Erin C.--Inkscape. Free, open-source. Not Illustrator, but vector graphics program. Dunno how it is on patterns, but I have semi-pro artist friends who use it. It might be worth trying. https://inkscape.org/en/
Ok, I finally finished mine:) These colors, although gorgeous, were kinda hard for me! It was killing me not to have a brown, but the tan seemed to work with the black to give it some neutrality and contrast! In the end, I think the colors looked so pretty together. Its amazing
at what you think won't look quite right, then you finish and the colors look just great together,haha!! I am still learning a lot about color combos,haha:)
Well, I wasn't going to make any elements.... but then I did. So here is my final kit:
@Sheila, it looks so nice, as your kits ALWAYS do! I love the leaf paper!
Well, I finally got some stuff done for this one--mostly papers and word art, stuff I could do with keyboard and mouse, but I threw in the few illustrations I managed to do in ArtRage before my health wandered south. I'm still hoping to add a few items to it, but with how much the bone spur has been making my whole arm jerk, I may not be able to get much more done. Still, the papers look good and the word art should make a few people very happy, since some of the phrases were requested.
It's been a frustrating month, but at least I still have a home and food, and family and friends who love me. And I've been learning Illustrator, so it hasn't been time totally wasted.
@Holly - sorry to hear you're still not feeling better. These papers and word arts are awesome, though! I think the time you're investing in learning Illustrator will be time well spent. I have barely scratched the surface with it, but those few things I know how to do are very useful.
I've made a TON of papers and some word arts, but still kind of struggling with the rest of my contribution. Lately it seems that I can only work when I'm really inspired to do something special. Otherwise I get so sleepy sitting in front of the PC, and have to go take a nap. LOL!
Marcy: Been there on the napping thing. Not so bad on that this month after the sleep apnea diagnosis and starting treatment. It's just the not being able to draw a straight line thing that's messing with me now, and pretty-looking curved ones aren't working so well either! :p
I'm very glad we've got the extra month for December--hopefully I'll be able to get a decent kit together for it with the extra time. (I'm hoping to make extras for Christmas giveaways and a celebration pack for New Year's as my birthday giveaway, so I definitely need to get my neck straightened out soon!)
As far as Illustrator goes, you'd be surprised at what you can learn in a few hours of instruction by someone who uses it daily--and someone linked me a site called Skillshare that has LOTS of little classes on Illustrator, Photoshop, making color palettes, creating inspiring patterns, painting, drawing, marketing, business management....some classes are free, but others require a subscription, which kind of put me off till I found out they offer a scholarship program if you don't have the finances to afford the subscription. So, I applied and ended up getting a one-year scholarship to learn all I can. I'll be happy to help teach the skills I acquire.
Wow, everyone's contributions look just fantastic! I'm so in awe!
HOLLY, so sorry to hear you do, indeed, have sleep apnea. You get used to the mask, but it's never comfortable. At least you should be able to sleep and feel a bit more rested after you adjust to it. We seem to be running parallel with our health issues. I'm having trouble doing anything on the computer that requires mouse use for a long time. I had a small tumor removed from the middle joint of my ring finger about six or so years ago. They warned me that it would, in all likelihood, come back. Unfortunately, it has and it's been growing steadily for the last year. I can't completely bend the finger anymore and it becomes quite painful after anything more than an hour or two of use. It's going to have to be removed sooner or later or it will destroy the joint completely. I'm going to try to start using my left hand for the mouse, but I'm sure that will be slow-going. Since I also have DeQuervain's tenosynovitis in both hands (kind of like carpal tunnel) which affects the thumb and that side of your hand, I'm not sure how much it will help to switch. It's a repetitive-type injury and I've had it for many years from doing medical transcription for just about thirty years. Oh, the trials and tribulations we go through! One good side effect of my hand issue is that I can't play a lot of my computer games anymore either so there's less "wasting" time! LOL Oh, thanks for stopping by by blog and leaving me a comment. You made me smile.
