Seaside Beauty

Pages of the girls first trip to the Ocean. Of course we took many more pictures, but for me, these just captured the special moments and are my favorites. I love the one of Alena from behind - I wanted her to know it was her. She loved the ocean, pulling to go into it even though it was still quite chilly in May.

I can't believe that I'm scapping so many single pictures, but sometimes one does a better job than many. The rest are all in a photo album to be enjoyed.

This page is also a simple layout - I didn't want anything to compete with the picture.








Papers from Live for the Joy by Kay Miller
Stitching by Natali
Tag Hanger from Deacon's Closet Mini Kit by Flerg's
Actions - inked edges by Atomic Cupcake
Font - jayne print

This was also one of my first ventures into photo editing back in 2005. The picture was so cute, but there were so many people in the background. Luckily, sand, sea & sky are easy to duplicate, but it makes all the difference in the world to see Iva peaceful & alone on the beach vs. sharing it with all these other people. For the LO, I cropped it even tighter than a 4x6 - all I really did was remove all the people and the book & stuff in the foreground.

Toothy Grin

This tooth chart is something I've been kicking around for a LONG time (about two years) and I finally got the motivation to get it done due to Megan (aka Flerg's) who lives down under and does beautiful design work. She is holding a contest to find CT (creative team) members. I think CT members get to use the designers products free of charge to create LOs that should inspire others to purchase items from the designer. Now, I don't have enough free time to be on her CT, even if she were to select me, but I love using her stuff just the same.

I recently got a few actions from Atomic Cupcake. An action is like a microsoft macro, it just records a series of steps to make it easier on the next person. The actions they have created are just amazing. I can finally have inked edges again because of them. So the edges of the frame & tag are inked, the teeth have a frosted glass effect (which I think makes them look more 3D), the edges of the transparent paper are torn, and the background for the teeth started off using her cutout action (like making it into a sticker), but then I changed the paper.

And then I used a distort filter (liquify) to push in the ribbon so it would appear it was going through the eyelet. The tutorial has a few more steps that I didn't use in this LO, but I'll give it another whirl soon. I used the old paper photo filter on the pictures - they were too bright to go with the muted LO.

So - a lot of things came together to get this LO done, but it's great to have another "traditional" babybook page off the list of pages to do.









Kit (paper & alpha) from Strawberry Delight Mini by Flerg's
Tag, Staple & Eyelet from Decon's Closet Sampler by Flerg's
Brown Glitter Style from Chocolate Berry by Flerg's
Actions - tear, inked edge, cutout & frosted glass by Atomic Cupcake
Font - kid print
Tutorial - how to thread an eyelet by Scrap Your Art Out!

Sweet Santa Baby

Ok - these are done now. Quite the hodge podge of kits, but I guess it's a good collaboration of many things that I've collected. In the end I'm quite happy with the results, but with being gone one week without scrapping, I'll have to go back and relearn that burn & dodge technique.








Paper & alpha from douceurenivrante by petitmoineaux
Other Papers (recolored)from Christmas Around the World by Kim B
Stitching by Natali
Note Paper & Tape (recolored)from Flutter by Karen Lewis
Safety Pin from DreadFullyHappy by Digital Crea (a Thursday's Freebie so it changes)
Ribbon (recolored)from Ashley's Polka Dot Christmas by Angel in My Pocket
Alpha (recolored) from Island Girl Choco Chip Alpha by Mabelle (My Scrap Works)
Tutorial - Realistic Stick Pin Placement by Studio Girls
Fonts - Serrific Grunge, Jayne

Santa Baby - not quite done

These LOs are not done, but I needed to take a break from them and for some reason I find that posting them here gives me fresh perspective. Looking at these LOs it seems as if they should have been so easy, but I've been at it 3 hours now and I still don't have a title or journaling (can't think of a title at all). I was having a dickens of a time finding paper I liked and tried to recolor a bunch of stuff, but the red in the sweater was hard to match. Ended up taking stuff from a bunch of different kits and recoloring some. Learned how to burn & dodge (necessary for really making the safety pin look like it went through the paper). I found some tutorials for that I'll share in case someone else is looking. I spent a little bit figuring it out and you can't even hardly see it, but maybe it will look right on the printed page.








Links for credits to be added later

Paper from douceurenivrantebypetitmoineaux, Kim B's Christmas Around the World,
Stitching by Natali
Safety Pin from DreadFullyHappy
Ribbon from Ashley's Polka Dot Christmas
Tutorial - Realistic Stick Pin Placement by Studio Girls

Birth Annoucement for a Friend

Sorry the DigiFree website brought you here March 3, 2008. It must have picked up the word freebie in the comments. Please feel free to look around, but the only freebie here is on the 2nd blog post for collecting family geneology. TFL.

