharon thompson said:

Thanks for the help Julian. My optimizer box is set up a bit differently but it does the same thing. When I took my first PSP course, the first lesson was on how to set up the workspace, arrange all the icons, and what settings to establish as the usual ones to use. I never changed the compression rate after that and forgot all about it. Just goes to show that I really should have bought the PSP for Dummies book after all. Again, many thanks. Sharon

 

Sharon, I always use the JPG Optimizer that you show here. Like you that is how I learned to save images years ago. Now whether that was back in the 1990's when I first started with PSP or when I started digi-scrapping in 2007/2008, I'm not sure since I don't have the early versions to check! But I've been doing this for years and it has always worked well for me.

When I save my pspimage files using this, I set the compression value to 13 (always) and save to my folder for the images I will be printing. Since using this does not change the pspimage file by renaming it, I then resize it to 600x600. Then using the JPG Optimizer I adjust the compression value so that the Compressed number on top right reads between 200 and 250 kB then save the image to a folder set up for only 600x600 images.

The only time I use the "save as" is when I start a layout using a psd template so I can save it using the file name I want (and to not overwrite the psd template).

Day 4. I used a brush from the Brusheezy download, #21. It was a lot of trial and error since a part of the photo was very close to the edge and I kept getting the hard edge. I did a lot of fiddling with the size and jitter settings but finally got it.

Kit used is called And Bake by Clever Monkey Graphics and is available at Sweet Shoppe. I again used the Discover Beauty font.

A note about the cake. My cousin's granddaughter (age 12) has been cooking and baking for about 4 years. She has figured out how to bake using gluten free ingredients since her mother has 2 auto-immune diseases and can't have gluten. Essentially the whole family is eating gluten free in support of Mom. At the age of 10, she knew that she wanted to open a bakery specializing in gluten-free items. And, sweet Caroline is a big fan of Taylor Swift thus this cake!

Day 3 are 2 more layouts for my cousin.

Layout #1 used the mask by Melo although I added to it so that I could get more of the photo. The kit is a really old kit by a designer that retired over 10 years ago. The kit was called Christmas Time and the designer was A Work in Progress. Again, the font is Discover Beauty.

Layout #2 used the extra mask from the 2022 Mask Workshop. The kit is called Around The World: Iceland and is available at Sweet Shoppe Designs. It is a collab kit from 2 designers. I again used Discover Beauty for the font.

All of my layouts for this workshop are being done for a book I'm doing for my cousin's family. So because of that I am using kits that I have in my stash so the book will look cohesive when done.

I had the template from last year's workshop so didn't even try to download it. 

Layout #1 for Day 2, kit is a retired kit from Bella Gypsy (Christmas Cheer). Template from 2023 workshop.

Layout #2 for Day 2, I used 2 kits, both retired from Bella Gypsy (Soul Sisters, Woof). Template is from 2023 workshop, extra for diamond members.

Font is Discover Beauty for both layouts.

@Cassel I didn't use the template shadows. I used my own. All 3 photos were shadowed the same. The left photo is below the middle photo in the layer palette, that wasn't changed. I also used a mat behind the photos instead of whatever it is that is in the template.

1 hour ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

It is such a timesaver and it is probably the script I use the most!

Agree about raster to mask script. A good companion to it is the Merge Group Rename script. I drag my photos into the layer palette which keeps the image number of it. By using the Merge Group Rename, it keeps the image number which is useful if I have multiple photos of the same subject.

I was doing the steps for my first layout for the regular photo spots and it wasn't looking right (was following the written directions but didn't scroll down far enough). So I used the script and realized that I had missed a step of changing the grey to black. 

My cousin's daughter posted photos just yesterday that were perfect for the day 1 templates! I used a kit called "Plant Life" by Studio Flergs from Sweet Shoppe Designs. A kit I've had for awhile because I loved it but had no photos... until yesterday! I copied Allison's description from Facebook for the journaling.

24 minutes ago, Susan Ewart said:

I am going to play more too.  Thinking of what type of photo works best and doing two different edits maybe.  Also, I would like to further learn about masking from a layer.  I would actually like to have a full black layer then bring back what I want (with white).  Using the Mask from image made a strange looking mask that wasn't either white or black, so I need to play with that some more too.  it's hard to see the little thumnail of it.  Either way, I did something with masks that I've never done and was really  happy that I might be on the cusp of learning something new.  It's kind of what PS does in the tutorials I watch (usually I'm watching a photo tutorial and then they do an edit of the photo afterwards ; lightroom then in PS to use layers and masks). I know there is a way to do it in PaintShopPro, just need to learn. More than that, I really need a good understanding of it.  It's easy to say; black conceals and white reveals, but to really understand it is what I'm after.  Teachers always make it look so easy don't they.  

Have you watched the Master Class on Masks? It touches a little bit on what you did and want to do.

51 minutes ago, Susan Ewart said:

That is a monumental achievement Rene.  It looks wonderful.  And that template is really nice.  Did you do the alpha as well, or was it part of the template?  It's very nicely done with the clusters.

This is like a contact sheet of a group of layouts, a person could do that for all their layouts or themed layouts.  I was thinking of posting a 13 layout wrap up every 13 weeks for the P52 challenge.  I had envisioned doing 12 layouts around/beside/under/over (in other words, where ever) the 13th layout which would be, maybe, the favorite of the first 13 with a little title on it.  this idea has never made it past a passing thought stage, but this layout is motivating me to consider it.  

Fiddle-Dee-Dee has done this collage template for several of the MOC challenges in past years. They are always free. I've used one of them to make a collage for my Document Your December layouts (31 layouts for the month of December) and for last year's October Daily layouts. She includes the letters and numbers on the template but I don't like the font that she uses because of the number 2. So I actually used the alpha that came with the kit I used and placed it where those spots were on the template.

Here is the collage for the 2023 MOC. On this one I used the lettering she had on the template.

There are at least 2 places for preset shapes, program data and the documents folder. Same as for brushes.

Look in your File Locations (File: Preferences: File Locations) to see what folders the program is looking at.

2 hours ago, Rene Marker said:

I have to log in every so often even though "remember me" is checked. Several times it has made me log in again when I was just on the site 1 to 2 hours earlier in the day.

Quoting myself because just 2 hours after I posted this response, I came back to the forum and needed to sign in!

15 minutes ago, Susan Ewart said:

And sometimes I have to re-log in because it says I'm not logged in.  I always check "remember me" for your website so it's easier to just click the favorites bar where I have you.  I chalk that one up to MS updates resetting things it has no right reset without asking first.  

I have to log in every so often even though "remember me" is checked. Several times it has made me log in again when I was just on the site 1 to 2 hours earlier in the day.

I spent the month of January participating in the Month of Challenges at The Lily Pad. 31 challenges in 31 days. Even with 4 days away from the computer I was able to get them all done. One of the designers graciously provides a free template to showcase all of the layouts. I finished that today using a kit by Bella Gypsy. Also, all layouts must have only product currently on sale at the store or retired products by the current designers.

Some challenges were a real challenge! Some challenges were easy because of things I've learned here at Scrapbook Campus (hello Mask Workshop). And some were full of ideas to use in future layouts.

This has happened to me in the past. Frustrating when it happens... once was an extremely long reply! 

The other problem I have had is not knowing if the reply actually posted. Just yesterday I replied to a post and hit submit reply. My post still appeared in the editing box and I didn't see a reply in the thread. I didn't want to hit submit reply again so I opened the thread in a new tab to see if my reply had posted. It had so I closed the tab that had the reply still in the editing box.