Organizing Supplies

Haven’t managed to post this week as I’ve been busy organizing my digital supplies. Last weekend as I said in my last post there was a big sale at www.designerdigitals.com and as a result my bank account is $50 lighter and my supply selection is boosted by some great additions. My problem has been that as I’ve added more supplies to my collections its been harder to remember what I did or didn’t have and where it was saved. Which meant when I was scrapbooking I was wasting time looking for supplies. This became really evident when I tried the 30 minute challenge last week and I realized I had to do something to help my process. My files on my external hard drive are sorted fairly well but I couldn’t search them. Yes I had copied the summary picture into one folder but what if I wanted to remember where I had a orange flower with a button. I couldn’t I had to look through them all. So I decided to tag my supplies and use Photoshop Elements Organizer to do this. I don’t use it for my pictures which I sort by event and date. So why not use it for my supplies. So I’ve spent most of my scrapbooking time this week going through my supplies and tagging each item. As some items have more one than one tag this is taking a while but even now I have found it beneficially and I haven’t even finished. It was great today when I decided I wanted to be creative rather than continue cataloging to be able to search for elements I needed or wanted without having to go through each folder looking for them! Certainly made the whole process much faster!
Photoshop Elements Organizer is really easy to use. I found it very simple to get things started and get multiple tags allocated to each item. I didn’t even read the instructions I just got started and it seemed to work. I even managed to work out how to rename a “folder” or “pile” I had created and then even to merge two. So if your using Photoshop Elements and your not using the organizer I can highly recommend the ease of using this program. Remember I’m using this for only my digital supplies and not my pictures. Anthony has warned me off using organizers for pictures and I haven’t really felt the need. But even 50% through the digital supplies I know this was the right decision to get it done. My word of warning is to make sure you backup your catalog so incase of disaster you can restore it. I haven’t yet done this but need to – as I don’t want to have to start again.

Enough words – here’s the layout I created this evening using one of the new templates I purchased last weekend.

Supplies -

Technorati Tags: photoshop,PSE,organising supplies

30 minute challenge – or speed scrapbooking

Today at designer digitals.com they have an all day chat going on with free digital downloads every hour so I have been watching and learning as I can. At 9 o’clock this morning there was a 30 minute challenge. They gave you some digital elements a set of rules :-

• your title must be the full width/height of the page
• use only one photo and it can’t exceed 3 inches on longest side
• include a border around your page
• use at least one of the freebies
• use the color red somewhere on the page

and then off you went. As a newbie this was a challenge and a half. I haven’t been digitally scrapping for that long so it takes me time to get things to happen as I want them. The other problem was remember quickly what you have on hand! In addition I had to run Eleanor to dance within the same 30 minutes!!! But I did it and I’m fairly happy with the outcome.

Don’t ask me what supplies I used and where from other than the freebie file. No really I found the title in my directory under journaling – not sure where I got it from. The stitches are from a set I got from little dreamer designs – I got two sets from there and the heart is from the same sets. No journaling – no time. I did learn though that I can now create in Photoshop elements fast if I need to!! Anthony thinks its terrible as it too much about the graphic design and not the picture. Well I guess he’s right – you don’t even know its a back to school picture. I was working so fast that I didn’t have time to create my own title and the rules said one small picture which meant lots of space.

Moving on - If you haven’t checked our www.designerdigitals.com this weekend is the one to do it as this weekend the products are all 30% off – they only do this once a quarter. At the moment my cart is full to the tune of $50 and as the weekend goes I thing it will go up. I better do some pruning as I don’t think I can spend that much.

Dance Scrapbooking – Back to the glue and paint

As I said in my last post Thursday was the first day of class for the latest May Flaum class at Big Picture Scrapbooking. Its all about using the products you have on hand – not a problem I have a room full to play with! The first exercise was to start with some neutral cardstock and lots of pictures allowing the pictures to do most of the work. Well I have plenty of dance pictures in the pile to do so picked out a set of these to play with  – managed to get 7 pictures on the layout in a way I was happy with them.
May is encouraging us to look at our supplies and see what we have a mountain of and to work on using them up. Now I have many mountains but chipboard letters and shapes are something I always seem to be buying with out regard to the ones I already have at home. So chipboard letters were singled out for this layout. She also wants to use products we may have purchased and not used a lot, if at all. That’s my collection of stickles – my friend Vicki is the queen of stickles but I always forget I have them and can’t be bothered waiting for them to dry. Chipboard letters + glimmer mist + paint + stickles give me the letters for my main title “dancer” – now not totally happy with it but 5 chipboard letters down and a decision made to give the stickles to my DD and the layout is complete in less than an hour.Not to mention the 6 other chipboard letters which I’ve had for over 5 years I’m sure.

