hi everyone!!

I'm not really new, but i am. I've been lurking around on here for over a year, but havent really posted anything. BEtween my boys and work and unfortunate deterioration of health I havent had as much time to dedicate to fun as I would have liked. So hello again! My name is freja and i love you all, you guys are kind of like my shadow friends no one knows about...who also don't know about me. Well it's time to come out of the shadow realm lol.

A little bit on what's going on. After a long stint away from writing (due to a nasty divorce) and said icky sickness, I have finally gotten the courage and the energy (hopefully) to write again. That being said I used to be a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl and just go. That never worked out well for me. I would get pretty far and then stop and move on to a new project. I don't want to do that anymore. I believe in thoroughness. This new universe I am working in is BIG and complicated. As in so complicated it breaks the laws of physics kind of complicated and you should probably know what those laws are before you go about breaking them complicated. I have magic of course to explain some things away (thank all the gods for magic yay!) however, this pocket universe still has something like 48 planets. Not all of these planets have to be made or detailed, but I would like at least 17 of them to be mapped out and detailed....which is where you all come in.

I have played around with the tutorials over and over again. I have watched videos and tried to follow the tuts and they are wonderful. I just can't seem to make any of them work. Honestly, I'm starting to think I just suck at this. I have done Ascension's Atlas tutorial at least 100 times and it's never come out right, I have done the artistic regional maps, and others. I hate to ask, but I could really really use your help guys. I'm getting pretty familiar with Gimp, But i still dont have a grasp on understanding it and I wonder if maybe that's my problem.

So without further ado my first question.
Ascension...In your atlas style map tutorial is there a way to skip the first part with all the clouds and stuff for the map? I already have the black and white map of my worlds created that I like (done in Paint) Every time i try going over the layers with the brush tool on the noise layer I end up messing up my coastline that I already have that I like. The map ends up completely different than the one I drew out, and I would like to keep it. Also I swear I saw once something to help with the landglow not working problem, but i can't seem to locate it anywhere. Did I imagine a post about that? forgive me it's been awhile.

I'll stop there for now, i'm sure i could go on for quite awhile. So hello again guys, lovely to meet you and I hope that soon i can actually make some pretty maps without driving my hubby crazy with my frustrated noises from the area of my computer.