Well, blessings to everyone and I'm off to try and do a small contribution to November's blog train.
Sally
I tried to make some more papers, hopefully these work out a little better. I started playing around with brushes this time. I think they came out a little better. Now I need to learn elements or something. I think word art will be my next step, maybe journal cards.
Maybe alternating between a graphics tablet and the mouse might help with the DeQuervain's? Not a lot that can be done short of surgery for the finger, but you don't really use your ring finger when writing, so it might help with that, too... Mine's a pen-and-touch model, which means I can use it like a giant touchpad to control the computer when my hands are really swollen.
As far as "wasting" time gaming...yeah, my friends just started up a new Minecraft server this week. I'm trying not to spend too much time working through the various mods to get the base set up the way we want.
I did, at least, spend tonight working on word art for December...to the point where I really shouldn't make any more as I have enough for freebies all through December! Even better, my hands were steady enough to do some reasonably neat writing in Illustrator, which I could then straighten up by adjusting the points. My son called on Skype and hung out for several hours while he was playing Warframe and World of Warships, so I got to show some of it off to him when he was between games. Scrapbooking isn't his thing, but he likes seeing what I create and encourages me, and sometimes even makes suggestions for additional elements. (Tonight he suggested "Christmas at Ground Zero" word art with a mushroom cloud, which I'll be adding to the December blog train part, because not everyone's holidays go smoothly... he has a point, and it's rare to see elements in a holiday kit for the less-perfect times.
Wow, Erin, those papers turned out beautifully! Word art's fairly easy if you have some gorgeous fonts and a good understanding of typographic pairings. (FontSquirrel has lots of commercial-use fonts available for free, and they only have commercial-use-okay ones listed. FontSpace is another site that I like, as they clearly label whether it's commercial-use or personal-use.)
Choosing fonts that fit the month's theme is the tricky and sometimes time-consuming part, and I usually spend half a day choosing just the right group to mix harmoniously on a page. The ones I used for the word art I did this month are Beffle, Freebooter Script, Typewriter, and a couple of fonts from the Adorn family which I bought in an extended-use bundle a while back. All but the Adorn ones are free at either FontSquirrel or FontSpace.
Sometimes just the words look fine on their own, and other times they seem to need some decoration. Brushes, shapes, and printers' ornaments fonts will all work for decoration. I believe I used Atlantix Ornaments for this month's word art. If it seems to need a little texture when you get your design figured out, set your eraser to a grunge brush at a lower opacity (20-40%) and click on and around your word art a little.
Well, I've decided to sit this month's blog train out. I just haven't been able to make anything I like so I'm going to just concentrate on December's and on the Classical add-on kit I'm working on. It's just all been so slow-going these last couple months that it's become frustrating and I'm going to take off some of the pressure I feel. This will be the first month since I joined DigitalScrapbook.com that I haven't contributed and it does make me feel like I'm failing. Got to talk myself out of that one, I know.
Thanks, Holly, for the suggestions on how to work without the mouse all the time. Gotta check into them. Actually, writing is painful because holding the pen (or whatever) is hard once the joint becomes really tender. I'm determined my health isn't going to take away ONE more thing from my life so I'll figure something out. Can't wait to see all your December stuff! It's so nice your son actually WANTS to see what you make...really sweet.
Katherine, I haven't commented on individual contributions much (just commenting to the group), but I must say yours is simply beautiful. It all looks like homemade paper, something I used to make a lot of, and it brings back some cool memories.
Blessings to all of you and please keep me (and all those who struggle physically) in your thoughts and in your prayers if so inclined. I do believe there is power in positive thinking and energy in thoughts.