Now I just have to be patient for those stickles to dry before I can move on to the next layout.

Also read some great news this morning on the Big Picture Scrapbooking website – Nic Howard has a new class coming up and it starts on my Birthday. Its all about color and using color in your layouts. I don’t really care what its about. Its Nic Howard and in the last two classes I’ve done with her I have learned so much that I’d sign-up regardless. It’s called Colour! Or is it Color? – well I’m certainly confused about that having learned to spell it colour as I grew up but now moved to color since moving to Texas. Anyways check out the course outline here – Colour! Or is it Color? If you decide to do it PaperClipping has a 10% discount

Technorati Tags: dance,scrapbooking,big picture scrapbooking,Nic Howard,paperclipping

here . If you haven’t listened to the PaperClipping podcasts I highly recommend doing that. They have two -  one which is more the traditional scrapbooking and the other is which is about digital scrapbooking. I find they are great things to listened to when I’m doing housework.

The Search is Over

Since I started playing with digital scrapbooking my issue has been printing the layouts at a cost which doesn’t kill me. Thanks to Alie Edwards I have found my solution. Recently I have been printing my layouts at CostCo but the machine automatically cuts the pages and I was loosing parts of the layout which were close to the edge.  This was so annoying to me. I like the distressed ink look around the edge but they would trim one edge of the four so the border no longer looked even. It could be several mm’s which really makes your layout off balance if you look at it in detail.

Fast forward to Wednesday and  Ali’s blog post. She is celebrating the re-launch of her blog and website by hosting a giveaway. One the prizes was from Persnickety Prints. This is what it said

per·snick·e·ty: Adjective a : fussy about small details b : requiring great precision

PersnicketyPrints.com is the leader in digital scrapbook printing. Their certified professional lab techs and quality control team set them apart from the rest. The best part about PP? Customer Service. They understand the time that is put into creating your layouts, and they will print your images the way you intended them to be. Check out their bleed comparison here.

• 12×12 full bleed prints on archival fuji photo paper is always $1.99.
• 8×8′s are 99¢.
• Flat rate shipping for US + Canada is $5. International $10.
• 100% Guaranteed

I was like I wonder if this is true. I checked out the website and the facebook page and it looked like a lot of happy people so with the added bonus of a 10% coupon on Ali’s blog I thought I’d try it to see if it as true. At lunchtime on Wednesday I loaded seven layouts and paid a total of $17.54 including shipping. This would of cost me $21.98 at CostCo so I was even saving money. (Even without the discount each layout would work out less than CostCo by a quarter. My savings would be even more if I send a batch of layouts as the shipping is flat rate). I couldn’t wait to get them in my hands and see if it was true.

Fast forward again to today. They arrived in the mail at 4pm this afternoon – so 2 days later from Utah. Great fast turn round. And its TRUE they don’t cut off the edges of my pages. Even the test one which I had printed at CostCo twice trying to get it done right came back perfect. It was important what Anthony thought about them – when you have serious amateur photographer as a husband any prints are also required to be given his seal of approval. And YES again Persnickety Prints passed the test for the quality of the paper and the reproduction of the colors. These guys are good! So if you do any digital scrapbooking I highly recommend you try them out while Ali Edwards has her coupon code (valid until 12th September) you won’t be disappointed. I know they will be getting my business from now on. They win on:-

1. price
2. no cutting off the edges of layouts
3. speed of turn round
4. price again – yes scrapbooking is an expensive hobby if your not careful - so this is important to me.
5. customer service – did I mention this before. I don’t think I have. Since Wednesday they have responded to my posts on their facebook page and emails I have sent to them in no time. Gold star rating for that. I always appreciate businesses responding to me in a timely manner.
   

