A mini album

This past weekend I was very excited to start a new digital scrapbooking class at JessicaSprague.com called Digi in Deep.  It's a more advanced class that will focus on layout and design.  Should be fun!  After completing the lessons, there was a creative challenge to complete a mini album out of quotations.  No pictures.  Futhermore, you needed to stick to the papers and embellishments that were included in the kit provided.  Ok, something a little different for me.  Well, it turned about to be a lot of fun.  I decided to pick a theme for my quotes - hope.  After an internet search I was ready to begin and here is how it turned out.  Each "page" of the pictures is really four pages of the mini book.

Chipboard Christmas Memories Album

Over the last week my husband and I have been very busy painting and reorganizing a few rooms in our home.  Feels great to have the spaces all cleaned out and organized!  I was able to sneak in one additional project - a chipboard album.  I've never done one before but all the pictures I've seen make them look so cute.  With Christmas parties approaching I am bored with the traditional hostess gifts so I thought this would make a great one.  I found some interesting and glittery papers, some cute embellishments, and I was off.  Here are the pictures of how it turned out:

Along the right side of the album is the word "JOLLY" and each page has little jounal tags tucked behind the photo space so that memories or people pictured can be remembered.

Digital Templates

As I've been searching through the web I have noticed that there are a lot of digital templates out there!  Then I got to thinking, I really could make my own so that I'd have better inspiration for making pages.  Thinking about making a template and then filling it in with papers and embellishments has actually helped me to scrap faster and be more creative.  I'm really enjoying it too!

It got me thinking about a template I had for paper scrapping many years back.  You basically cut up one inch squares and then pasted it all back down.  It was a long process, as you can imagine.  However, I did make some great pages - my favorite being one where I used pictures of the 4th of July fireworks to make one really big display from all the picture parts.  Anyhow, this all got me to thinking that I could do this digitally so I took an hour or two and made a mosaic template of my own.  Then I found some fall pics and made the following page for a color swatch challenge.  The elements are from K Teague's November kit.  Enjoy!

Photo Fun

In my recent scrapbook flurry I haven't spent too much time digging through my photos and finding fun ways to edit them so today I spent a little time doing that.  I had a few photos from a trip we took to visit our friends at the end of October.  It was fun to revisit that trip and the beautiful fall day we had to spend together.  I tried various techniques on the photos and was really pleased to end up with many that I felt turned out very good!  Of course, scrapbook inspiration was born!

(sorry, don't want to show their faces, but hopefully you can still see how these fun pics got me thinking scrapbook!)

I've actually been working on my very own digital kit and this is a small preview of some of the goodies I made myself.  It was my first attempt at it and I think it came together pretty well.

A Blog Hop!!!

What an exciting day today will be!  The recent graduates of Jessica Sprague's "The Art of Digital Design" are hosting a blog hop with FREEBIES!!  Hop from blog to blog collecting a massive collab kit called "Christmas Treasures."  I hope to take this class one day so I am VERY excited to see the creations and to see some new blogs!  It all starts at: sweetsunshinephotography.blogspot.com

I know what I will be doing today!

Starting backwards

Over the many years that I have been scrapbooking I have taken several different approaches to getting pages done.  Most times I start with a specific event, find the best pictures, and then develop a theme around those pictures.  Sometimes that works out great, but other times I leaves me wanting more - wanting those cute pages I see others design.

Well, that is one reason I love digital!  I can start a page both ways and see which one I love.  Lately, I've been trying to challenge my layouts so I've started with some of my digital kits and just focused on making several different layouts from them.  It's been a great way to get more creative and every so often I think, hey, those pictures would look really cute in there.  And that's how I came up with the page below.  I was working with a kit by Michelle Coleman and really liked the layout I had.  So I searched through some pictures I had not yet scrapped and found a few that I think worked from a fun Friday summer night we had just hanging out and celebrating a friend's birthday.  Just an impromtu sort of day that can be so relaxing!  (Sorry about hiding some of the photos, but I don't want to put everyone's face out on the internet) :)

Feels like summer...

Well, maybe not.  But it is a VERY nice fall day here today!  I was looking back through some of the pages I've already completed for my 2010 scrapbook.  I like to re-visit them and see if I have new ideas to add when I came across this page.  It's from the summer so it's a great day to post it!

We had a fun time at the minature golf course this year and I had a fun time putting this page together too.  For the background, I used a picture I had taken that day of the course and just put a brush effect over it so it was more subdued.  I then extraced from other pictures so I'd have two players on the course.  I loved the way it turned out.  Add in some journaling, a nice close up of the bunch, and ta-da!  Page done.  I like how it combines a nice portrait with some action shots.  By extracting the subjects, I didn't have to mess around with any distractions in the backgrounds of the actual pictures.  Therefore, the whole thing is more coheasive.  In general, I really love using Photoshop to remove distracting backgrounds.  It makes my pages come together a lot better so I can CREATE the focal point rather than having the eye get caught on some off color distraction in a photo.

Happy BELATED Digital Scrapbooking Day!

Ah, yes, this past weekend was the celebration of Digital Scrapbooking Day! There seems to be a day for just about everything now, but this is one I enjoyed finding out about.  However, due to some home renovations I was not able to do anything digital over the weekend.  Too bad for me.  But I am looking forward to some more this week!

I got started tonight by finishing up our Christmas cards.  I had a lot of fun making several designs.  I wanted to have a more fun with it than my husband did, but we eventually agreed on a design together and it is now officially off to the printer!  Here's a peak at the front of the card.

Happy BELATED digiscrap day!

Credits: StarLight Designs(hats & Window), CelineDesigns (stars), Storybook dreams (wood), Renee Pearson (crackle), DSE (metal border), Seni (lamp) Choubinette Designs (red leaf hearts)



what I believe

As the photo taker and scrapbooker in the family, I'm often not the subject of either.  So it's rare to find a good picture of myself but even more rare to find an entire page devoted to ME in my scrapbooks!  So, I decided to do a little focus on me and came up with the idea to document the things I believe.  Looking at the finished piece, it seems more appropriate to call it a collage.  I used A LOT of blending modes to get this one done.  I still feel like I may make a few tweeks but I'm going to post it anyhow.  (Kit "encourage yourself" by Lucrecer Braxton and brushes by Renee Pearson)