I just love helping friends design cards to send. I just think it is so wonderful to recieve a totally custom card - and today's printing industry it making it so much easier.







Paper - Jolly Hollydays from LivEDesigns
Ribbon - Happy Birthday from Digital Design Divas
Fonts - Papyrus, Baskerville, Nupital

My 3rd Christmas

These pages don't feel like my finest moments, but I always need to ramp up with my scrapping and I've been off for three weeks now. Lots of holiday memories to scrap - but I don't want to overdo it since we don't have lots of pictures of the previous Christmases.

I used a template, but had to change it a bit. It had some really neat elements that I kept - like the folder tie & the ribbon stitching - but I had to work at it to make them mine. The template was really neat, but it was all gray scale, so it was designed to be just recolored, but once again the bright colors of the girls dresses didn't really lend themselves to simple recoloring. I had to take the folder tie completely apart (thread, button, eyelet) and I had to add the gold eyelets to the ribbon tie, otherwise they would have been just brown too. In the end it was worth the effort, but sometimes I just wish I knew how to design a ribbon - but I think that might be a while off.








Template - Template 66 by Lottchen
Kit - Tis the Season by Retrodiva
Action - Chipboard by Atomic Cupcake
Font - 2Peas Flea Market

Mother's Day 2006

I'm so happy to post a new LO. December is flying by as well, and it didn't seem like I was making as much progress. Last week was terribly busy and this week is almost gone as well. Soon we'll be on our way to visit family & friends for the holidays and I haven't decided whether I'll bring my laptop with me or not.

Not many new techniques here - just reapplying the ones I learned late last month. I hope everyone has figured out when I post two LOs that look very similiar there is always one picture that is an individual picture of the girls, so they have a unique page in their baby book.








Template - Template 166 by Andrea Gold (Andrea posts a new template almost few days for free, but they are only available for a short time, so you have to keep up with her)
Kit - Chocolate Berry by Flergs
Layer Style - Chocolate Berry Glitter Styles by Flergs
Fonts - Scriptina, Jayne

Christmas Card for a Friend

My friend and neighbor honored me this year by asking me to help with her Christmas card. It was so much fun putting together a card that captured this jam packed year. Even I was amazed how wonderful putting the magic of Disney & Christmas together was. It was made even more fun because it was a full 4 sided card, so I got to design something for all 4 sides.






Paper - from Świąteczne papierki - part 1 by Monika
Layer Style - glitter freebie by Flergs
Font - Papyrus

Leaning Pumkins

On this layout I got to play around with two actions that make pictures concave & convex. You can do it yourself with Filters-Distort-shear. I was able to accidentally do it once and thought - ok, that is easy, and then I could never repeat it. I need to practice, because it is a handy trick to make things look more real, especially with the pulled away stitches.







Template - In Stitches by Tracy Drane
Kit - A Call to Act, a collaboration hosted by the Digichick Community
brad - recolored from No Room for Grey by Retrodiva Designs (was previously a freebie)
tag hanger - from Bonne Annee by Maman Scrap Passion
Stitching - by Natali
Action - Concave & Convex by Panos
Fonta - Euphorgenic, jayne print

2007 Christmas Card Photo Shoot

ok - not a speck of pink or green in sight - not even a variation like red. Making something feel like Christmas when you're all wearing black is hard (you look good, but it's not seasonal). Lots more adjustment layers and recoloring here - the original paper was purple - now that I've learned how to adjust hue/saturation the possibilities seem endless.







Kit - portion of collab kit Whimiscal Wonderland by Flergs
Embellishments - Cork Stars by Flergs
Glitter Style - glitter freebie by Flergs
Font - fontdinerdotcom sparkly

See these LO on Flerg's blog here

2005, 2006 Christmas Card Photo Shoot Pics

Before I started digital scrapping I would have never used glitter even if it was the hottest trend going. Now I can't seem to get enough of it - it is so fun, maybe it's just a girl thing, but I really like it. I found a fabulous collab kit for Winter coming out and even though only 2 of the 12 parts were out there was plenty of inspiration. One background I had to make and in it I learned about adjustment layers and how to recolor a bunch of stuff for a LO. The green one is a QP (quick page) and I just had to plop my pictures behind it. Now to go do a design for this year's photo shoot which I hope to have done soon as it's time to get cards in the mail.










Kit - portion of collab kit Whimiscal Wonderland by Flergs
Chocolate Berry by Flergs
Embellishments - Cork Stars by Flergs
Font - fontdinerdotcom sparkly

Joy (at Christmas time)

ooh - scrapbooking again pictures that are less than a week old (and I still have paper LOs that need my attention). Not for sure that this page is finished. The white space on the left feels good - but I don't have a title so that feels odd. Guess I'll let it simmer a bit and see if I come back to it.