So just to make sure you get it – GO and Visit Persnickety Prints if your persnickety about the printing of your layouts. You won’t regret this decision.

Off to work on some paper layouts for the new May Flaum Class I’m doing at Big Picture Scrapbooking. It will be fun to make a mess again.

Sketch #51 – capture these sketches

When I saw this sketch I knew I had to try my hand at it. I don’t know why it spoke to me but it did.

I really don’t like this picture of me but if I had a choice there would never be a picture of me in the scrapbooks as in my mind I never look good. I believe that some people just don’t take good picture while others the camera just loves them. I see this when my hubbie takes pictures of the dancers. Some of them just never take a bad picture. Do you have the same issue?? I wonder how many of us avoid getting in front of the camera as we’re never happy with the results. The purpose of my scrapbooks though is to leave a record of us all as a family and not just the kids. I mean I’m expecting to be gone before them and hope they will cherish pages like this even though I don’t anywhere near my best! (I looked even worse in color!).

Digital Supplies

Changing Digital Papers Color

Sometimes when scrapbooking you don’t have the correct colored paper. Now the beauty of digital scrapbooking is that it doesn’t matter you just change the color (can I just say here I don’t think I’m going to give up traditional scrapbooking totally but this digital stuff is getting a little addictive making and I’m loving I can do it anywhere!).

The patterned papers I chose to use are these ;-

I wanted to change the blue to match the blues more in my pictures and didn’t want the green wanted a brown. Doing this is easy in PSE 8.0. Firstly I took the papers and included them in my layout with the pictures. I then used the eyedropper tool and sampled the color of the jacket Philip was wearing. Then I clicked on the layer with the paper I wanted to change and selected Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue Saturation. A pop-up window  appears and the check the colorize box and if by magic the paper changes color. You can change it a little more if you want using the sliders.

Using this method I also changed the color of the hearts from green to the brown – so simple, so cool and fast! Means when you buy a digital element you can use it many times in many colors and thus get lots of uses out of it.
The other special thing I did on this layout was the cut out of Philip. So easy to do with the magic wand tool and so much easier than cutting out with scissors! Can you tell I’m becoming more and more into this digital scrapbooking. That being said I’m starting my next Big Picture Scrapbooking class this next week with May Flaum – “Adventures in Scrapbooking – using your stash” - its about using up your stash. So I think I’ll have my glue and scissors out again although I’m not sure I’ll use much of my stash up as I’ve got so much of it. I really need to get into my scrapbook room to clear-up ready but haven’t made it there yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Supplies used in addition to papers -

plus - Flergs_SBAportauprince_Heart1

Southport Times

When we first got married we lived in a small village called Burscough which is between Liverpool and Preston and inland from Southport in the North West of England. With our first child on the way I wanted to take pre-natal classes and signed up with the National Child Birth Trust. As a young couple we had made few friends in the area prior to this and these classes have resulted in making life long friends. Each time we visit England we try and get to visit them, it doesn’t always work as we have limited time and many people to see. (We missed seeing a couple of sets of friends this year due to vacations and time constraints. Its really hard when you have family and friends to fit in and its also your vacation.)
On this occasion we were able to spend a day in the Southport area and see three families in one visit. We all met with the birth of our first born child – Jake, Eleanor, Isabella and Nathan. Thirteen years later (with 11 of them spend overseas for us) we can return for a visit and the kids just act as if they saw us yesterday and even us adults manage to continue where we left off, although we do discuss the differences in education and things like that. Sue was a great host and provided a excellent base for our visit. Its great to have someone willing to open their house to that many people. Thanks Sue!

Supplies – Katie Pertiet Photo Clusters no.31, Vinnie_Pearce_Kraft_Paper_single, Jen Wilson grungedges_set1, iKari designs Alpha Bits Stamped Chocolate.

Another layout from England……

Well that’s not exactly true as the pictures are from Portmeirion in Wales but they are from our trip to the UK. Portmeirion is a strange place. It was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village and is now owned by a charitable trust. Many know it due to the pottery that was designed by the daughter of the Sir Clough Williams-Ellis. My Mum used to love this pottery and the last time I visited I was able to selected some pieces to add to her collection from the seconds shop. This time we spend a few hours just exploring the grounds. We had left the kids with the grandparents for a few days and it was nice just to have sometime to ourselves. If your ever in the area I highly recommend a visit, but get there early as it gets busy!

