Susan Ewart

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it, well, I hope I am. but I know I'll be staring blankly at the corel draw screen not knowing how to even start. I have wanted it too and had it once years ago but never used it. 😪

If I buy the humble bundle would you be able to suggest tutorials for how to use corel draw, or at even just how to turn a raster into a vector?

perfect colors in this layout Mary. I love what you did with the main frame part of the mask.

Corrie, I'm blown away by your calendar, it's just stunning (like everyone else's I see, this is just like opening a present on Christmas morning!). I really like the dates starting on Monday, it makes the weekends look really nice in the calendar. I like how the mushrooms have a gradient, how did you do that?

I agree, each page with it's glory of color is like celebration. I love color so there was so much to discover in Donna's pages. it really has that "wow" factor. So many different calendars that had me going "WOW" that's fabulous.

I don't know why. but it seems like if I think something is going to take no time at all, it seems to take forever and I have all kinds of challenges that pop up. My hubby and I were just talking about that. He had something he was going to be doing and it wouldn't take any time at all he said. And I reminded him that when you say that, you know what happens, it goes south and takes 4x as long. in 2020, My hubby got new glasses, they were supposed to have the coating that makes them go dark in the sun. They came, but they didn't have the coating. so they had to be sent back. The new ones came, they had the coating but they used the wrong prescription. then the next two times we went, they broke the lens when they tried to cut them. In the end, it had to be sent to the lab to be cut and not cut at the store and it was about 4-5 months later. We got to keep the first pair of glasses as well, because they messed up so much. It's a 45 min drive each way so it was a chunk of our day gone.

Love how you did the date boxes.

Wow, this is perfect.

Thank you so much Cristina. I've learned so much in the campus from Carole and the members; from layout design to photography that I cant help but be inspired and improve. I love it.

Thank you Donna. I really like the process of learning how to control the light...not always a success (mostly not) but really engaging to try.

Here is the materials properties box. You can see I've chosen the gradient tab on the top and to the right you can see the gradient at zero angle and and 98 angle on the second image. you can see the name in the drop down list bottom left. Cassel made this gradient...look below to see how complex it is. Blows my mind! And yes, there are master classes about Gradients in the Campus (for Diamond members). And those (The Master Classes) are downloadable. You can also see in the drop down gradient menu/list (?) all the other gradients are showing the same 98 degree angle. I first manipulated it by grabbing that stick--thing in the middle of the gradient box above the words angle and repeats (oh man, you can do crazy cool stuff with repeats using huge numbers!). I used the top of the 4 vertical boxes on the right top side. Does any of this help? I'm not a great explainer. I also probably used the pick tool to pull out from the left side, horizontally. I stretch the corner of the canvas out so I can stretch beyond the canvas to get the effect I want. Sometimes I need to reduce the canvas on the screen to be able the pull out the corners or edges as far as I need to. Probably this is all stuff you know already.

Here goes. I'll do two posts. Hoping the images are big enough to see. First is the layers palette, I grouped the layers for my background so I had the originals. I duplicated the group and merged it turning it into a raster in order to add the texture. but backing up, here's how I started. From the bottom (called background in the layers palette) I used cass-sunset07 gradient with the linear gradient (top button on my gradient type list - next post shows the materials palette). Sometimes, I stretch gradients way up or way down using the pick tool; like, WAY past the canvas, I'm pretty sure I did that because there is also yellow in that gradient. Then I added a new raster layer and manually played with the angle until I liked it (turned out to be 98 degrees). I wanted that bit of yellow to be like the sun or light shining on the front of the flower so I used shear and perspective with the pick tool to manipulate the corners. In doing so, I had some of the canvas show through at the bottom right (you can see the white sliver of it in the layers palette). (NOTE: raster 4 added with the same initial 98 degrees, so I had one that was untouched in case I messed up - Raster 3). If I tried to use the pick tool to cover that sliver it moved the yellow spot too much so I used a blend mode: lighten to fill in the transparent part on the canvas. Blend Modes affect the layer below it...there is a Master Class about that in campus if you are a Diamond member. the top two white layers are the fading white gradient, I used two, and rotated one 180 degrees and used various opacities to control the strength of the gradient. Hopefully this isnt way too confusing.

Yikes, I'm usually a hot mess when I'm playing around and I never write stuff down. I will see if I can recreate it, in steps, again...might be later this week though.

Oh my gosh! Thank you so much.

here is an almost finished October. I made the calendar smaller to fit the days of the week across the top and so I could enlarge the Month. Still playing with placements, month in the centre, month to the far left or centered on the date boxes. So, I'll live with this for a bit. The extra space I had planned on using quotes so i will stick with that. I used a gradient on the background (made of one of Cassel's gradients - sunset), two of them, one with an angle and probably a blend mode to blend them together and the fading white as well. kept a copy of all of them then merged the other layers into one layer. Added a texture to the background and to the boxes to make them look like they are part of the background. Havent changed the numbers yet and decided if I'll keep black text or try something else. I did try to blend the rasterized quote and it looked cool, but not sure the calendar would remain cohesive if I did that with all the months. So, this one isnt all the way done but thought I'd show some progress. Now to go back (and forward to Nov/Dec) to complete them all. I'll post as I get each one done. I might have forgotten to take the blend mode of the first part of the quote (it's a separate layer than the word Flowers), it's looks lighter and not black.

I can see the difference in jpg and if use Tiff or png and have started using tiff or png to get better resolution. Especially png for anything that needs transparency; and I noticed when I print the png, the margins dont shift around like jpg and even pdfs do. I'm doing wedding invites and need the page to stay centered in the printing process. I though pdf were the most stable for outsourced printing, but testing on my computer shows it doesn't stay centered like the png tests i was printing does.

I cant see where it shows 100 or 200 px. When I save the jpgs it just has a compression slider. I'd like to know where this is in case i'm missing something. I'm sure you'd want 300 if you were printing. I'm interested to find the answer to this too.

Wow Daniel! Fabulous and cohesive. the photo's were all beautiful and the fit the month and are interesting. Who doesnt love horses? I loved those pages. Very cool to have the state in the background of the date boxes, it was a little something extra to discover.

I agree, beautiful gradients that really make those photos look great.

Wow! that's awesome to make the date boxes into a mask. Great work!

I would have a hard time picking. they both appeal to me. the people one looks so happy it makes me smile, the other one is so inviting I just want to walk right in, sit down and start eating.

Donna, your patterns are really interesting to look at. You are really well versed in AI and FF so your backgrounds come out really well. And I'm super blown away how well polished and finished your months are. There's is feeling of motion, like waves, in that background and you can see it's affect on the mask of the smaller picture (I love that mask btw).

me too. I'm cutting more sample cards to show the bride-to-be this week. Measure 8-9 times, cut once...get it wrong. ugh!

WOW! Incredible shot and what detail! I havent seen one of them since I left the Westcoast, they are so cool.

I am doing the same. the photos I'm using actually look better in a portrait orientation. It's sometimes a happy surprise when I fit them in the mask and think, hey, I would not have thought to use this photo this way and it look cool. Your flowers are stunning. Not just the photography but how full and perfect they look. You have a very green thumb.