Susan Ewart

Just finished my workout and I need PROTEIN!  So off with the carbs and on (the plate) with the meat!  'Cause baloney is a good clean protein, right??  That's my story.  I bought new dishes this year  and some complementary cutlery.  Now I better go and eat...I am like a bear out of hibernation after a workout.

(379017) Ann! You are brilliant!  I did 1/2 the instructions, no wonder why it didn't work.  Here is my  *New*  *Improved* screen shot.  the photo is mine, of my friends painting (1 of 6) that is currently at a gallery showing.  My hubby and I have to dismantle the show of her paintings this weekend, YIKES!  The canvas' are about 4.5 feet x 6+ feet and mounted to the wall then framed out.  Putting them on stretchers was a too expensive for the price of wood these days and they have to be mailed back (to Quebec where she lives) in tubes.

Here is my workspace.  I like it dark and have the organizer and learning centre palettes closed to give me more space to work.  This is a windows snipping tool shot.  I've still yet to figure out how to do a screen shot with PSP.  It's not high on the priority list.  Now I must get my photo's organized.  It's some flower shots but mother nature has been conspiring against me.  I am shooting this project with diffuse light from overcast skies and the when the perfect time comes I am either heading to work or I get all set up and then there is a thunder/rain storm.  I finally had to take it inside to my studio and shoot some of it with continuous light.  Nice to see the familiar faces and welcome to the new faces.   I'm sure I will learn lots from all of you.  this is my 6th time through the bootcamp. I really love doing it and like Gerry, I keep learning new things and am inspired by all the layouts I see.

That's cool Mary, the gulls look like they have always being part of the photo.  Just from watching the Q&A today I did an extraction using the "smart selection" tool.  I like the style of your layout, especially how the photo's are arranged and the background being a photo really adds to the layout.

 

 

Sue, I love the information along with your beautiful layout.  I had no idea that bees can "sleep" while hanging on with their teeth.  fascinating!

 

 

Here I am again!  My photo's are still in my camera so I don't have one to post just yet.  I am hoping to be doing some flower photo's for all the layouts.  Looking forward to seeing everyone's layouts.

Lab 5-11.  Quite an enjoyable Lab.  Well, except the part where my PSP wont save the pspimage file.  All is not lost as I could save as JPG.  And here it is.  It goes with the last Lab I did.  Lessons learned:

Chevron 2: loved this tutorial and this pattern.  I used a gradient for the background.

Cutout Word:  I think font choice is important and perhaps only using one word would have been better (more readable)

Punched Out Border:  another fun one that has so many possibilities.

The shadows were tricky on the Punched Out Border and the Cutout Word. I did lower the opacity of the shadow to make it easier on the eyes.  Papers and photo is mine, elements from Digital Scrapbook, Arial Font for the journaling and I forget the font for High Key and I rasterized it without duplicating (a boo boo on my part).  It did come from Creative Fabrica though.

 

UpDATE: I never did get it saved.  I see a spelling error in the journaling so when I recreate the layout I can fix the spelling error.

Bonnie these are awesome.  So many varied layouts.  I enjoy reading them.

 

Fabulous page Sue. Thank you for the larger write up, I didn't know birds had friends.  I can totally see that.  I love the part where you said ...."sleep under the stars".  It's sounds wonderful.

Thank you Mary.  I have to laugh that you thought our looked like kindergarten work, it's just what I thought of mine.  Who knew coloring could be so hard.  You can dress up bad coloring, but underneath it's still bad coloring.  ?

Wow! Dawn!  I'm blown away at your postings.  They are incredibly beautiful.

 

Here is my layout for lab 5-10.  Does it look like I got a kindergartener to color the crayon edges?  Of course, a kindergartener would do much better. ? I'm a lefty who uses a mouse right handed.  It was a challenge.  I shouldn't be surprised, in the physical world I can't color or sew. A tablet would work best for this type of work.

 

Even though it's not my best work, I am happy that I've learned new techniques which makes this work as important to my growth as work I've done that I like.

 

Tutorials learned:

Stitching (very cool, loved learning about the presets too!)

Random picture tube (Even more cool)

Crayon Edge (interesting, loved the sample. mine? not so much, hahaha)

 

Sue, those are wonderful.  A great idea.  The weather in Alberta is dismal and cold today, rain, rain, rain.  And I'm pluviophile (rain lover)!  However, I'm in the middle of an abstract flower photo project and without the sun, the flowers are holding tight in their buds. I did get to practice 3 tutorials last night for the next lab, so all is not lost.