Digital supplies - KPertiet_PhotoClustersNo31, KPertiet_GraphicFlowerClusters-3, Kpertiet_Edges_7, KPertiet_StitchedJournalStripsNo2-1 (Designerdigitals.com); Kraft Paper - VPearce_Kraft_paper01 (Two Peas).

London Trip

On our recent trip to England the main reason for the trip was to visit the American Embassy to present ourselves for our renewal interview for our “visa”. We have a special visa which allows us to live in the USA due to hubbies job but it is only valid for a number of years and it was finally time for us to renew it. The kids didn’t have to attend so we flew from London to Manchester on our arrival in England and then a few hours later we caught  a train back to London. Having just flown all through the night from Texas by the time we arrived back in London we had been travelling for over 24 hours – yuck is all I can say. Then the next morning we had to be at the embassy for 9am the next morning so we couldn’t even get to sleep in and catch-up. Luckily our interview was simple and fast so we got to spend sometime wandering around London (even those in a sleep deprived state) and having lunch with my sister before we got back on the train and headed back to Manchester. By the time we finally made it to Manchester we were both dead on our feet but happy to know that our visa had been approved and we could return to Texas and continue with life. I don’t know what we would have done if there had been a problem – thankfully it didn’t happen and for that I thank God.

Digital supplies –Papers and digital elements  JM Designs – Travel the World; Template – Biograffiti.com – creative juice no. 21(freebie). Shadows – scrapmatters.com Jennifer Barrette designs “Get Real – Realistic Drop Shadows”.

Back from England

 

Haven’t posted for a while as I’ve been in England for two weeks. I had fun but glad to be back in my own bed with my own things. Its nice not to have to cook and clean for two weeks but I miss my own space and was ready to get back to the routine. Visiting England is about the grandparents and I take the kids each summer but this year we also had to renew our visas which allow us to live in the USA and we’re grateful that this was achieved in the end with ease and we can stay for five years without having to renew.
While I was in England I had the opportunity to meet up with a school friend who I hadn’t seen in 26 years so I thought I’d record this with a digital page – digital because I’ve discovered one of the great advantages of digital is that it can be done at 4.30am without waking others who may be sleeping and as I always have trouble with the jetlag this is a great advantage to me!

The layout I have created is also for a challenge for the online crop which is running at pretty paper, true stores (and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes) blog. It was a color challenge to scrap with red, aqua and white. I then decided to use the latest template from Katie Pertiet at www.digitaldesigns.com template inspiration.

Supplies – Katie Pertiet Clock Buttons and template; Jen Wilson – worn foam stamps, paper flower – Reminisce kit from sweet shoppe designs and red paper and text swirls from Jessica Sprague.com InAWord04.

Photoshop Friday Series

At JessicaSprague.com there is a series of photoshop short tutorials called Photoshop Friday. So far I’ve bought two of these when they have been on special so they have cost me a $1 – yes that is not a typo. Now they are short and sweet but they come with a mini-kit and template to make the layout as part of the class so for a dollar they are a sweet deal. I’ve learned that like at Kohl's when shopping for digital supplies you only buy when things are on sale. Most of the digital websites have at least one day a week when things are on special and you just need to sign-up for their newsletter to know when.
Anyway yesterday I took Philip and his friend to the pool for some fun in the water at LMRA and when I opened the latest tutorial I had purchased to work through I realised the pictures were perfect for the layout. I was very proud of myself as I also actually did some photo editing before I made the layout to make the water bluer and put some ‘extra’ water behind philip. The highlights also needed some work!

Before

After
 

How cool is that! The reason I added the extra water behind him was so the picture would fit better in the template. In the end I didn’t need it that much as I realised I could just angle the picture – durrrr…….
Here’s the final layout. What I learned to do was using the text on curve tool – now in photoshop elements you have to use a text path purchased from someone else but I’m lucky if I want to do this Anthony has an earlier version of the full photoshop I can make the curves in. That will be for another day – for the moment I’m happy with what I did and what I’ve learned. Creating my own curves is for another day.