I totally understand, Sally. I've been pretty bummed about not being able to get October's done and released. That's the first one I've missed since joining PixelScrapper, too. I guess we really are on parallel tracks right now! But I've pushed through and got something ready for November. Hopefully you'll be able to feel like you're back on track with December's...but you shouldn't be beating yourself up too much. Participation in blog trains is voluntary, even if it has been kind of a point of pride with me not to miss. Maybe me realizing that in the course of my coming to terms with that over missing this month can help you with missing November.
Besides, your music series is HUGE, and doing both that and the blog trains would be more than I could manage on some of my best months--I just wouldn't have enough time to make everything I want to include. What I'm trying to do, going forward, is spend a day or two making papers, one or two making word art, and 3-4 making elements, and calling that enough for any given month's blog train, rather than spending the entire month on them like I have been doing. While it'll mean my blog train portions might be a little smaller, I hope it'll also give me more time to focus on designing kits for my shop while still allowing some life-work balance (between gaming/design for me, but you get my meaning). Focusing too much on one or the other creates stress and massive swings to avoid burnout, and I'm choosing the middle path since left and right have just brought me back to the same place.
@Holly, you are so awesome, thanks for all your help. I managed to get some word art done and I posted everything. I think i need to work on my jpeg quality, but I really think I did well. I'm did end up downloading CS2 and it really helped bring everything together. I've been out of town for the last 5 months so I can't wait to get my actual desktop back with some power in it. I borrowed my best friend's laptop just so I could have some type of power and I keep transferring things around with my external hd and googledocs.
Thanks again for all your help and I hope you get to feeling better!
Holly and Sally, I'm so sorry to hear about your health problems. I hope you both start feeling better soon.
Also thanks for your comments, it means a lot to me coming from you!
For all the others: Amazing contributions! I'm glad DigitalScrapbook.com is such an active&generous community and I'm happy to be a part of it and make some contributions myself.
Erin, you're welcome. I'm glad to hear CS2 helped. It's a different menu system, but the menus make a little more sense than GIMP's and the algorithms are equal or better. Plus, clipping adjustment layers to templates is SO much easier in Photoshop.
Katherine: Thank you for the well-wishes. With multiple chronic illnesses, better is all I can realistically hope for, but it'd certainly be nice to have a month without something flaring up! Diet, stress, UV exposure (to the point where I can get a sunburn from being under fluorescent lights for an hour), too much heat, too much cold, and several allergies all play factors in triggering flareups, and it's almost impossible to control all of them at once. So I just keep doing the best I can, and try to give something back within my abilities.
Holly, thanks for the tip about CS2 for free. I'm using it now! I used CS3 in college so this is a breeze. I tried the new version last year and I HATED it. Everything took so long because it was all new. Anyway, I'm so glad to have the free version and its LEGAL! Ha! Thanks again. I'm looking forward to trying Inkscape, too.
The new versions are definitely a little different, but it's been a series of gradual changes, and most of them have been improvements; once you know how to use the new features, they're faster. But it's a lot of new stuff to learn at once, so I well understand the feeling of it being much more difficult. I dealt with that with Illustrator for several years, since I really had no idea how to even do something as basic as change color, or use the pen tool effectively, but the few little online classes I've taken have given me the boost I need to get going with it. I'm sure I'll have a bunch of good stuff for December at this point (and I'm not just talking about the mountain of word art I have done already!)
I wanted to do something in a Tuscan style, with a lot of elaborate motifs (roosters, olive trees, grape clusters, etc) and some word art having to do with Tuscany...but I ran into a snag that I just couldn't seem to get around: this month's palette doesn't have any greens or browns in it, and I felt like those were essential to do full justice to my idea. So I decided to just post the papers I have made so far, and later on I will do some kits based on this work and use an extended palette, and offer them at my store DollarDigitals.com
So here's what will be available on my blog starting November 1st:
Here are the sets that will go out to my newsletter subscribers (you can sign up here):
Erin P.--You're welcome.
Erin C.--Inkscape. Free, open-source. Not Illustrator, but vector graphics program. Dunno how it is on patterns, but I have semi-pro artist friends who use it. It might be worth trying. https://inkscape.org/en/
And now, time for sleep....
