Susan Ewart

Julie, this is really beautiful. I miss seeing cormorants. Your lino background is really nice and fitting with the rocks in the photo. I know what you mean, what I first envision isnt what the end result is. Often thought, inspiration takes you in a different direction. I like what you did with the frame.

Bonnie, that lino background is fabulous. Love that flower. You are on a layout roll.

I agree. Really good input from everyone and so many inspiring layouts. O[ops, I answered in the wrong quote. I agree about so many wonderful layouts.

So sweet Ron. Love the look on Simba's face. So cute they all sleep together. Good to hear you are on the recovery road and working on PSP.

Corrie, that is a perfect lino background. It looks so much like that sponge-shroom. Which is really beautiful by the way, it looks more like a flower than a mushroom. I cant believe how many different ones you have there. I recently read a very interesting article on mushrooms. they are really fascinating.

Day 6. All about Linoleum paper. It's almost as fun kaleidoscope paper. This is two lino papers (a yellow and light brown one), with the yellow as the top layer I used multiply and it gave me a darker brown. but it wasnt dark enough so I put a black layer under the two lino layers and reduced the opacity of the middle of these three layers (or the layer above the black which was the light brown one). That way I got it dark and moody for the shot. The moon and clouds are a composite shot of two photo's taken less than a minute a part. I extracted the moon and placed it over the blown out white moon that was in the cloud photo. Font: Risen (from Creative Fabrica) Quote: Frederick L. Knowles (found by searching "moon at night quotes") Photos: mine from Oct. 2022 I'm feeling more comfortable on my second time through the Masks Workshop and trying for adventures things: like the preset shape tool....I know, going where I've never gone before.?

HI Sharon, the mask in that tutorial had the broken type frame as part of the mask, but I edited it out so I could make my own frame using the preset shape tool (a new thing for me!) and then using guides I made selections to take part of the frame away. All newish stuff for me. Getting braver and braver with PSP. Give it a try. It's based on Carole's design, she deserves the real credit.

Day 4 in the bag! I'm finally catching up. Around the same time as the baby squirrely whitetail showed up, this pigeon showed up, strutting her white finery. It left me wondering what's going on, all the wildlife turning up with white pants and white tailcoats. Even the local famous white Magpie made an appearance in my yard this year, far from it's normal territory. None of my pictures were good enough to show this strange sight. When it spreads it's wing and fans it's tail feathers in take off it looks like an angel. So cool. The pigeons are quite comical and thier eye makes them look a little crazy and scatter-brained. Fonts used: Gill Sans Ultra Bold Condensed ("take a walk"), Gold Night ("on the"), Dancing Clarisha ("Crazy"), Good Morning Christmas ("side"). All from Creative Fabrica except Gill Sans...(windows). I used Gina Jones Bright and Cheerful paper 06 for the background, two layers, on upside down and used a blend mode of lighten to get rid of the darker color on the paper. Two borders were used, both by Sheila Reid - at the beach burlap border and Doodlelines page border (both Sheila and Gina are from Digital Scrapbook). Photo's are mine

Thank you Sue, Carole did mention that. So hard to remember all the masterclasses and what was in each one. I'm glad the rest of you have a much better memory than I do.

You have great neighbours too. This one looks like he's/she's wrapped up in a mink coat. Really plush looking. I know what you mean about a small fortune feeding them. They give me great pleasure (along with the birds). Cheaper than therapy too.

AWESOME Sharon, just awesome!

Day 3 Diamond Extra. I call this new baby of 2022 Spider Squirrely, the second. Because after some trial-be-panic learning it became adept at scampering along the rock/glass chip siding of the garage. Remember that stuff from the 60-70's, hurt like crazy if you scraped yourself on it? Turns out, it's great for Squirrels and birds to cling to. I came up from the basement and looked out the window to see the neighbours cat chasing it, and up the wall it went. You could see it was rocky. I was banging on the window and hubby was out the door to yell at the cat. It's only the second squirrel we've seen do that. If I had been able to take a front shot it would have been Super Squirrel as he is in the super hero pose. As it might turn out, he could be a she. The one in our feeder right now looks pudgy, so might have some babies (in our closed-in shed off the garage - there's been several families in there over the years). I think I tried every wrong way to isolate the brackets of the mask and finally remembered about Preset Vector shapes (yay for all the master classes, Q&A's and tutorials - I remember about the preset shapes!). Once I did that I could add a bevel to that shape that I intended to do right from seeing the mask. This layout is similar to other Day layout, they are a set, since it's the same squirrel on the same day. I did the same type of thing for the Kaleidoscope background. Black layer below it, then lower the kaleidoscope layers opacity. this was also set to a small size and I think I did 30% angle.

I agree with Ann, this is the kind of brush work I will strive to do. I love that there is layers of color in the different strokes. It's beautiful Anja.

Oh, Julie, this is so sweet. Giving her the best life at the end of hers, what a gift.

I know, right...about the frame. For so long I wanted to know how people did that. It wasnt until I did the Greeting Card workshop that I learned how. Now to figure out how Sue does the intertwined frames! Your background is really nice with that photo, which is beautiful by the way. I would love to walk there.

Day 3. I call this "Most Muscular". As this wee babe looks like he's doing the "most muscular" pose at a bodybuilding contest. Or could it be that he's just showing the Magpies and Blue Jay he's not afraid of them. I had to go outside several times in the day as the larger birds were picking on this fearless baby. He scampered around the ground and all over the lawn furniture and since he couldnt get into the bird baths (it was hot) he lapped up the water off the pavement. I think I played around for almost an hour with kaleidoscope random pattern. This one is at size 25 or 30. I tried a number of sizes and it looks like it's at a 45 degree angle but it's at zero. Again I put a black layer under the background layer and lowered the opacity to get a darker result. I find I can control density better than using Brightness/contrast and I can go back and change it later if I want to. The frames were added on separate layers with an inner bevel.

Corrie, your background is so nice. all those techniques really add up to an interesting and unique background.

Ugh! I already see that I need to fix the shadow on TAIL. And when I fixed the kerning on TALE I didnt get it lined up with TAIL. I feel like I'm chasing my tail!

Masks Workshop Day 2 Diamond Extra. This is baby Squirrely White Tail. Her's (or His) dad used to frequent our feeder. Sadly he had a run in with a transformer and did not make it. I'm glad to see he has passed down his white markings. I know, I know, never point the subject out of the frame....but, in my defence, there are TWO ends to this little creature and one of them is surely pointed inward right at you. ? It's all about the base, 'bout the base, no treble (with apologies to the singer of that song). Fonts used: A: Quentara. Tale: Amnestia Normal. Of A: Allicia. Tail: Audiciti. All from Creative Fabrica. Photos: min. I used the plaid at 45 degrees and as large as you can make it (250 I think), with a black layer below and a reduced opacity on the plaid layer. I changed the sizes of the small masks (before they were masks). I remembered learning that if it's in a group I can resize all the group at once so before I made a mask I made a group of the black square and the frame, resized it, ungrouped it and made the mask of the black square. I also bring my photo into the layout and lower the opacity a lot to see the size against the raster layer (before it's a mask) to get the sizing. Once i'm happy with the size of the photo and soon-to-be mask I can then go ahead and make the mask and drag the photo in. It might be a long way but I found before I'd bring in the image and I always wished it was either a bit bigger or small or wider or taller. This takes all that away and I can make the best decision before I make the mask. Love all the layouts, you are all so creative. I'm learning a lot from you.

I'm going to try this.