 

All supplies from JessicaSprague.com – Photoshop Friday Series No.10

Snapshots of you - Dad

In January 2007 my Dad had a massive stroke and since them has spent his time confined to a wheel chair watching the world go by. I haven’t seen him since the last trip we made to England but I prepare myself for another step backwards in terms of what communication there is. Last time I visited he certainly recognised me but this time I’m not so sure it will happen from what my sisters report! Thanks to my mother-in-law I get to speak to him about once a month as she calls on her cell phone from the nursing home. I don’t know what he makes of this but I tell him I love him and we miss him and I pray that he at least understands the words.

I have been struggling with what to take with me for my next visit. The last few times I’ve taken T-shirts but really how many does he need. I send DVD’s for him and his visitors to watch for his Birthday and Christmas. So I wanted to do something different. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know I’ve started playing with digital scrapbooking so I decided to make a layout for him which I will put in a frame for his wall. The pictures are all of him over the years. Some of my favorites from the pictures my sister Juliet got scanned by a company so we could have digital copied of them.

Supplies – Template No 19 Cathy Z, Notebook Edge Frames and KPertiet_Edges all from designerdigitals.com; Carina Gardner Distressed Urban from designhousedigital.com and jbarrette_shadowstyles from scrapmatters.com

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements

So today I decided I wanted to learn something new about photoshop elements and create a new digital layout. I had purchased the “How’d they do that?” – course called the perfect blend from ww.designerdigitals.com it was well worth the money. It comes with a digital paper, a digital brush and all printable step-by-step instructions. The only negative is that I’m using elements 8.0 and I don’t think its been updated for the changes so something’s were in a slightly different place than the instructions but it was easy enough to find them and continue to work. Once I had worked through the instructions I decided the best way to make sure I understood what I had learned was to try on my own to create a layout. This is the result.



Supplies –
plus the Portauprince set I purchased for Haiti from Songbird Avenue.com

Then & Now or should it be Now & Then

May Flaum challenged us to do a layout comparing two different times and  as I was searching through the pictures to find an old picture of Eleanor with her sheep I came across a picture of Anthony and I at his 21st birthday party. Yes we’ve been together that long – well even longer we got together just before his 16th birthday…………and we’re now 42! I suddenly changed track on what my layout was going to be about as I knew I had the picture Eleanor took the night we went out for his 42 birthday that I hadn’t scrapped booked and all sheep were forgotten. When I looked at the picture from September I realized that the new basic grey kit I got yesterday was perfect for the dress I was wearing in 2009 but not in 1988. A scan  later and a conversion to black and white and I could now work with the pictures in one layout!
Here’s the original picture – that dress was so 80’s. And look at the color of hubbies hair.




I also cropped the picture to get rid of some of the background as well. Love being able to scan pictures so easily. I use my HP Deskjet F340 All-in-One. It does a great job and is so easy to use.

Here’s the final layout. The kids love it!

All the supplies are Basic Grey other than the flower (handmade by me), The Thickers letter stickers and the rub-on dates. Layout is based on one by Nic Howard from the dimensional details class I was taking previously! The small picture is mounted on chipboard and for both pictures I sanded the edges to give the white edge to them.

Crazy Dog – Crazy Paper

Some scrapbooking papers are just crazy colors and designs and I don’t know why I ever purchased the Lime Rickey kit from basic grey in the first place. The paper is just not ‘me’ normally but that being said I think I’ve made some of the best layouts I’ve done in a while in the last month or so using this kit. The latest I completed last night and can I just say I’m really happy with the outcome. Its based on sketch #112 from creative scrappers.
 

If you look closely at the layout you can see I did stitches around the “frame”. I did this my sewing machine with no thread in it. Doesn’t show very well in the picture but adds some dimension in real life. The pictures are also mounted on chipboard to raise them off the page and then the edges sanded. The Star and arrow are foam taped also to raise them.

Just got in the mail another kit from basic grey so look out for a change of paper soon – here’s hoping it makes me create layouts of a similar standard (in my opinion and that’s whose opinion matters as my pages are the one thing I’m 100% in control of so if I’m happy all is good!).