Ok, I finally finished mine:) These colors, although gorgeous, were kinda hard for me! It was killing me not to have a brown, but the tan seemed to work with the black to give it some neutrality and contrast! In the end, I think the colors looked so pretty together. Its amazing
at what you think won't look quite right, then you finish and the colors look just great together,haha!! I am still learning a lot about color combos,haha:)
Well, I wasn't going to make any elements.... but then I did. So here is my final kit:
@Sheila, it looks so nice, as your kits ALWAYS do! I love the leaf paper!
Well, I finally got some stuff done for this one--mostly papers and word art, stuff I could do with keyboard and mouse, but I threw in the few illustrations I managed to do in ArtRage before my health wandered south. I'm still hoping to add a few items to it, but with how much the bone spur has been making my whole arm jerk, I may not be able to get much more done. Still, the papers look good and the word art should make a few people very happy, since some of the phrases were requested.
It's been a frustrating month, but at least I still have a home and food, and family and friends who love me. And I've been learning Illustrator, so it hasn't been time totally wasted.
@Holly - sorry to hear you're still not feeling better. These papers and word arts are awesome, though! I think the time you're investing in learning Illustrator will be time well spent. I have barely scratched the surface with it, but those few things I know how to do are very useful.
I've made a TON of papers and some word arts, but still kind of struggling with the rest of my contribution. Lately it seems that I can only work when I'm really inspired to do something special. Otherwise I get so sleepy sitting in front of the PC, and have to go take a nap. LOL!
A lot of amazing contributions !
Marcy: Been there on the napping thing. Not so bad on that this month after the sleep apnea diagnosis and starting treatment. It's just the not being able to draw a straight line thing that's messing with me now, and pretty-looking curved ones aren't working so well either! :p
I'm very glad we've got the extra month for December--hopefully I'll be able to get a decent kit together for it with the extra time. (I'm hoping to make extras for Christmas giveaways and a celebration pack for New Year's as my birthday giveaway, so I definitely need to get my neck straightened out soon!)
As far as Illustrator goes, you'd be surprised at what you can learn in a few hours of instruction by someone who uses it daily--and someone linked me a site called Skillshare that has LOTS of little classes on Illustrator, Photoshop, making color palettes, creating inspiring patterns, painting, drawing, marketing, business management....some classes are free, but others require a subscription, which kind of put me off till I found out they offer a scholarship program if you don't have the finances to afford the subscription. So, I applied and ended up getting a one-year scholarship to learn all I can. I'll be happy to help teach the skills I acquire.
Here is my contribution. I will most likely have some graphics as well.
What a lovely papers Rene and Holly!
Amazing contributions so far!
Wow, everyone's contributions look just fantastic! I'm so in awe!
HOLLY, so sorry to hear you do, indeed, have sleep apnea. You get used to the mask, but it's never comfortable. At least you should be able to sleep and feel a bit more rested after you adjust to it. We seem to be running parallel with our health issues. I'm having trouble doing anything on the computer that requires mouse use for a long time. I had a small tumor removed from the middle joint of my ring finger about six or so years ago. They warned me that it would, in all likelihood, come back. Unfortunately, it has and it's been growing steadily for the last year. I can't completely bend the finger anymore and it becomes quite painful after anything more than an hour or two of use. It's going to have to be removed sooner or later or it will destroy the joint completely. I'm going to try to start using my left hand for the mouse, but I'm sure that will be slow-going. Since I also have DeQuervain's tenosynovitis in both hands (kind of like carpal tunnel) which affects the thumb and that side of your hand, I'm not sure how much it will help to switch. It's a repetitive-type injury and I've had it for many years from doing medical transcription for just about thirty years. Oh, the trials and tribulations we go through! One good side effect of my hand issue is that I can't play a lot of my computer games anymore either so there's less "wasting" time! LOL Oh, thanks for stopping by by blog and leaving me a comment. You made me smile.
