Showing posts with label twelve of twelve. Show all posts

Five Great Reasons To Try Digital Scrapbooking

I made a video in response to questions I've had from other scrapbookers over the years about why I switched to digital scrapping, and thought I would share why I love and enjoy it so much:



If you aren't one for leaving comments on YouTube, feel free to comment here about what your thoughts are about digital scrapbooking...I'd love to hear any constructive comments.

Here are photos of the pages I featured in my video, if you'd like to get a better look at them:









Also, if you need the link to the Adobe PSE free trial, here it is: Free trial for PSE15

Thanks & have a great day,





Fun News and My Latest Pages

Holy cow! January and February were crazy busy months for our household. Lots of birthdays and more going on around here. I'm back on the blogging bandwagon now and ready to go!

By now, a majority of you who read my blog already know this, but I'm going to share it again anyway. Back in January, I was lucky enough to earn a spot on the Creative Team for Jen Martakis. She is one of the fabulous Garden Girls over at Two Peas, and is also one of their digital designers. Click here to see her digital scrapbooking kits. They rock!

Below are some of the pages (and a card thrown in for good measure) I made using her awesome products:
















The follow layouts are ones I've done recently for Heather T., who has recently taken a designer gig over at The Digi Chick. I used her "Owl Play," "Stitched 4," and "Darling" kits to create these pages.

See that cool, loopy cursive font I used on the title for the "Owl Love You Forever" page? It's one of my faves right now, and if you are a font junkie like me, you can pick it up over at dafont.com. It's called Clementine Sketch and lucky for you, it's a free download...yippee!





These final two layouts are first "Twelve of Twelve" pages for the new year. I'm doing a two-page format this year to see how I like it. While I really enjoyed doing the one-pagers last year, I felt a little limited with the picture size. It's been nice to have a bit more of breathing room for my photos.






Enjoy your day!

A Look Back and A Little Something For You

December has been a wonderful month around here, but also a busy one, so I haven't updated in awhile. I've been trying hard to spend time with my husband and kids. I'm back now and feeling so happy about my scrapping this year. I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to with it. I was really hoping to get a jump on the kid's life books, but I still have time and hope to start knocking some of those pages out in 2010. The good news is I completed the final "Twelve of Twelve" for 2009, and that has me feeling pretty stoked. I was looking back on all of them, and I'm so glad I have a snapshot of what we were doing each month. So, just because I think they are worth seeing again, here's a look at December's page, as well as the rest I've done this year:



























I've talked in depth about the "Twelve of Twelve" concept before, so I won't go into that much detail now. You can check out Susan Keuter's blog (since Twelve of Twelve is her concept), or you can read my previous post on the subject. I look back on it now that it's been a full year and can tell you that it was worth doing. It wasn't difficult, and as busy as I have been, I could definitely fit it in once a month.

I know a lot of folks are gearing up to start Project 365 (which entails taking a picture every day, then scrapping a week's worth of photos), so I thought I'd put in a plug for those of you who might even be slightly interested in Twelve of Twelve. Scrapping twelve photos once a month is much easier, in my humble opinion. There's no special supplies needed, just the ones you have already in your stash. This is a great opportunity to put some of those lovely papers and embellishments to work.

And, if you dug the idea of using a digital template, like I did this last year, I have some digital goodness for you below. I whipped together some layered templates that I'm pretty sure can be used in Photoshop and will for sure work in Photoshop Elements. I have made it so that everything is completely editable --- you can change the fonts, change any of the layers to your preference, or even delete the ones you don't need. I made them in 8.5 x 11 and 12 x 12 sizes, so that you can use the size you prefer.

I kept the design of them simple, since Twelve of Twelve pages are supposed to come together quickly and be no fuss. If you want to add more, then feel free. I also decided to go with a two page format, simply because the photo spaces in the past year's template were a bit small and I couldn't show as much of my pictures as I wanted to.

You can see what the templates look like below. Even though these thumbnails show the two pages stitched together, there are actually separate page templates for the left and right sides of the layout. I did this because I think it's tons easier to get them ready for printing, and you can always make a larger background and plop the two pages on it if you feel like uploading them to the web as one document.







You can click here to get download the files. I tested this link out and it worked fine, so holler if it you have trouble with it at all.

And, just as you would with anyone else's work, please give me credit if you use the templates on pages to upload to a gallery or send off for publication.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy this small holiday gift from me to you!

I'm Alive...

...and finally healthy! My hubby and I both got ill, so between that, all the Halloween festivities, and my husband's birthday, I had a lot going on. I'm back in business now and thought it was about time I did a page share:

Here are two pages I did last month for Heather T with her digital goodies she has available at Pixel Canvas.