Technique rich layouts

Once in a while I feel like creating a page which is more in depth in terms of the techniques I use on it or the mediums I use. Last night I decided I wanted to play with my paints and glimmer mist. (One of the reasons I could never go totally digital is my love of getting messy sometimes when I’m scrapping – digital just isn’t so much fun!). So I decided I would make my own background paper. Originally I was doing it for a different set of pictures but I was moving things around on my desk and managed to knock a pile off and when I was sorting the stuff out I found an envelope of pictures from our trip in 2008 which I had never scrapped. I was flipping through them and this one spoke to me and I realized I wanted to do an ‘artzy’ page with it. Not really recording a memory which is 99% of my scrapbooking but using the image to remind me to dream about possibilities. Doing a layout like this also means I have more freedom to play with the messy stuff! Here’s what I created.

The background cardstock started life as a piece of CTMH textured white cardstock. I took two masks and using tattered angels glimmer mist in tattered leather color I sprayed the paper. Once it was dry I then took some new CTMH stamps called Live inspired and used the corner stamp in this set with Tim Holtz distress ink to stamp around the edge at all different angels. The picture is then matted in twilight paper by CTMH – the lighter color is the reverse side of the twilight textured cardstock. The “dream” was a piece of pre-cut chipboard i picked up at Michaels – I sprayed with a blue glimmer mist and a copper one. The saying “Live inspired, dream with possibility” was a saying on the stamp set and I stamped it first off but it was too small so I recreated it in word and printed on an overhead. The compass, arrow and other words are CTMH rub-ons.

When finally complete I’m really happy with the look I created. May even get a frame for this one and put it on the wall rather than hiding it away in a scrapbook album. For those interested this picture is of Ecole Beach in Oregon. It was a grey and dismal day but Anthony still managed to get this picture.

Today I also made a quick digital page using the challenge template on designerdigitals.com. I used digital brushes to create my own digital background paper in a similar way with the traditional layout. Fun to see how you can recreate techniques digitally. Other supplies are :-

Winged Words Brushes and Stamps - Katie Pertiet
LivEdesigns - Afternoon Stroll
SBA-portauprince

Another take on the same sketch

 

To show how versatile sketches are I decided to make another layout on the same sketch I did for the last post. I turned the sketch by 45 degrees so I could include landscape pictures.

 

Added a grunge board swirl which I colored with glimmer mist to give some dimension to the right side of the layout as I didn’t have any journaling I wanted to add. With this sketch you could include a 7 by 5 picture in addition of the large area of patterned paper as well. That would give even more options!

And just for fun another quick digital layout I did for camp scrap yesterday – digital template was provided by Allie Edwards and papers etc came from a freebie at designer digital by Katie Pertiet

Fast and Easy Layout

Yesterday I didn’t get to scrapbook so today I’m trying to catch-up yesterdays layout and do today’s – plus work, keep house and all the other things that go along with having 2 kids home for summer. Add the hubbie coming home to watch Germany via Spain, so I couldn’t scrap like planned this afternoon!

For Camp scrap yesterday May Flaum provided a great sketch from Valerie Salmon, a name I didn’t know but I’ve now added her sketch blog to my Google reader so I won’t miss any of her future sketches that she shares. First I will share my version of the sketch – this time it really is a straight take on the sketch. That’s the great thing about sketches sometimes you can do that just as they are, other times you can change it out to fit your pictures. This time as I was short on time I decided it would work for me just as it was! Taking about changing sketches out I recently bought a book on changing out sketches from Ella publishing. They sell some great e-books which you can download and print at home or read them on your computer. The following article is a great article about the book and using sketches – check it out by clicking here.

Sketch #111 – Creative Scrappers

Have to repeat how I love working with sketch’s and creating my own version. I’m also really enjoying using trims on my layouts at the moment. Yesterday Sketch #111 from Creative Scrappers arrived in my google reader and I knew I just had to play along but what with cleaning the house (yes I sometimes have to stop scrapbooking and attend to the daily chores) and having invited the neighbors to our “English” 4th July Celebration grill I didn’t have time to play yesterday. This is the first day in a while I haven’t created a layout, I really have been working on trying to allocate some creative time each day and missed it yesterday. I mean cleaning just isn’t as satisfying, especially with children in the house who seem to create a mess as fast as you clean it up!