Well, blessings to everyone and I'm off to try and do a small contribution to November's blog train.
Sally
I tried to make some more papers, hopefully these work out a little better. I started playing around with brushes this time. I think they came out a little better. Now I need to learn elements or something. I think word art will be my next step, maybe journal cards.
Maybe alternating between a graphics tablet and the mouse might help with the DeQuervain's? Not a lot that can be done short of surgery for the finger, but you don't really use your ring finger when writing, so it might help with that, too... Mine's a pen-and-touch model, which means I can use it like a giant touchpad to control the computer when my hands are really swollen.
As far as "wasting" time gaming...yeah, my friends just started up a new Minecraft server this week. I'm trying not to spend too much time working through the various mods to get the base set up the way we want.
I did, at least, spend tonight working on word art for December...to the point where I really shouldn't make any more as I have enough for freebies all through December! Even better, my hands were steady enough to do some reasonably neat writing in Illustrator, which I could then straighten up by adjusting the points. My son called on Skype and hung out for several hours while he was playing Warframe and World of Warships, so I got to show some of it off to him when he was between games. Scrapbooking isn't his thing, but he likes seeing what I create and encourages me, and sometimes even makes suggestions for additional elements. (Tonight he suggested "Christmas at Ground Zero" word art with a mushroom cloud, which I'll be adding to the December blog train part, because not everyone's holidays go smoothly... he has a point, and it's rare to see elements in a holiday kit for the less-perfect times.
Here's my part, waiting on Dea's designs
Wow, Erin, those papers turned out beautifully! Word art's fairly easy if you have some gorgeous fonts and a good understanding of typographic pairings. (FontSquirrel has lots of commercial-use fonts available for free, and they only have commercial-use-okay ones listed. FontSpace is another site that I like, as they clearly label whether it's commercial-use or personal-use.)
Choosing fonts that fit the month's theme is the tricky and sometimes time-consuming part, and I usually spend half a day choosing just the right group to mix harmoniously on a page. The ones I used for the word art I did this month are Beffle, Freebooter Script, Typewriter, and a couple of fonts from the Adorn family which I bought in an extended-use bundle a while back. All but the Adorn ones are free at either FontSquirrel or FontSpace.
Sometimes just the words look fine on their own, and other times they seem to need some decoration. Brushes, shapes, and printers' ornaments fonts will all work for decoration. I believe I used Atlantix Ornaments for this month's word art. If it seems to need a little texture when you get your design figured out, set your eraser to a grunge brush at a lower opacity (20-40%) and click on and around your word art a little.
Yay, I've finished my part before the deadline for a change
Please let me know what you think!
Katherine, I think you know that's gorgeous and I can't wait to download it!
Well, I've decided to sit this month's blog train out. I just haven't been able to make anything I like so I'm going to just concentrate on December's and on the Classical
add-on kit I'm working on. It's just all been so slow-going these last couple months that it's become frustrating and I'm going to take off some of the pressure I feel. This will be the first month since I joined DigitalScrapbook.com that I haven't contributed and it does make me feel like I'm failing. Got to talk myself out of that one, I know. 
Thanks, Holly, for the suggestions on how to work without the mouse all the time. Gotta check into them. Actually, writing is painful because holding the pen (or whatever) is hard once the joint becomes really tender. I'm determined my health isn't going to take away ONE more thing from my life so I'll figure something out. Can't wait to see all your December stuff! It's so nice your son actually WANTS to see what you make...really sweet.
Katherine, I haven't commented on individual contributions much (just commenting to the group), but I must say yours is simply beautiful. It all looks like homemade paper, something I used to make a lot of, and it brings back some cool memories.
Blessings to all of you and please keep me (and all those who struggle physically) in your thoughts and in your prayers if so inclined. I do believe there is power in positive thinking and energy in thoughts.
