Back From Vacation

Well, I haven't posted a blog entry in a month. I was busy getting ready to go on vacation. Now I'm back. I had fun taking a Beginning Scrapbooking with Paintshop Pro class from Digital Scrapbook Place. See my DSP gallery (link at right) for my latest layouts. Next month I'm taking two classes from there.

John's Flowers

This is the layout for my third lesson in Memory Page Design. I was looking through the photos that my brother, John, often attaches to his emails and ran across two with a yellow flower in them. Maybe it's the same flower from two different angles. Anyway, I thought they were the perfect photos for this layout, which is more of a graphic style. My other layouts are "paper style", which means they are meant to look more like paper scrapping pages. This is supposed to look more like a magazine layout.

Friendship

I'm a member of the Digital Scrapbook Place forums and I have done challenges for SNL (Saturday Night Live Chat group) and SADS (Seriously Addicted to Digital Scrapping). These are challenges where you create digital papers, elements, etc. (which I love to do), but I wasn't getting a lot of layouts finished, except the ones for the online classes I'm taking. So I decided to join the DET Boot Camp challenge. This is for digi-scrappers who want to be on the DSP Design Team or to just polish up their layout skills. This is my layout for that challenge. We had to find a layout in the Hall of Fame or Design Team galleries that we liked and use it for inspiration. (That's called scraplifting.) I'll put a link on the right to my DSP gallery, so you can see what I've been doing over there. DSP also has classes and I'm signed up for the Intro to Digital Scrapping with Paint Shop Pro class next month.

This is a picture of me and my friend, Gary, who lives in Wisconsin. We've been friends for over 35 years. I turned the photo to sepia tone, because we were wearing very bright clothing. All papers and elements used in the layout are DSP freebies except for the chipboard words, which I made from a tutorial at Pickleberry Pop, except I used a background paper fill instead of just color.

http://www.pickleberrypop.com/tutorials/lorettamarwick_PSP7_ChipboardwithPaint.htm

I know I promised that I would have tutorial listings here, but I've been busy with my classes. But I did give a tutorial link today and it's a really great one. You can make some awesome chipboard letters using it. Just remember to save your presets when you do the tutorial, so you can make more letters.

Ken's First Solo Flight

One of my sons is taking training to fly airplanes. I did my second lesson of Memory Page Design using some photos of his first solo flight. The object of this lesson was to do a monochromatic layout. I used a teal color from the trees in the background of one of the photos and made a digital paint chip with several different shades to use for the components of the layout.

First Freebie

I opened up a 4Shared account and uploaded a zip of my digi-chocolate. Click on the post on the right called Digital Candy and you'll see the link at the bottom. I know I don't have anyone reading this who will be downloading, but by the time I figure all this out, I might have some. Now that I have a place for downloads, I will be checking my hard drive for more freebies. I'm still learning, but I'd like to give back to the digital scrapping community.

Memory Page Design

Here's my first lesson for Memory Page Design with PSP, also self-study from LVS Online. These are my three youngest grandchildren at Easter. In this lesson I made a frame for color blocking and inserted photos in the openings. Towards the end of the lesson I learned how to use drop shadows to make the pictures look like they are on top of the frame.

Lesson 3

Here's my layout for Lesson 3 of the class I'm taking at LVS Online, called Memory Page Fundamentals. I'm using Paintshop Pro XI. My grandson had a big balloon shaped like a seven, so I had to get a picture of him with it. If you look closely, you can see he's been eating birthday cake

New Layout

Here's a layout I'm working on using the PSP X Secrets movie tutorial from Scrap Girls. The items I used are freebies from http://kalaniscrap.over-blog.com/ - Kalani Scrap. The set is called ChocoMint & Lilac. The picture is my son, grandson and granddaughter, shortly after she was born.

Cowboy Stars

Here's my lesson 2 of Memory Page Fundamentals. Can you tell I'm having fun? The page title in the lesson was Our Little Star, but I couldn't find the picture I was looking for and then I ran across this one. The new title is Mom's Little Stars. (It's kind of hard to read at this size.) These are two of my sons at least 20 years ago, probably closer to 22 or 23 (oh why didn't I write the date on the back!!??). Background paper was created by adding a drop shadow to a star design. The rest of the items were included with the lesson. There's a larger version in my Flickr album.

Prom 1987 Revisted

I wasn't really happy with the layout for this lesson, so I decided to customize a little. I learned how to use colorize to match something in the photo. Unfortunately, I had already accidentally merged the ribbon layer with the photocorner and border layers, so now my ribbon shadow is kinda pink. But otherwise, I like this version a lot better. I applied a cutout to the lettering and added a texturized layer that was first floodfilled with pink over the paper layer. I also added a slight bevel to the borders, to give them a little more dimension.

Memory Page Fundamentals

I'm taking several online, self study classes in digital scrapbooking from LVS Online. (Like I said, compulsive!!) This is my first lesson from Memory Page Fundamentals. This is my daughter at her senior prom. You can see a larger version at my Flicker album. (Link to the right.)

Digital Candy

One of the things I will include in my blog are links to wonderful tutorials that I have discovered on the internet and examples that I have created with them. I recently found this great tutorial for creating chocolate with Paintshop Pro. The tutorial is in Viewlet format.


http://jinnysplace.com/sf04/candybar.html


Here's an example of some chocolates that I created. I went a little crazy, but it was sure fun experimenting. I added drop shadows for display purposes. All the candies were created with Paintshop Pro's vector shapes in version XI. When I figure out how to create a 4-Shared account, I may offer these for download. Stay tuned...

Okay. Here's my 4 Shared link.

Digi-Chocolate

I know there isn't anyone reading my blog yet, except for friends and family. That's a good thing, because it give me time to figure all this out. :-)

Testing 1-2-3

Well, I've decided to do a blog. Don't know anything about it, so I'll be stumbling along for a while, until I get the hang of it.