Here’s my take on the sketch

The papers are all CTMH, rub on swirls Heidi Swap, Memories tag and butteflies CTMH, round letters misc old product (sorry had these about 5 years and no clue who made them). Trims I got from the local (or no so local scrapbook store). I used my i-rock tool again to add bling to the trim and butterflies – can I say how much I love that tool. Really make it easy to add bling  - well that is if you don’t tip the container over when its open!!!

Really happy with how it all came together in the end – note I even hand wrote my journaling. I hate to write on layouts as I don’t have fancy handwriting and always worry I’m going to make a mess but sometimes I make myself do it and today was one of those!

Fun layout for Saturday morning…..

Started the morning moving some pictures off my point and shoot and re-cataloging them so they were stored ready to print. I try and do this on a regular basis just incase the card gets corrupt or something. I know so many people who have lost pictures with lost cameras or corrupt card. So if you have done it recently get it done this holiday weekend!

Once I was had finished the family were still sleeping so I decided to play with PSE 8 again and try another layout. I recently had downloaded a free template from www.designerdigitals.com for a template challenge – the template was by Pattie Knox and had space for lots of pictures. Having just sorted my “snaps” I knew I had lots of guinea pig pictures and it would be a fun template to use with these.The kit I used with the template was LivEdesigns_AfternoonStroll-PPack from www.jessicasprague.com.

I don’t very often scrapbook using my pictures who would when they have a semi-professional husband. My pictures can’t compete with his but I’m still really happy with the results. I couldn’t get PSE8 to remove the guinea pig red eye. I’m guessing guinea pig eyes are different and I maybe need a different tool. I now have to create a second page for Galaxy our other guinea pig – I think I’ll try and flip the template so I have mirror image layout to go in the album.

Talking about albums – I gave up on chronological scrapbooking several years ago after reading the Stacey Julian book. Now I have themed albums. So Eleanor has a dance album and Philip a sports album. We have trip albums, everyday Eleanor and everyday Philip albums (these include school layouts) – then my favorite album is our special people album and this is where these layouts will go. Joining the page on Boris the hamster. If your still chronologically scrapbooking I highly recommend moving away from this – the freedom it has given me is great. I can just scrapbook what  I feel like – like this morning. The pictures of Slash just appealed to me at 9am on a Saturday morning. If I was a chronological scrapbook I’d have to wait until I got to that point.

Here are links to the two books by Stacey Julian which got me to change, highly recommend them both although I can’t believe how much copies are going for as they are out of print! If your in Fort Worth and want to read them you can contact me and loan them if your promise to return!

Part 2 – dimensional details

So I’ve decided to work my way through the dimensional details class again myself – why you may ask. Well I really think I need to go through all the material again so I make sure the things I’ve learned to do are now naturally part of my layouts and also to keep me scrapbooking. While I do this I also need to keep-up with the camp scrap challenges and stuff so where I can I will combine the two to create my layouts.

Yesterday at Camp Scrap it was “Artistic Thursday” and the idea to add into a layout was paint splatter. I have to say this was a little out there for me. I like to be in control of what happens on my layout and your not in control of paint splatter (my face and clothes are evidence of that) but part of doing these classes is trying different ideas out so splatter it was! Splatter on a heritage page as well – didn’t take the easy way out and do a page of the kids painting or something like that.

Technorati Tags: scrapbooking,heritage,ronnie crowley

The papers are from a set of papers I got from Costco a while back – not sure who made them but I bought them with the view to use them for heritage pages and they put them away and forgot about them. Came across the other day and thought I need to get using them – I mean there is only about 500 pieces of paper to be used. If you look at the cluster there is a tulip swirl – got this from Australia from one of the students, Rae,  in Dimensional Details class who has her own store www.scrapmatrix.com she offered us all a discount so I had to order some things. They arrived yesterday and I just use one of my new things on a layout. They are made of a very light product like chipboard which can be painted or colored in similar ways to chipboard. I used glimmer mist to color it this time and was very happy with the way the color set. Highly recommend these unique items especially for your heritage pages. The shipping wasn’t too bad from Australia and it took a little over a week to arrive which is no longer than some place in the USA.

The other thing I thought I’d share was the page I made at the start of dimensional details 13 weeks ago to show you how two very different pages can be made using the same instructions.