Well I came back to it. I spent quite a few hours learning how to load actions, brushes & layers into PSE, but I finally figured it out and I know I'll use them alot in the future too.







Template - Template 15 by MOriginals
Kit - Dear Santa by Karen Lewis
Actions - Pristine Chipboard by Atomic Cupcake
font - jayne print, 2 peas Flea Market Block Regular

Born with a Little Diva Inside

Another day where the photos to scrap were totally dependent on the freebies I found today. The Diva kit was just perfect for this pictures of the girls and their sunglasses which were not necessary to scrap, but were too cute not too. This is the true benefit of digital, I'm able to do scrap so many other moments that might have been just left behind because it just took too much time. My goal now is to do two LOs a week - one for fun and one that really belongs in a baby book.







Template - Clustered by Tracy Drane
Kit - Diva by Daniela Peuss
Stitching - by Natali
Overlays - Vintage Floral Overlay by Shabby Princess
Fonts - Tall Paul, Euphorigenic

Thanksgiving 2007

We were blessed to spend Thanksgiving with friends (all from A-B). We had our first taste of fried turkey, and Julianna looked out for all the little girls so it was a relaxing afternoon with lots of yummy food (and desserts). I tried a new sweet potato recipe that was quite scrumptous (and almost healthy).







template - 6 Pic Double by Heidi Lentz
Kits - Harvest Spice & Shabby Fall by Shabby Princess
Overlays - by Clara Wallace and Jill&Jack
Fonts - grumble, 2 Peas Hot Chocolate

On Your Own

A traditional paper LO. I love how it turned out, but as soon as I figure out how to "ink" edges I'll be doing this type of LO digitally. I thought it looked done, but now looking at the pictures I think I need to add just a touch of stitching here & there - hard to believe it needs more with all those papers on there - I love them and they are the reason I'll continue to do paper LOs in the future.




Fonts - Serrific Grunge, Jayne Print
Papers - Basic Grey: Ashbury Street & Sausalito from the Phoebe collection, Ratine &n Mila from the Urban Couture collection, and Beatrice from the Perhaps collection
Layout Idea - Scraplift of 'Wibbly Wobbly' by beaglesonthebrain at 2 Peas in a Bucket.

Your Own Style

This is one of our favorite pictures. It doesn't look like much really, but it captures such a special time when the girls were first moving around - Alena by crawling and Iva by creeping on her tummy. This meant that Alena was always in the lead, but Iva made pretty good time.

I was working on this LO when I decided to check for freebies and this template was right there - I knew it would be perfect for this picture. It took a while to get the background color - I tried green, brown & pink all from the patterned paper, but they distracted from the photo. Finally I just made it the same color as the blanket in the photo and it all just clicked. The hardest part of this one was learning to use the text mask - you can't just move the text around or resize it once you use a mask (or at least I couldn't find that you could) so it took a few trials to get it right.

And now I really must get to work on that paper LO that I've been meaning to work on - but keep letting the computer distract me.



Template - Template 11 by MOriginals
Digital Paper Kit - Live for the Joy by Kay Miller
Overlay - Zoey by Clara Wallace
Overlay - Vintage Christmas by Sunflowers
Fonts - Serrific Grunge, Euphorigenic, jayne print

Perfect Pumpkins

I'm just getting all the old holidays taken care of - this once again required learning a few things - like modifying the clip for color, the direction of the spring and then breaking it into two pieces so that the shadows could be applied properly. Shadows are what make the whole thing realistic and I think this turned out ok, but still more to learn in this area.



Paper Kit – Festival by Shabby Princess
Clip - from Manic Monday by Lizandherbabes
Bow & Ribbon - from Tis the Season by Retrodiva
Tape – Mellykat
Fonts - 2Peas FleaMarket, CK Journaling, Euphorigenic

My 2nd Christmas

I got it done! Christmas #2. Not only did I get this done today, but I'm headed off to the neighbor's tonight to work on paper LOs. And because I got these done I'm all ready for Christmas #3. I do love this kit.

only 1 page for this holiday-it's hard to take pics of toddlers!

Template - November by Bastelzauber
Kit - Tis the Season by Retrodiva
Overlay Edge - Edge Pack by Lauren Bavin (couldn't find the product again on her site)
font - 2Peas Flea Market

My First Christmas

Another LO finished today!! It's getting easier and I'm realizing now some of the mistakes I made on the first digital pages - oh well. I'm sure that I'll have to make some adjustments too, since I'm using PSE6 now as a trial, but bought PSE 5. Just like paper scrapping in that regard. I found 3 of these Christmas papers as freebies, but I liked it so much now that I made this page I decided to buy the kit - hopefully I'll be able to do Christmas for several years with this kit.