 

 

Brian these are wonderful.  They look so real.

Thank you Mary.  I think there probably is an easier way to do it.  I was trying to do it the same as the tutorial and since I didn't have a color picture to start with I figured I'd color it first then follow the tutorial.  I sure had to zoom in when I was erasing and when I edited the selection for the Out of Bounds.  It was hard to tell where I was sometimes.  I love your Lab postings, you are so dedicated and I can see how much techniques you are learning.  I hope to carve out more regular time to do mine.

 

Anne, I love your effects posting.  I have never tried them before.  They look like they could be addicting.

I = Indispensable

 

 

That's very beautiful Pirkko.  I love that look.  I find it very hard for me to do that style so I really appreciate when someone does it this well.

Well, this was supposed to be for the June Scraplift but it wasn't to be.  Life can get unexpectedly busy sometimes.  I learned a lot with this layout.  Out of Bounds technique on the centre dragon and Coloring the red balls with the eraser tool.  This was a long large freestanding cement installation in a new park in Edmonton where the city is putting in a Japanese Garden.  The sculpture starts with the big dragon in the middle and has two scenes on either side with two dragons playing/fighting (?) with a ball.  Since it was already mostly grey, I used HSL to turn the image red, then made a duplicate and desaturated that before using the eraser tool to reveal the red ball.  Out of Bounds was just a small area on the middle photo (top of the head).  I had a little problem with that as I  thought I followed the instructions to put the white frame on the inside.  when I did that the white frame went straight across the out of bounds part.  So I put it on the outside and it seemed to work. Not sure what I did wrong, but got there in the end.  I chose not to do the Slipped in Photo, and subbed in Cutout Word on a curve.  the pen tool was a bit tricky, thankfully the tutorial was really good and I actually made it work.  More pen tool practice is needed.

 

I have being enjoying all the various posts in the forums, despite not being too active in them.

Ann, that is beautiful.  I missed getting those templates, they are really nice with clean lines.  Your color choices are perfect.

Corrie, I can see the background overlay of the windmills and it looks really cool.  it's hard to imagine the one from 1744 is still in working order.

 

Rene, I love your M letter.  In fact the way you've done all the letters in the alphabet so far.

 

 

thanks Michele and Cristina, I hadnt heard of  FontBundles.net and the other sites.  I'm not ready for Fontaholics Anonymous yet, I'm not addicted....much. LOL.  My therapists (AKA my cats!) say I'm in denial.  I say, if I gotta be somewhere, denial is a wonderful place to be. ?

I don't have a subscription either.  I found them to be quite responsive when I had a problem logging on (my fault) and they fixed it right away.  Norton hasn't detected anything devious from them so far.  I get the freebie's and bundles.  I love looking through the fonts and there is cool ideas when you look at the thumbnails when you click on a font to see more of it.  sometimes I really like a font and will pay the $1 sale price if I don't want to wait and see if it will come around as a freebie.  I did buy my favorite font (Samantha Upright Script by Laura Worthington) that finally came on sale for $9, reg. $79.  It's on sale for $17 right now.  It has so many glyphs that it has a user guide!  I'd say give it a month or two with the free membership and then decide if the membership price is worth it.

Congratulations Sue and Lynda!  Well deserved.

 

 

Michele, your layouts are always so inspiring and motivating for me.  I love your style and beauty of them. And thank you for your explanations on how you made the layouts.

 

P.S. A lot of adults like what we think others would think as "for kids"...hubby and I watch anime...we are 57!  Inspiration for creativity can be found from the most unexpected places.

Wow! It doesn't get anymore motivational than everyone's layouts.  Delightful to log in and see all the creativity.  I'm trying to soak it all in (the creativity).

 

I also meant to add that my project is meant as a "poster" so I didn't add shadows.

Ann, that's a cool background.  Isn't that the way? You are playing around and do something cool, then you don't know how you did it so you can recreate it again.

 

Here is my tut/tech challenge.  Gradient on the bottom quote and, well, not so colorful (in fact Hueless or Color-empty) use of Value going from White to Black on the value scale in random increments.  Seeing the Value of Hue in my Color Course was the hardest to learn and still an on going struggle.    That is why the 'A' in 'Scripta' is barely discernable as this cyan/blue background is very close in value to the letter 'A'.  Painters are really good a reading the value of a hue.

Thank you Sue, for the explanation and for graciously adding the practice photo's.  If I didn't know you blended the three photo's I'd have thought it was one photo.

 

Ann, that is a beautiful page and I love the picture.  That font is awesome and really looks great colored the way you did.