Susan Ewart

Ann, thanks for explaining how you did it.  I never thought of using Hue/Saturation. I'm sure I've seen Carole do it in tutorials but forgot.  I wondered how people keep "changing" the color on a paper and still keep the texture of the paper.  they must be using hue/saturation.  Boy, my head is sure "thick" sometimes.

Holy WOW Sue!  that's stunning.  I love those colors.  I love geese.  We lived on a flight path to the local (very small) pond, in Chilliwack, BC.  Our windows got pelleted but we didn't care, the low flying geese were awesome.  That little pond got well over 800 geese, ducks and many different waterfowl.  Hubby and I would go around dinner to watch them all take off for the farm fields for the night.  We and a random stranger (who came everyday for the same reason) counted the groups as they took off.  We stopped counting at approx. 800.  I'd go in the mornings to watch the landings too.  There was also the smaller cackling geese.  Best memories for me, I miss it.  In Alberta they are too far out in farm fields to be attainable.  In Chilliwack you walked amongst them as it was a small neighbourhood park, with nests right beside the foot path and a geese sitting on them, not even a bit concerned about the people walking by.   Beautiful layout that take me down memory lane.

 

 

Beautiful Ann. The background is fabulous.  The whole layout looks like it's framed.  How did you do that.  That's a cool tip about making the striped paper.  I have tried to use plaid, but I just dont like them.  But stripes are A-okay.  I will give that tutorial a try.

Here is my Day 9-Project 4.  Two versions.  the darker one is the one I like.  I had about 6-7 papers as the background, hiding and unhiding over and over and finally decided on these two.  I worked mostly on the dark one, then revealed the other layer to see.  I would brighten the title on the lighter one if I was to keep that one.  I did the pinking shear look easier this time through the bootcamp.  And one thing I'm learning is not to go into freak-out mode when I click something I shouldn't.  Cassel told me my computer wont blow up. And she's right, it hasn't blown up yet. The papers and elements are Pixel Scrapper, the fonts are standard that came with windows.  As always, photos are mine.  these are from some of the Christmas card fronts I've done. I was going for the rustic theme.

Laurie, check out Sue Thomas' work.  She is a master at birds, bugs and pretty much anything outdoors.  If you love corvids (like I do) June Hunter is worth a look, she is from my home province of British Columbia and she has a fabulous blog post you can subscribe to (The Urban Nature Enthusiast).  Like Sue T, she is at the top of her field in this respect with ability and incredible knowledge on their subjects, and I'm lucky to own some of her (June's) work.  For flowers, check out Kathleen Clemons style of painterly flowers (Creative Live has videos, they come on sale often, don't pay full price - I have two video seminars and love them and I'm not even a flower photographer!) or just google her and see her stuff, not all her work uses "lens baby" lenses so the painterly look is still attainable with telephoto lens.

Connie, good idea to convert to greyscale.  You inspired me to try some of my parents old photos that I love...down the road a bit when it's not too busy.  I spend more time bringing in elements and deleting them.  I would like to say I am a planner, and I am in certain things, but an idea is more of a starting point for me.  As blocks or issues or problems pop up and I solve those issues more ideas open up to me and the end product is quite different from what I planned or saw in my head.  In other words: I much about the same as you. hahaha.

 

Here's a question for you and for everyone.  Do you start a layout; and you like it, then you hate it, then in the end after its done and you don't look at it for a few days/weeks then look back and realize you are quite happy with it.

 

Laurie, if do actually get to photographing the leaves, I will try and do a post.  I went through a phase of freezing leaves in ice and photographing them.  I filled my tiny freezer with trays of frozen leaves! Here is some samples, I used some in the first bootcamp I did in May 2021

Wow Laurie!  that layout is stunning. Is your font filled with a photo?  It's so beautiful.  I love the fall colors too.  They are in abundance now in Alberta.  I was out in my backyard late last night picking up dried fall leaves for my other course and now I think I'll collect more for a photo project (in-studio).  My neighbours must think I'm crazy.

Anita, I love the use of plaid in your layout.  You matched the colors beautifully.  I try using plaid but it never looks right to me.  This layout shows just how nice it can look.  And cats are always a winner in my book.

