Ann Seeber

Been so busy tweaking all the months that I never even started Nov/Dec yet. But at least now I have a format I like and I'll post the first four months to start.. Jan/Feb/Mar=grandson Will's wedding and Apr/his new baby Magic for the rest of the year..

 

Thank you to whoever mentioned Pixabay.. that's where I'm finding my illustrations for each month. I have added shadows but doubt the photos can be done as they are large under the masks.

Lynda, I'm enjoying your beautiful calendar progression.

 

I particularly like the emphasis on Feb 18, because that's MY birthday, too! ;)

I was not happy with the photo quality on one from May so I changed that. Also here are July and August.

 

I've been longing to use the drumming photo as I think it's classic of their lifestyle in No. Cal.

Hi everyone. Here are April, May and June. Now we're into Baby Magic, three years after the wedding. The other person in these photos is Nana Deb. She is Magic's grandmother, Will's mom and my daughter! Now the setting is Comptche,  Northern California, just in from the  Mendocino coast, about 3+ hours north of San Francisco. So far the fires haven't touched them. It's really damp there from the ocean though the air quality has suffered.

 

So far I'm sticking with the same gradient background and keeping the Bradley Hand font, though I did increase the size of the first letter of each of the months.

Ok, here's what I have so far for Jan, Feb and March. April onward will be baby Magic. These wedding photos are for the ages with all the chanting and  rafting back upriver after the ceremony. The reception was held out in the woods in Colorado with lots of tents and mosquitoes. That tall handsome groom is my grandson. ;)

 

I changed the font on the month name to Bradley Hand. The gradient background is Rising rotated 180 degrees. I think that split screen effect came out pretty good, a first time for me.

Did the background for Jan and Feb with a gradient called Rising. And I selected the area of the calendar and filled it with white. I changed one of my photos; in Feb I added a photo of the happy couple boarding their raft to leave for the reception.

 

I did fill the background on March and April but I got confused with the photos for March. The layers had lots of PHOTO HERE directions so I thought I'd wait for Carole/Cassel to explain.

 

Carole/Cassel: I did try adding photos to March and something isn't working right. I used 2 photos: one for the right area and one that I placed twice for the 2 left areas. The left areas worked out fine but the photo for the right will NOT show up, for some reason. I'm attaching a screenshot to show what I'm dealing with. Help!

After a lot of fiddling with photos I am satisfied so far with these from my grandson's wedding. I traveled from NY to Colorado to be with them. It was awesome! As you can see, the bride arrived by raft.

Hi everyone. I've never done a calendar before so this will be something new and different for me. I have a ton of photos of my now 4+ month-old great-grand in California that I didn't know what to do with so I think this will use up quite a few.

 

Carole/Cassel: Will we be posting our work in here as we go along?

 

=^..^=

Finished my October Color Challenge, and it was a challenge to use those colors! My theme is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which was a story written by Washington Irving, of Rip Van Winkle fame. Sleepy Hollow is an actual village not far from me, south of me, near Tarrytown, NY. This entails a lot of journaling which I will post separately also. It may be hard to read in the reduced version for The Campus.

 

Here's the text:

 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow begins in 1790 in a small town named Sleepy Hollow, near modern-day Tarrytown. The town is believed to be haunted, owing to a witch’s curse in the early days of the Dutch Settlement, or potentially the sorcery of an old Native American chief, depending on who you ask. The most feared spirit in the town is the legendary Headless Horseman, supposedly the ghost of a Hessian mercenary who lost his head to a cannonball during the Revolutionary War, and roams the town in search of his head.

 

The protagonist of the story is Ichabod Crane, a tall, lanky, schoolmaster prone to superstition, who has recently arrived in the town from Connecticut. He is infatuated with Katrina Van Tassel, the 18-year-old daughter of the town’s richest man. He’s attracted by her beauty, but he also sees marrying her as a chance to get his hands on the family wealth. He has a rival for her hand in Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, a rowdy drunkard who is beloved by the town for his strength. The two quickly become enemies, with Brom Bones pulling mean-spirited pranks on Ichabod in an attempt to scare off his rival.

The rivalry comes to a head at a harvest party at the Van Tassel home. Ichabod attends the party, eating more than his share and attempting to woo Katrina. Brom Bones captivates the party by telling ghost stories, with the locals becoming involved as well. The tale of the Headless Horseman is the center of the tale, and Ichabod is rattled by the story. His attempt to propose to Katrina goes poorly, and having failed to win her hand, he heads out into the woods to return home on his horse with a heavy heart. As he travels the distance home, he passes by many sites that were listed as haunted by the revelers, and he becomes more and more frightened of what may surround him. However, he doesn’t actually see anything, until he arrives at an intersection in a dark swamp.

 

Waiting for him is a mysterious, cloaked rider who seems unnaturally large. Unnerved, Ichabod is then horrified to see that the rider does not have his head on his shoulders. Rather, the Horseman is carrying it on his saddle. Ichabod breaks into a panicked run as the Headless Horseman gives chase. Ichabod makes his way to the bridge next to a cemetery, and sees the Headless Horseman vanish in a flash of fire and brimstone. Ichabod urges his horse onward, only to see the Horseman suddenly leap over the bridge, rear up his horse, and hurl his severed head directly at Ichabod Crane.