And alas, I'd like to work on their 2nd Christmas tonight too - but other duties call.



Template - October by Bastelzauber
Kit - Tis the Season Freebie by Retrodvia (they offer only one freebie at a time, so this link may take to their current freebie, and alas the freebie papers are not in the kit.
Overlay Edge - Edge Pack by Lauren Bavin (couldn't find the product again on her site)
Staple & Bling - from the Design Tool Box by Raspberry Road Designs
font - 2Peas Evergreen

Splash in Puddles

I am making headway with PSE - I managed to do these LOs in about 2 hrs - so much faster than with paper. I've been wanting to scrap these pictures with this poem and I finally found the right combination of stuff - and I taught myself a few new things tonight as well - so bonus for me.

The girls had just gotten their new Crocs and they couldn't wait to wear them. They were the perfect shoes for a rainy day and the girls loved splashing through the puddles.



Template - Paper Squares by the DSP Team
Kit - Emma by Amy W. Designs
Push Pin - from the Design Tool Box by Raspberry Road Designs
Overlays - Vintage Floral by Shabby Princess, Crumpled Paper texture by Jill&Jack
Fonts - Jayne Print, Euphoroigenic

Moments

I had a little time today and I was going to work on getting a few paper LOs done, but I browsed through my inspiration site and I found a quote that fit perfectly with these pictures that I wanted to scrap - so the paper once again will have to wait. Using a template does make things so much easier. The hard part for this one was the mat/photo. The template just had straight edges all around and it just looked a little blah to me. Once I found the edge cropping in PSE I was much happier. Then I added the crumpled paper overlays to everything except the background paper and it all seemed to come together then.

These pictures were taken when we went to The Homestead in Virginia. It was beautiful and they had a walkway that just had perfect light.



Template - #10 by Pixelninechen
Paper Kit - Sweety Spring by Miss Vivi
Overlays - crumpled paper from Template 12 by Jill & Jack and crumpled paper by Cindy Doerksen
Stitching - by Vendula Sediva aka Natali
Staple - by Leah Riordan
Fonts - CAC Shishoni Brush, Calligraph421BT, 2Peas Hot Chocolate

The most Precious Gift

This was not what I was going to work on tonight. But I glanced through today's freebies and found this awesome template, and I had a couple of photos that went perfectly, so I thought I'd give it a try. Several hours later, I have a LO that I'm pretty happy with. Spent the the most time on the frame for the heart - applying different effects, trying to make one from buttons (spent alot of time searching for how to make buttons or find black buttons) only to have the solution hit me at the last minute (a piece of paper from the same kit) - and then it was only 5 minutes 'til I was done.



Template - B-day bonus 4 by Kim B
Digital Paper Kit - Urban Kiwi by Shabby Princess
Staple - Blog Freebie by L. Riordan
Fonts - Luna Bar, Portia

a tweak on Halloween 2007

So I wasn't totally happy with the first LO I did, and while I have other ideas in my head for pages that need to be done, inspiration struck and so I did this page again. When I went back through the photos, the one of them from the back with the bright orange pumpkins just really needed to be included. I think the 2nd result is better - yeah for digital scrapping!



Original LO


Overlays - Shabby Mommy Sanded Overlay by Shabby Princess & Zoey Overlay by Clara Wallace
Paper kit - Halloween Night Add on by Peggy France
Stitching - by Vendula Sediva aka Natali
Font – 2 peas ditzy

Fairy Tale

TWO layouts in one day - a record. Of course this is only one page, with one picture - so it should have only taken an hour - plus I used a template to boot. So a little modification for the photos (it had two), some Word Art, and a simple manipulation of the scrolls and bingo a finished layout.



Template - Template #24 by Netty's Scraps
Digital Kit - All Organic by Kay Miller
Fonts - The King and Queen, 2 peas Hot chocolate, Swiss

a sweet little baby (baptism)

Woo-hoo, another set of finished pages!! Ok, once again, just on the computer and not actually in the book. Boy, do I hope I like the way these print. This one was actually 75% done in PSE6 - that program is actually getting easier, but I still did some of the text and moved the photos in using Powerpoint - that way I could design two files in PSE, but use them as backgrounds for two different people. I added all the drop shadows (even the ones for the photos) on the quick page. So - do I like digital scrapping?? YES, it is great - especially since I used to spend this much time on the computer working on the design anyway.





Digital Paper Kit - Live for the Joy by Kay Miller
Edge Overlay – Shabby Princess Vintage Floral kit
Alpha - Sweet Serenity Alpha by Shabby Princess
Stitching - by Vendula Sediva aka Natali
Fonts - 2 peas glitter girl
Poem - Carlton Cards (thanks Aunt Betty!)
Layout - Feb 2004 Sketch by Becky Higgins