 

Connie, Wow! I love the subtle use of color, almost monochromatic.  It's beautiful and really brings out the photos.

 

 

Sue, I get what you are saying.  I like the fussy pages others make but it is also not me, I like it clean and sparse, to showcase the photos.  I try to add stuff and then delete it because it doesn't make sense to me, but I'm keeping an open mind and trying things that are out of my style.  I find using patterned paper hardest of all, it seems distracting.  I do like a nice tidy work space (in my studios) as well.  the kitchen for me however, is a love hate relationship.  I tend to cook Cajun...if you get my drift.  One time I  commented to my husband about the cool light coming from the kitchen, the way the sun was lighting it....it was smoke from the colander I melted to my pot!  He jokes that he's going to wire the oven/stove so that when it's turned on the computer is turned off!  And baking, I love to eat it but I cant do it.  I tried healthy diet peanut butter cookies once (side note: there is no such thing!), took almost a week to soak the pan to get the "cookies" that fused themselves to it, off.

Beautiful layout Sue.  Sending me off to work with wonderful images is always a good thing, especially when I dont want to go.  I like the idea of making my own papers.  I'm going to try some tutorials to get the ball rolling.

Ann, that's beautiful! And so cute

 

Cindy, love that one, "what Bruce thinks" hilarious.

Cassel, I would like a post on linking.  In my Day 7-project 3 post I linked the upper right flower with a little flower and moved it and then I linked the lower flower/star to move them.  Mostly to practice linking.  What I found is sometimes I'd link and it would work then I'd go to move it again later and it was unlinked, but one of the layers would still have the link on it, but I think not the second one.  Likely from me randomly clicking when I shouldnt be, or is that because I had linked other stuff after that.  I thought once you link layers they stay linked until I unlink them.  Does this make sense.  I will look forward to the blog post.

 

Cindy, love Bruce Lee!

Pirkko, I love your papers that you made.  You have good color sense.  So cute with the black cat helping pick berries (One of mine is black too).

Oh my goodness, how awful Wanda (Sue) McGuire.  I hope you are feeling much better now.  Better to have bad chicken than the "C" word.  Take Care and speedy recovery.

Here is my project 2 (Merry Christmas) and project 3 (winter daze) from the bootcamp.  This is my third time through and I get more relaxed and comfortable with PSP.  Still takes forever to find the right papers elements etc.  I'm beginning to see that making my own papers is the next on the long list of what I want to learn with PSP.

Here is my Day 7 project 3. I was obviously in a monochromatic mood today. Photos are mine, elements and papers from Pixel scrapper.  Title font (and quote, I think) is Little Pigeon from Creative Fabrica.  I used two papers on the bigger blue one that I couldn't decide on.  None was the color I wanted, either too blue or too green.  When I played with opacity I still had the other one behind it and the color showed through. It was the color I wanted.   A happy accident for sure.  I had a better time with using the glitter tile and flood fill tool (took 3 bootcamps and one basic course to get it!).  I put the lighter glitter behind the dark blue one to separate it from the background better.  As such, I didn't put a drop shadow on the blue one, it looked weird when I did.  My flowers were flatter looking so I kept the drop shadow as if it was thick paper,  and the wire looked thin (24 or 28 gauge) and did the same as the flowers.

thank you Cassel.  I want to form the "good" habits now at the beginning.  I'm going to work on using Linking to start.  Grouping will come later when I have a better grasp on it.

Day 5 Project 2, a wee early for Christmas (well...not for me, it's NEVER too early for Christmas).  Photo is mine, the elements and papers are from Pixel Scrapper.  The dark green paper I lowered the opacity.  The border was Marisa Lerin from PS and I lowered the opacity to 42 (I think) because the orginal was a black border.  I knew I needed something around the border, especially at the bottom but I couldnt find an element(s) that made sense to the design. The font is called Sea Garden from Creative Fabrica.  I tried all kinds of sizes for the cut papers and had them all in my layers pallet so I could hide one and see what the other looked like.  The red papers are two different ones that I layered together and then merged them so I could move them as one.  I do understand once merged I can not undo it.  In this case I wasn't going to be needing to separate them.  Still, might have been wiser to just link them to move them together.  What do all of you think about Merging or Linking as the solution?  Which is the better way to always do it?

