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I thought this was
really hard in a lot of places. First, it's just way too
busy for me. Simpler is always better on something like
this. There were too many layers of pearls and flowers and
leaves and lace and ribbons and ...too much! I also HATED
trying to freehand the ribbon, and finally gave up and
left it out. The bottom two ribbons are
"streamers" from PSP that I colorized and
removed the drop shadow on. I also tried several
"bottom" things, but nothing looked quite right
and finally decided to mirror the upper pattern. Came out
all right, but I got to be honest, I won't be recommending
it to a friend. LOL. |
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This was the stock calendar. I faded the image
of the wreath behind the dates cause I thought that was an awful
lot of blank space. I used a bunch of stock Jasc Tubes that I
thought were kind of cool, but I had already merged the dates to
the background and couldn't go under for a "seamless"
look. Also the font, while very pretty, didn't shrink well at all.
My biggest beef with this was the length of the squares. I just
couldn't get "Christmas" in there very well. |
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So, when I did this one I made some changes. I
made a blue-gray background, a color picked from the picture you
see behind the dates. Then I added some "snow globe"
snow I had lying around, and then some sparklies on top of that. I
used the same blue-gray for the upper background, adding some
small "noise" to tone down the look a flood fill can
sometimes get.
I had some problems, again, with font choices. I
love my fonts, but they do NOT shrink down well. Only boring fonts
shrink well. Anyhow, I did what I could. I wrote "Yule"
instead of "Christmas" to start, although "Winter
Solstice" gave me space problems. I added the wreath again,
this time to indicate Dec 25 itself.
One small note about those poinsettias. My
grandmother died last year around the end of December. Not
Christmas, but it was enough to kind of be casting a pallor. I
wasn't really aware of it until I saw the poinsettias. The last
time I saw my Grandmother alive, she was being cared for in a
hospice. On the floor in her range of vision was this beautiful, gigantic,
blood-red poinsettia. I haven't seen anything like it before or
since. While looking for tubes to use for this tutorial, I came
across poinsettias and just stopped. I knew they had to be
included.
May you discover a reminder of beauty and life.
I did. |