This first one uses her "Masked 1" and "Country Dream" kits:




This second page was done primarily to showcase her "Paper Pieces 1: Houses" kit. I also grabbed some patterned paper from her "Burnished Papers" kit:



The next two pages are ones that I did when I participated in the Fall Crop at Two Peas (it was held at the beginning of October). Both of these were created for challenges I took part in, and the layout of Izzy and the dragonfly got me entered into a drawing, which I was lucky enough to win! I got a hefty box of uber-cool scrapping goodies for my efforts...woo hoo!





The following three layouts are ones I created as I took part in some of the Digital Weekly Challenges at 2Ps. I don't always have time to participate in these, but when I do, I feel like they help me grow as a scrapbooker. I enjoy the fact that I can hone my skills by the simple act of doing a page for a challenge.


This layout was a real catharsis for me. While the crux of the challenge for this page was to use a black and white color scheme with a color photo, it was great to actually address something through this page that has been bugging me for a long time. And ya'll know how much I like to be honest in my scrapping:




For this next layout, we were challenged to create a shadow for an object on our page, then warp it so that it actually looked like there was light somewhere casting a real shadow. I made a little shadow for my pumpkin and was quite happy with it:



The next challenge I did required creating a digital paper tear somewhere on my page. Can I just tell you how much I've always loved paper tearing? It's not really the "it" technique anymore, but I still try to sneak it into my pages here and there. I could've just grabbed one of the premade paper tears I already have in my stash, but I really wanted to try making my own. It took a bit of experimenting to find the right type of brush to use, but I finally got it right. I added a texture filter and burned the edges a bit, and I thought it turned out pretty darned good for my first ever shot at it:



Over at the 2Ps digi-board, some of the other gals and I finished another round of the digi-morph challenge, where we are sent a layout by another person in the rotation, and we scraplift the page to create our own. Throughout the process, we see only the page right before ours, and none others. When we all finish, then the challenge hosts reveal all the pages so we can see how the layouts have evolved. Here was my page for that challenge:



If you are interested in seeing the change from the first layout to the last, check out them here.

Now that I've reached the end of my post, I suppose you know what's coming! Here is October's Twelve of Twelve" page. Shhh...don't tell anyone I actually took the photos on the 13th, since the 12th was kind of an icky day...:D



Have a super day!

I'm Baaaack...

Sorry for the hiatus. I hate it when life gets in the way of blogging (just kidding). I took some time out to celebrate my birthday, take a Labor Day weekend trip with the fam, and get my younger two in preschool. It's been a little crazy!

Here the pages I've done recently:

The following two are layouts I made using Heather T's "Tuesday Templates" kits that were released on 8/25 and 9/08:






The next two projects were created with Heather's "Burnished Papers" kit. As you can see, the paper is beautiful works well for both digital and hybrid projects (like the card). When I had my birthday party a few weeks ago, I did up a card kit for each of the gals that came and then they completed it that night. It turned out so pretty!!





Another page I did for Heather was made with her "Ooh, Shiny 1" embellisment kit. There are tons of pretty pearls and gems to work with.



This next page came together for two reasons. First, I've decided to quit putting myself on the bottom of the list behind family, church responsibilities, and all the other stuff that I have to do everyday. Putting my feelings into a scrapbook page about it seemed like a good way to remind myself not to shove "me time" down again. Second, it was a fun page to enter in last week's digital challenge over at 2 Peas, where participants were challenged to use exclusively the free digital kits available there. So cool!



And as always, here is my latest "12 of 12" page. I think this is the first one that fell on a saturday, so we didn't have the hurried schedule we have all the other days of the week. Plus, my hubby and I went to Art in the Park, so we got some fun pictures there:



Thanks for taking time from your busy day to come by!

My Latest Pages

It's time for some shameless page sharing! I cannot tell you how nice it is to have my scrapbooking activities back to a regular occurance instead of a sporaidic one. Let me show you what I've been working on lately.

Here are the most recent pages I've done for Heather T's creative team. These are pages for kits she has for sale over at Pixel Canvas. I used the "Painted Corners and Dividers," "Country Dream," and "The Softer Side" kits:








Heather also got a designer gig over at Gotta Pixel, another online store with great digital goodies (yea!), so here's some pages I did with paper and embellies from her "How It Works" kit:






I was also pretty excited to see that Heather had posted about her new creative team here and to see that I am part of such a great team. I'm so lucky ---thank you, Heather!

And, last but not least, here is my July 12 of 12 page:



If you've made it this far, thanks for letting me share my work and have a great day!