Wow Connie, that made a big difference.  It pushed the photo to being the main subject. My eye goes right to it first.  I love old photo's.  And the crochet snowflakes, they are special.  I have my mom's on my tree every year.

 

 

Thank you Michele, for your kind words.  there is so much awesome work in the bootcamp right now.  Here is my Day 3 project 1 of the Bootcamp as promised and I did a snap of the actual card made in 2012.  the frames(mattes) around the card are cut by hand, inside is a rubber stamp from my friends company (She is a calligrapher, now retired from rubber stamp business).  Looking forward to using PSP to cut out the frame cutting process. I still like the  Strathmore Creative cards/envelopes to put the image on as I like the deckle edge, so I wont to the whole thing in PSP, just the cover photo.  I hope it was okay to post a non PSP item (the card).  I'll be using other past Christmas cards in the bootcamp but wont show the cards, just layouts.  Excuse the off color on the cards, forgot I left an overhead light on and it threw off the custom color balance I had already done.

What beautiful pages to see today.  Here is my page, the photo is mine, the rest come from pixel scrapper.  I used "stardust" (that's what it was called) instead of scatter as none of the scatter I had made sense with the idea I was going with.  Shadows are hard to see on the darker background and wonder if the shadows are too big on the flowers.  I think the bottom paper flowers are okay as I've made these origami flowers before and they are quite thick.  The white frame was from "Selection-Modify-Selection Borders" where I chose a white frame on the outside of the photo.  This makes rounded corners which I dont really like, but going on the inside of the photo would cut off some of the picture I didnt want to cut off, but I'd have gotten those crisp 90 degree corners I like.  Is there a way to get get the 90 degree corner and stay on the outside of the photo.

 

Sue T,  you have such a cool life!

 

Ann, I LOVE cats, keep 'em coming (I have two myself).  Actually any animal picts, I love all critters.

 

Pirkko, that opacity is really effective and beautiful

 

Colin, that is so sweet, love the color of the background

 

Donna, Stunning photo!  Is that HDR?

Hi Brenda, I started in May this year.  You will enjoy this bootcamp and this forum.  I've learned a lot and I am someone who's had limited time with PSP (due to work and other life stuff).  I'm finally getting to put in more time and have learned the more time I put in, the easier and more natural it feels.  I'm still taking baby steps, soon I'll be walking!

 

I love the variety of sandwiches/table set up I've seen today.  Can't wait to see where you all go with your layouts.  For now, off to work (boo).

 

 

I am working on the bootcamp which started Monday and thought I'd post it here too.  I made a new table set up this time around (3rd time), improving a little each time.  yay me!  I'm going to try and use this photo, from one of my Christmas cards, in the first layout we will be doing.  I will post when I get it done and we can see if I do it justice.  hahaha.

 

PS yes, there is a pickle in my tomato soup...my husband did that, how rude eh?

Wow! I love the advanced plates I see here.  So awesome.

I'm a little late to the table (pun intended).  Here's is my lunch.  I had this fabulous company called "The Big-10" come in and install my new linoleum flooring.  Carole, the installer, even taught me how to install my own linoleum...for next time.  Installer and teacher, a one of a kind service for sure!  So why not have a picnic on the new floor.  I'm having tomato soup with tea while darling hubby has a clubhouse sandwich, this time with onions.  When I went to get some napkins he cheekily (new word?) put one of his pickles into my soup.  He is having some hot chocolate.  I reduced the opacity on the soup and hot chocolate so you could see part of the spoon.  the bowl and sandwhich plates are sitting on charger plates (after all, we are civilized..well, sort of).  The charger plates are made of blue transparent glass(ie. reduced opacity). you can sort of see the lino through them.  I reduced opacity on the pickle so it looks like it sunk into the soup.  Lunch was yummy, although the cats kept thinking it was their meal (we dont feed them people food, but they try).