Susan Ewart

4 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Yes, it is unusually bright for you but the colors match the glow on your teapot! So well done and I love it!

Thank you so much Corrie.  That means a lot to me, as I always admire your choice of color in your layouts.  

51 minutes ago, Jeni Simpson said:

Cindy, I plan on doing the same, I want to join the Diamond Membership, and I am on a single income and bills get too high! However, I hope to do a monthly membership every so often when I can, because I think it is well worth the money.

I started by buying one month at a time.  It is insane the cost of living now.  I've certainly changed my spending habits in the last several years.  Retirement is on the horizon and how to make ends meet when that time comes is more on my mind now than ever before.  

Week 25

Working in colors that are quite bright for me.  The background is a gradient that added a gaussian blur to the max and repeated it several times.  Then i added a texture ("blinds" I think) and then added another texture on top of that (Texture>striation).  I used the same gradient on the ring of the magnet and in the text (week 25).  

23 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

Copying a chicken from CF

I like your version better, nicer design, especially the wing and tail and chest area.  

2 hours ago, Daniel Hess said:

@Ann Seeber Maybe search the "documents" folder for USA-MAP.PspShape and see where it landed.  Apparently NOT in the documents/Corel Paintshop Pro/2023/Preset Shapes folder.  ???  I don't have 2023...I didn't see anything that tripped my trigger better than 2022 but am ANXIOUSLY awaiting to see what 2024 is going to bring.  I figure the best of 2023 will also be included in that.  Punctuation is KEY in the file names and folder names...you miss one capital letter and it will give you nothing.

 

 

Thank you for sharing your hard work Daniel, I got it too.  

57 minutes ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Thank you! For a while petunias were considered old fashioned but they are back in full swing. I always liked them and have them almost every year, but they are prone to lice.

Lice?  I would have never known that.  

2 hours ago, Sharla said:

Week 26 A marigold flower (calendula officinalis) catching the sun.

 

Stunning Sharla.  My kind of photo!  Dont you just love the side lit and back lit flowers?  Mother Nature is the earths first artist. We are artists capturing an artist in action.

12 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

Pssttttttt..... I have a template for Canada with the individual provinces on it. It is still available at The Lily Pad. The designer also did one for the US and I used it for a layout I did in April documenting every state I have visited in the first 68 years of my life. Since I can now start working on my travel dreams, I will continue to fill it in the next few years.

I'll check that out, thank you.  

2 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Well I would like that lovely map as well because I have done a couple of short roadtrips with my family when I was visiting them. So far I always used Google maps to draw the routes we took, but your map with the states would be a great asset for which I would be very grateful.

I think we would all love that, it must've taken some time and a lot of patience to make it so precise. Daniel, you did a superb job on it.  There is only one question left to ask.... Where's Canada? ...we NEED that too!😁

1 hour ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Week-26, we are already half way through 2024. Where is the time gone, or do I sound a bit old now.......

After all the rain of the last weeks this week the sun did its utmost best to let us forget that and not only we but the plants enjoyed it too. I have taken the opportunity to shoot a lot of photos from the plants on my small patio. The gardencenter we usually visit often has a rack with small free plants that are no longer good enough to sell but if you take care of them they most of the time perform later on. This petunia was looking dreary and didn't like all the rain but, look what a couple of warm, sunny days did to it. 

That's fabulous Corrie.  There is so much variations in the color and the veining looks so cool.  Petunias remind me of my mom, she always had them.  

9 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Thank you Susan, at the moment I tend to use soft colors instead of very bright ones. By the way we had a couple of summer days but tomorrow the weather is changing to rainy and cold days again...... I used this week's good weather to take a lot of photos from the plants on my little patio for future use. The plants were so happy with the sun, as we were.

We also are heading back into to rain next week.  Should be sunny and in the high 20's (Celcius) by now.  the sun really helped my plants sprout up.

