Susan Ewart

I"m in with PSP.

I'm in with PSP too! I can always use (read: need!) the extra practice.

They are so pretty. Lucky they are to have flower for so much time of the year. I really like that watercolor 2 Script.

I agree with Corrie. This song came to mind too, it seems humans are doomed to repeat past mistakes over and over. Even in everyday life I've found myself saying, why haven't I learned, why do I keep doing the same thing over and over?

Thank you Cristina. This is very helpful. I did watch "Katie the Creative Lady". they were good, except the loooong time going over her kit she is using. Her teaching is largely to sell her kits. I am going to look into the HTG course you mentioned, at least it will teach me where and how to use the tools. I liked the YouTube videos of his and it turns out I did see the Melissa Shanhun one as well, it was already on my bookmarks. I need to rewatch it because it was too long ago now. Your words are so right, "I dont need to learn the basics of scrapbooking, but how to do it using the tools PSE has." I should be looking at it from that point of view.

Thank you Donna, I have seen some of his videos. I like them. Was hoping for the beginning to end type. I have meant to look into the the paid version but havent had the time.

Thank you Cristina. I'm going to try the Melissa Shanhun's one to start. I agree fully, nothing out there even comes close to how Carole takes a rank beginner that never used a graphics program to making layouts in two short weeks in a bootcamp.

We spell it like that in Canada too.

I like this way too. I have done it before with some Lemurs up a tall tree at the wildlife park I visited often. It really looked good as the masks were a bit offset and it followed the not straight tree so fittingly. I have forgotten about this technique though, so I'm happy you brought it up.

I did the same (used two photos, 4 would make the photos too small - a challenge for me). These photos are out of this world awesome. Seeing it in person would be something.

J- miminal 'nuff said... hahahah, right, like I could just leave it at that. You all expect it, you all know it's coming Along with being a font-a-holic I seem to be a word-a-holic, a complete waster of words. There should be some word-police to stop my blathering-on-long-story posts. But there isn't, aren't you all so very lucky. 😜 And...wouldn't you know I clearly don't know the order of the alphabet. I've had this done for over a month before I realized I forgot about poor 'I'. this was the layout of masks, one to lighten up a part of the J, another to mask the J itself and then I add the background. I actually have 4 backgrounds in this mask if I ever want a J with another background (and who wouldn't want that?)

Letter I I'm back to trying to keep up on color practice and was inspired by playing with very impure acrylic inks touting themselves as Primary Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. The magenta has yellow in it. yeesh! And then there's me, mixing away and adding too much water as I was trying to get the same saturation...I failed, but it sure was fun overcoming the impure ink I had. All these hues were made from these three inks, and yes, even the black, known in this case as "hue black" as opposed to "true black- (which is a value on the value scale). The back light also washed out some of the hues and made Red, Magenta-Red and Magenta hard to tell apart - which is actually the case when sorting these ones in smaller increments of change. I'm adding this color bar so you can see what it should look like. The font is Wild Smith and this is a composite of two photos. I did extract the ink bottles to place in the frame, mostly to take up some space. I had wanted to do a circle but didn't have any suitable containers. I should point out that there is very few pure art media materials available (ink, paint etc), but knowing which way a color skews and how to counter balance that is most helpful. I learned from painters and polymer clay artists that if you have to add a bit of something to fix one hue, you should add it to all the hues you are working with so the palette works well together. I will invest in some high quality printer ink to play with.

Where do you find good PSE videos. Ones I found aren't so much scrapbooking ones, or they are just doing a layout to sell their products. I want beginner techniques, like Carole's bootcamp. Can you tell me if Affinity is as closely related in form to PSE as they say and that Affinity tutorials might translate across to learning PSE. But first I must face my fear of ON1.

Wow Jacques, you've done a masterful job.

Thank you so much Jeni.

I love it! Very creative.

Template 7 - Diamond I just shot these photos last weekend, now that the dandelions are out. The Alpha, the prongs and the two clocks were from my Build A Kit 2024. The one clock is on the brown circle which I used one of my papers from that kit. The clock is a cutout which I saved and did you all know you can resize the cutout? So cool! The other two circles I tried for a couple hours to find a paper anywhere that I liked and didn't find anything suitable. I just colored them thinking I'd add a texture from PSP but ended up blending them in. I chose to cut off the rest the one circle. I use Shift D and Duplicate a lot when I'm playing around with different techniques. Especially Duplicate when I'm testing out which texture I like and I can compare. I used Shift D to duplicate the the layout when i want to test out big changes or make a version two. Which is what you see here. I used the Lifted Photo Script. The font for the quote is Banerton. the brick wall is PSP with a gradient, duplicated, free rotate 180 and sliced diagonally-deleting the unwanted 1/2 (and yes, I kept the full size duplicates and hid the layers). I didn't quite get the BG lines to hit the corners or both the edges and the blue paper. Life is like that, so I left it. ...and if you thought the "s" in changes looks far away, it is...I forgot to move it back into place. ugh!

that's a neat watermark. I'd love to see it on it's own so I can get a good look at it. I have a design I used in the past but it was drawn on the work itself physically. I must sit down and get to making one of these. Although, I'm pretty sure my layouts are training some AI somewhere, not much I can do about it. If only the AI could come and work off using my data by cleaning the toilets and washing the dishes etc. You, know, doing something really useful to us.

So beautiful Corrie. I really love the background photo.

I just love this. Your description of the pair was funny (smartest and naughtiest 😄)

Those are so neat. the ones on the right look like they are made of wood.

I love jars too and was thinking of that for the layout. But never fear I had chosen something even more simple that it perhaps should even count....if I ever get to that point.

Can you really have "too many" hobbies? 🙃

Template 6 Papers and elements from Digital Scrapbook (Gina Jones, Jessica Dunn, Sheila Reid and one paper that says ABM-Christmas Joy). the background paper is Creative Fabrica. I used also a pattern paper that i blended into the texture layer and added a PSP texture on top (Striation). I selected the light bulbs in the string and promoted them so i could add an outer glow to just the bulbs. Title font: Christmas Ink (CF) and I blended it into the background as if it was written with a felt pen. Journal: words of the song...oops I forgot the authors (in the layout) Lee Mendelson and Vince Guaraldi and it's one of my most favorite Christmas songs. Photos are mine from driving around the neighbourhood. The lights on the fence I didnt have to angle the photo to match, as the fence is on a street that has a pretty steep hill and it fit perfectly.

Will we get to see some of your work as well. It's interesting to see the other creative endeavors that the members have.