Issabella, Dalia, Pat:
thanks a lot for your nice comments.
It's a challenge.
Likely I will not be able to repeat the result, I was lucky.
(In love, in life, and...in Gimp you have to be sometimes lucky ! hehehe)

Dalia, you tell your emotions and feelings so good. I love having brought you so beautiful memories. Thanks for sharing it with us.

RJKD - love the image but not the team
Dinasset - only you can come up with such imaginative images; excellent outcome
Issabella - so beautiful as always with your work
Dalia - click clack and so emotional; beautiful image and personal story

Here is mine ...

a second attempt
i was not so lucky as with the first one
but I need to practice....

dinasset, if I posted all of my attempts - boy oh boy - nothing would come close to what you just produced.

I worked on something and am content with the black pieces but my white pieces not so much.

Thanks Dalia, your chess set is nice too.
I understand what you say about white pieces: white doesn't show light easily, try to use the natural wood colours both for the chessboard and for the pieces, official chess set uses those

...to show what I mean, Dalia

OMG, Dinasset, Dalia: I love all your images. Very artistic!

OMG, nice cottage, you gave me the idea to create mine.
Dinasset, you get so good results in spite of being so difficult.
Dalia, I like your chess set, but as Dinasset says, try to change white for clear wood. I think it'll be the key for it.
I post my result under GMIC, too as I liked the effect.

new "intarsio" style, Issabella, interesting.
What do you mean by "I post my result under GMIC, too as I liked the effect." ?

I meant that the result I got in wood, I applied it that effect (which is in G'MIC). simply, because I liked that effect.

my question was ambiguous, sorry: I liked to know which is the g'mic effect you applied

It is Frame - Frame cube-

thanks, my friend, I did not have it in mind...

a third attempt

Did you apply blue nuance on some parts of the wood? I love that result.

at the end I set the quantized image on top, hardlight (or color...)

dinasset, as always - great artistic results.

I will be taking your advice about the "chess set". I wanted to try to make it different but it didn't pan out - goes to show, simple and straight is always better.

Another outcome different from my previous one.

Issabella, that's beautiful! Teach me