 

Ichabod Crane is never seen again in Sleepy Hollow. With his mysterious absence, Katrina accepts the proposal of Brom Bones, who many observe seems like he knows something whenever the subject of Ichabod’s disappearance is mentioned. The only traces of Ichabod ever found are his horse, saddle, hat, and a mysterious shattered pumpkin. Who was the Headless Horseman? Was it Brom Bones, using his size to impersonate the ghoul and scare Ichabod out of town, using a pumpkin to represent the severed head? Or was Ichabod Crane spirited away by something dark and supernatural? The answer is never found, with some saying he fled to another town and married a rich widow, and others insisting that the Headless Horseman got him.

Thanks, Carole Cassel! I was looking forward to another color challenge. I enjoyed the Sherwin Williams Perle Noir. Yes, the color was challenging; that's the idea, right? I already did one with a Fall theme with Coat of Many Colors for the Shania Twain Song Theme. I'm going to try to use these colors in something other than "boring" Fall.. ;) (off to sort photos >>>>>>>>>>>> )

Here is Adam, the companion piece to Eve. He's her big brother and we adopted him first. He had languished in a shelter for two years from early kittenhood. Black cats are  usually the last to be adopted. :(

 

 

I decided to look up Jellicle Cats. Here's the definition: The name "Jellicle" comes from an unpublished poem by Eliot entitled "Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats", where "Pollicle dogs" is a corruption of "poor little dogs" and "Jellicle cats" of "dear little cats".

 

=^..^=

I did a complete revision of my EVE layout and am now happy.. swapped the photos so they face inward, added a paper strip behind the journaling but had trouble with the jagged border. Added a brad to tie down the photos and a white border that I buttonized.

 

Carole Cassel? I seem to recall using the eraser tool set to 45 degrees to create the jagged border. Clicking on one corner and holding down the shift key when touching the opposite corner. It didn't work for me in PSP2021! In fact, it erased the entire edge of the paper without any cutouts. I ended up clicking for each diamond all along the edge of the paper. What did I do wrong?

It's the 5 year anniversary of Eve's adoption, aka Gotcha Day! I did a pretty little layout showing her then and now. Nothing really fancy, just showcasing her photos. The photo on the right where she's on my shoulder was more or less a kittie selfie! My iPhone XS has a Portrait mode and you can choose the light level so this is Stage Light.

I'm not really familiar with much Country Music but Shania Twain is pretty classic. I looked up her list of songs and picked one that coordinated with one of my colorful fall foliage photos. The song is A Coat of Many Colors. which I think was a cover of Dolly Parton,  and the photo is where I live in the Mid-Hudson region of New York State.

 

I enlarged the photo by 200% as I now have PSP 2021 Ultimate and it makes quite a big difference from the free trial. The journaling is a quote about the beauty of Fall and also about the area of the photo.

 

I used a simple gradient background with a border using ribbon from the Frootloop kit and Cass-mitered border script.

The alphas were from the eyeinspire kit but I doctored them with a lot of color, as you can see! The birds are from a kit featuring Iceland and I tried to identify them but had no luck.

 

All in all, my Coat of Many Colors is quite colorful!

 

Edit: I see from enlarging the layout that it's hard to read the journaling at the bottom, so here's what it says:

Bonnie: Yes, it's at the drive-in. We have a special area where the local firetruck comes and dumps water to make the mud and then the jeeps and trucks drive through it and around behind one of the screens (we have 3 screens) and back into the mud again, hopefully not getting stuck! It's lots of fun :)

Q = Q-Light Flash for Polaroid SX-70

O = Optical Illusion - Ex: Colored Shadows

Working at actual WORK.. I do graphics for our business, the Warwick Drive-In Theater and this is an event coming up in October. The skills I'm learning here are helping me with my actual job. :)

 

Oh, just to show you how popular this event is, here's a photo of the lineup to get in last year..

Karon, thank you for your kind words. That Oriole layout was begun in the summer when he could have been dreaming about his winter beach scene. I particularly like your Construction Work layout, I remember those rusty cogs. Were they from Cassel? Sunflower, AL: I need to work on the title on a curve, myself. Well done!

Thank you, Sue. As my journaling shows, the orioles are now at the beach! I'll bring them back in the Spring. I am finished with that particular layout, for sure!

I may actually abandon this layout..(trying to avoid saying it's DONE which seems to jinx me and I find more to do!) lol

I know I'm late but here's my Scavenger Hunt.. My daughter with the deer and the snake and her daughter with the bobcat kitten (she's a zookeeper)

 

EDIT: Did some tweaking, including adding the shadows I totally forget in my rush last night. Here's version 2:

 

 

I tried the Gallery template with some photos of my daughter, Debbie, and her granddaughter, Magic.

 

I had to practically make the photos invisible while scaling them so I could see the outline behind but it worked out ok, I think. Let me know what you think.

 

Oh, and the closest photo was way smaller than the others but at least it was the correct shape. Luckily the AI engine in PSP2021 did a great job of the 200% enlargement.

On the subject of Speech Bubbles I see these all the time on Facebook done by a local animal shelter's talented volunteer and always wished I could make some myself. Here's an example:

 

Interesting use of speech or thought bubbles accompanied by journaling. -from Real Cats of West Milford Animal Shelter's Facebook page.