Susan Ewart

We've been having unusually warm weather this fall. It should be down to zero at nights now, but its still 10 degrees (Celsius) and it's supposed to be 25-30 Celsius during the days this week and into October. There is usually snow on the ground in October. I was reading in a local paper that the almanac said Alberta was in for a "deep" freeze this winter. As far as I'm concerned, any time water freezes...it's a "deep" freeze. I hope the almanac is wrong. Summer started slow with lots of rain. I keep thinking Alberta and BC are switching weather patterns with each other because where I lived in BC it mostly rained and now they are getting 30 degree days (at the coast) which is very unusual. They were really hot this year while we had the rain. Alberta is known for cold winters and hot hot summers, but of course Alberta is also known for quite unpredictable weather and severe temperature changes in one day.

I love the look of this.

Awesome! It's so beautiful.

I had not heard of Katie Pertiet before. Her stuff is gorgeous! thanks for the mention Julie and Cristina

That's really beautiful Julie. I too, love old barns.

Happy Birthday Bonnie! Missed you in campus. Looks like a great day for you.

Great layout! And you can see the broken paperclip. I bought the script but will be awhile before I get to try it out. Great ideas here Corrie, I never thought to use it on something other than text.

WOW! and WOW! I love this. It blows my mind all the different ways you come up with.

Thank you so much Corrie. That makes me feel good after a not-so-good day at work.

Is that moldy bread? Awesome!

That is amazing, once in a lifetime photo, and I got goosebumps reading your post.

I've been busy lately with another project so this is a sparse layout from me. I needed a little PSP time so my brain could reset for the other project that I'm running into more challenges than expected. the little photo is framed with a cutout. I actually extracted the flowers and vase then made the selection around them and added the cutout. the good part was I didnt need to be perfect with the extraction as it blended in with the background. I got lucky on that. I also used the pencil sketch 2 script. I played with the opacity of the layers and used a mask to make the centre yellow part show through a little more. I turned on the photo layer that the sketch leaves intact to allow the the color to come through. maybe a little too much though.

We thought the same thing. I did pencil sketch 2, too. This is stunning Corrie.

Wow Kasany, the 'after' butterfly is awesome!

I found the history lesson interesting. I'm glad you shared it. In North America we cant even imagine what that would have been like and that there would still be people living now (young kids then) that had to experience that. The detail in the parachute harness is neat.

Awesome. I can't imagine driving backwards for the amount of time it must've taken. What a beautiful car!

Week 37 Kings = Tall Tea Pots The background started out as the Striped Ribbon (2) tutorial in the latest lab. I added noise, and a gradient layer below and used a blend mode. still wasnt happy with it, so I duplicated the noisy striped paper and used 90 degree angle so it was horizontal and added the same blend mode as the previous. Then grouped the 3 layers, duplicated the group and merged that group. then I could add the blinds texture (it did look like much if added the texture on the layers that were not merged). In the end I was wanting it to resemble fabric. The fonts are Kings and Kingstone Roman from CF I think.

You are giving me some awesome ideas. I could make that box in PSP and print it, fold it the deck of cards. Such a great idea. I should look into playing-card making companies.

Hope you are feeling better soon!

here's the full opacity effect. It might not show well, surprisingly this effect layer is a really big file.

Week 36 Jacks = Creamers This background was fun. Just wish I could remember how I did it. I started with a gradient then I remember adding repeats. Then trying out various effects, ripple then kaleidoscope but then I chose the orginal gradient with less or no repeats. Even when I went back to the different texture effect with saves the last setting, it wouldn't do the same thing so I wont be able to repeat it. Wish I had made a 3600x3600 paper of it. This paper has the effect lowered in opacity to 26%. I'll post the full opacity one so you can see it. Fonts are Antonia Retro and Fascinate. I think these are google fonts that came with my font viewer because they are the only ones that have tags on them, I looks for retro type fonts. Was actually looking for art deco style. I am surprised I am still finding so many different backgrounds.

...there are more words where that came from...for example...Math-i-macation! I hate days where I have to do lots of math-i-macation.

YES, I would love to get them printed. I'm thinking of at the end also designing a back for the card. Because I have a tea cup (T-Cup...for Ann! 😁) I dont think I used yet because it's a demitasse cup but it has playing cards on it so I could use that for the back of the card. That just came to me today. Isnt it going to be awesome when we complete this challenge and look at all the work we did. So cool!

Week 35 Aces = Sugar containters! Hmmm, I've got a pattern going (with the cutout effect). I did the tight diagonal from the Lab 14-9 with the preset shape (clubs). PSP was being persnickety when I was doing the math it was making up it's own math, I finally got it to math-ify correctly and that became my tile for the background. I used the cutout effect and turned off the actually layer (clubs overlay) so the cutout is on the background layer. BG layer got a texture added (sandpaper). I keep the merged cutout layers(white and black layers) separate in case I want to change the cutout. I made dups of it and the background layer so I could merge the cutout and the paper so that I could select "from Vector Object" when I did the text. I promoted the background/cutout layer, added white around it and gave it a shadow. The 2024 and outer frame was is white, and blended into the background with a blend mode. Font is two from the Gill Sans line up.

OMG! LOVE wrapped up in fur!