2 hours ago, Donna Sillia said:

I spent yesterday revising my wedding card. Most of the graphics are from CF except the silhoutte which is from Canva. The side font is ruritania. The other fonts are FarewellAngelina and FancyPants(I don't remember where I got them) and starinline(purchased from Deeezy.com). The other font is DDRadford from CF. I made the letters M and J, but stupidly forgot to save the vector so I don't remember what it is, but it's from CF. I also made the gold frame on the inside. The wedding is today so I just managed to get it ready after an extremely hectic week.

The card is an 8 1/2 by 11 printed borderless on card stock.

Wow Donna, that's a STUNNER!

2 hours ago, Daniel Hess said:

I'm now wondering what painting with paintbrush with "Lock" tool is all about.  Didn't see anything like that in the PSP help topics.

me too.  I wonder if it locks the settings in no matter if you try and change them in the F11 Variance palette.

oops i just saw Ann answered it for you.  I was WAAAAAY off.

2 hours ago, Julie Magerka said:

Love those names!

me too.  Echo is a grey tabby and Zeppelin (older now and does really wander anymore) is a black fuzzy long hair dude.  My black cat (Sumi) is in love with Echo, so you can imagine her surprise at him attacking the window screen (he's actually a chicken and make all these noises if a different cat comes into the 'hood).  we usually head out the door to stop the meeting.  They have a Chow named Jasper, barely ever hear him bark.  

16 minutes ago, Rene Marker said:

I actually like taking pictures of the moon when they are clouds or trees partially obscuring it. My absolute favorite picture I took was maybe 15 years ago. I was attending a camera club meeting at my church (we talked and learned about all things from usage of the camera to setting scenes for taking photos). When we came out it was a Harvest Moon in the sky with a cloud cover. I stood with my back against my vehicle to be as still as possible (didn't have my tripod which is highly recommended for night photos). I held my arms very close to my body and took several photos. One of them is absolutely amazing. I ended up having it printed as an 8x10 and put into a larger frame with matting. It was displayed in the church along with other photos from members of the camera club for awhile. It now hangs in my living room. I love the spooky feel of it!

I also did this layout of the photo.

I love that, it's moody and mysterious.  Beautiful shot.  

5 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

on this topic, I'm involved with TNR which is Trap/Neuter/Release of stray community cats that can never live indoors. When teaching kittens (who are able to be domesticated when they're young) to use a litter box, it is recommended to first use organic potting soil, which is similar to being outdoors. I know most cats prefer to be clean and I wonder if your local cat would use a litter pan instead of the garden if it had garden soil in it? They tend to prefer the confined space, which is why they love kids' sandboxes, too. You could add sand to it, and that might even be better and keep the cat out of your garden. Just slowly nudge it away a little further every day and before you know it your garden will be cat-free!😽

Good ideas.  Echo and his brother Zeppelin have been part of my backyard landscape since their owners moved in.  While I don't like it (especially when they try and attack my cats through the window screen and Zeppelin sprayed my downstairs window - with white frames, that are now spotchy yellow!), that they hunt in my yard and use it as a giant litter box (I dont care if they "go" in the bug hotel....the bugs probably think it's a feast), I want this to also be a cat-safe yard as we have lots of coyotes around here. And the neighbours are great people. We usually just knock on the window or go outside and call his name and he knows it's time to go home.  And I don't have weed...that's the main takeaway for me.  You'd almost think I planned it this way.  😁

I love what you are doing, it's so awesome that you take action and care for these disadvantaged cats.  It's sad to think they have to survive all the seasons, the predators and manage to feed themselves.  I'm glad my girls are safely inside!  the world outside for cats is scary.

1 hour ago, Julie Magerka said:

This is great. All those cool details you added. I especially like those 3 cutout lines near the bottom. So clever. (BTW, I've learned to live with some "weeds", easier than pulling them over and over. A garden that is too manicured doesn't attract enough insects. (That's my rationalization.)

I agree, and some weeds are quite pretty. I also have a bug hotel (very exclusive!), well, it's just some logs from the dead parts of a tree we had to cut off (now the tree is spindly but doing fabulous).  The Magpies keep eating the guests at the hotel! So, it's a stay-at-your-own-risk kind of hotel.  I'm lucky my hubby pulls the weeds, I don't because the neighbours cat does his business in the garden 😪. My husband has a stronger nose, and his icky-factor sense is higher than mine.