I totally understand, Sally. I've been pretty bummed about not being able to get October's done and released. That's the first one I've missed since joining PixelScrapper, too. I guess we really are on parallel tracks right now!
But I've pushed through and got something ready for November. Hopefully you'll be able to feel like you're back on track with December's...but you shouldn't be beating yourself up too much. Participation in blog trains is voluntary, even if it has been kind of a point of pride with me not to miss. Maybe me realizing that in the course of my coming to terms with that over missing this month can help you with missing November.
Besides, your music series is HUGE, and doing both that and the blog trains would be more than I could manage on some of my best months--I just wouldn't have enough time to make everything I want to include. What I'm trying to do, going forward, is spend a day or two making papers, one or two making word art, and 3-4 making elements, and calling that enough for any given month's blog train, rather than spending the entire month on them like I have been doing. While it'll mean my blog train portions might be a little smaller, I hope it'll also give me more time to focus on designing kits for my shop while still allowing some life-work balance (between gaming/design for me, but you get my meaning). Focusing too much on one or the other creates stress and massive swings to avoid burnout, and I'm choosing the middle path since left and right have just brought me back to the same place.
@Holly, you are so awesome, thanks for all your help. I managed to get some word art done and I posted everything. I think i need to work on my jpeg quality, but I really think I did well. I'm did end up downloading CS2 and it really helped bring everything together. I've been out of town for the last 5 months so I can't wait to get my actual desktop back with some power in it. I borrowed my best friend's laptop just so I could have some type of power and I keep transferring things around with my external hd and googledocs.
Thanks again for all your help and I hope you get to feeling better!
Holly and Sally, I'm so sorry to hear about your health problems. I hope you both start feeling better soon.
Also thanks for your comments, it means a lot to me coming from you!
For all the others: Amazing contributions! I'm glad DigitalScrapbook.com is such an active&generous community and I'm happy to be a part of it and make some contributions myself.
Erin, you're welcome. I'm glad to hear CS2 helped. It's a different menu system, but the menus make a little more sense than GIMP's and the algorithms are equal or better. Plus, clipping adjustment layers to templates is SO much easier in Photoshop.
Katherine: Thank you for the well-wishes. With multiple chronic illnesses, better is all I can realistically hope for, but it'd certainly be nice to have a month without something flaring up! Diet, stress, UV exposure (to the point where I can get a sunburn from being under fluorescent lights for an hour), too much heat, too much cold, and several allergies all play factors in triggering flareups, and it's almost impossible to control all of them at once. So I just keep doing the best I can, and try to give something back within my abilities.
Holly, thanks for the tip about CS2 for free. I'm using it now! I used CS3 in college so this is a breeze. I tried the new version last year and I HATED it. Everything took so long because it was all new. Anyway, I'm so glad to have the free version and its LEGAL! Ha! Thanks again. I'm looking forward to trying Inkscape, too.
The new versions are definitely a little different, but it's been a series of gradual changes, and most of them have been improvements; once you know how to use the new features, they're faster. But it's a lot of new stuff to learn at once, so I well understand the feeling of it being much more difficult. I dealt with that with Illustrator for several years, since I really had no idea how to even do something as basic as change color, or use the pen tool effectively, but the few little online classes I've taken have given me the boost I need to get going with it. I'm sure I'll have a bunch of good stuff for December at this point (and I'm not just talking about the mountain of word art I have done already!)
I wanted to do something in a Tuscan style, with a lot of elaborate motifs (roosters, olive trees, grape clusters, etc) and some word art having to do with Tuscany...but I ran into a snag that I just couldn't seem to get around: this month's palette doesn't have any greens or browns in it, and I felt like those were essential to do full justice to my idea. So I decided to just post the papers I have made so far, and later on I will do some kits based on this work and use an extended palette, and offer them at my store DollarDigitals.com
So here's what will be available on my blog starting November 1st:
Here are the sets that will go out to my newsletter subscribers (you can sign up here):
Pages