2 hours ago, Mary Solaas said:

@Susan Ewart Yeah - I'm getting to like those layer styles.  They come in handy sometimes!

You did a great job as usual. I like those frames also. And the cutout strip at the bottom.

I like what you do with the layer styles.  You have good control.  I find I'm usually having to put it so low in the settings, wish there was more fine control on them.

20 hours ago, Julie Magerka said:

One of the things I did recently was take a woman from BC on a guided tour of my hometown so she could learn about the place where her ancestors lived many years ago (here in Ontario). It was a very hot & sunny day but we had a good time. We had exchanged many emails back & forth and met for the first time that day. She took lots of pix and I took many of her in the places that mattered. With one of those I made this layout for her.

Julie, what a wonderful thing.  It must have felt surreal for her.  

6 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

Yeah, I love it, too!

me too. 

7 hours ago, Mary Solaas said:

Still working on the workshop. Need to practice. This time I made the outline of the dinosaur, exported it as a shape, used it and changed it to a raster shape and painted it using the paintbrush with the lock tool and this is what I came up with.

That's fabulous Mary!

Here the sketch I did.  Pretty much followed the sketch.  The three photos are mine (one was extracted- yellow dandelion).  The little tag was a vector shape I made in the first Vector Workshop.  I made frame by promoting the background layer and gave them a bevel.  the lines below the tag are the effect>cutout and i used a vector ellipse shape to have tapered ends.  It's the first time I made something I could use "Selection from Vector Object".  The background paper is a photo I did of dandelion seeds on a black background.  I first did negative image, then used a blend mode, then I think I used HSL and reduced the opacity or something like that.  the bottom tiling is a CASS punch (cass-Edge12), then a small inner bevel and small shadow which made it stand out more.  Fonts used are  Adorn Copperplate on the tag and Amanda Sunshine for the quote.  Both from Creative Fabrica.  My text tool was acting very strangely today.  I couldnt move it or resize it, it would just jump back to where it was.  Also I used cass-screwheads picture tube for the screw on the tag.  

I'm not sure about the quote.  I couldnt find any color that showed up well against the busy background.  I tried the paint behind technique but I did a dismal job at it so I used a layer style so the quote would at least be readable.

6 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

After finishing with the Vector Workshop I took a pause because we had such nice weather for a change. This was the first time this year we could sit outside in the evening, much welcome after all that terrible rain. But after a few days I wanted to see what the Argyle-2 script which I won is doing. I love it, it gives so many options qua colors that can be matched to a project. Of course I wanted to use it in a project and I took the Sketch and incorporated not only the argyle tiles but the photo corners freebie by Carole too. Those use the blogtrain color palette for this month and I have the freebie kits from Jessica Dunn and Marissa Lerin where all the elements are from. I don't know if it is clear in this reseized version but the background has a texture. The fonts are Crocus Monogram and Georgia and the photo is by me as usual.

So beautiful Corrie.  I love those soft tinty colors.  At long last summer has arrived for you.  I think we had our two days of summer and now it's fall, with constant rain.  

5 hours ago, Cassel said:

You really went wild with those cut vectors! Great results. The Flower tubes are from the follow-up emails for the Flowers freebie. For the funny answer in the quiz, it reminds me of one anatomy class, where our teacher was always joking. One exam we had, the first few questions were "normal" but then, after that, he would have hilarious options in the multiple choices, even offering 12 choices instead of the typical 3-5 choices. The options he gave were so hilarious that we knew when a student reached that first funny question; everyone would burst out laughing when reading it.

Thank you for the link to the flowers.  I'd have loved being in that class.  A sense of humour makes life so much less stressful.  it must've been fun watching the students, knowing what was coming. 

2 hours ago, Cassel said:

You don't know how true that statement is! 🙂

Works great for the rest of us!