Happy Halloween!

Are you having a frighteningly fun Halloween?  Halloween is such a fun holiday and our neighborhood celebrated yesterday evening with trick-or-treat.  So much fun to see all the little kiddos out in costume having a fun time.  But unlike the saying goes "Trick-OR-Treat", today I have both a trick and a treat for you!

Trick: Removing unwanted shadow areas
For the most part applying shadows to your elements is pretty straight forward but at times you end up getting a shadow in places you really don't want.  I mostly see this happening in my layouts when I put a frame over my pictures and part of the shadow hangs into my beautiful picture.  However, there is a super easy way to resolve this issue while keeping the rest of the shadowing on that element that you love.  Simply hover your cursor over the layer style (in this case "drop shadow") and right click.  A menu will come up and you will want to select "create layer."  Now your shadow will be on it's own layer in your layer palette!  Simply grab your eraser tool and select the right brush, generally a small, hard, round brush, and remove the parts you don't like.
Treat: Free Mini from the collection Boho Chic, available here.  You will get everything I used to make this page:

To check out the rest of this collection or my other kits, please visit my store.

Are you having fun yet!?!

I hope you have found some time to enjoy the games and prizes at ndisb.com in honor of the 6th birthday celebration.  In case you need just a bit more incentive to get over there and celebrate I have a special coupon for you, my blog readers.  Simply enter "BLOG15" to enjoy an additional 15% off your purchase!  The coupon is good through 11/4/11 but don't forget my store is all 40% off through 10/31/11. 

So head on over there right now!!

Toot, toot! The train is rolling in....

I sure hope you've made a stop at ndisb.com to check out all the fun being had with our BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION!!  For starters, EVERYTHING IN MY STORE IS 40% OFF!!!  I know many other designers are featuring great sales as well.  Plus there are plenty of games including a treasure hunt where you can find all the pieces of our birthday collaboration Color Me Beautiful!

On this stop of the train, I've included quick page using several papers and elements from Color Me Beautiful which is yours for free.  Grab it for your personal use by clicking on the image below.

You should have come here from scrapdragondesigns.co.uk and your next stop is snackpackgu.blogspot.com  Enjoy the rest of the blog train and the birthday celebration!

Ready for a treasure hunt to find some freebies??

See this cupcake?  Well, there are 22 of them hidden throughout the forums, store, and gallery at ndisb.com and each of them has a freebie to download when found.  If you search well, you will find all 22 gorgeous mini kits from our Color Me Beautiful Collaboration.

See head on over there now and celebrate with us!  And don't forget, my store is 40% off all week and the blog train full of fun freebies starts on Wednesday!

Birthday Celebration and Sale Coming Soon

Natural Designs in Scrapbooking is turning six and to celebrate we've teamed up to provide some fun games, prizes, and a blog train.  In addition to the celebration everything in my store will be 40% off from October 24th to October 31st!
Make sure to head on over to http://ndisb.com to check out the games, including a treasure hunt which will lead you to our birthday collaboration Color Me Beautiful!  And check back here to hop on the blog train as well which begins October 26th at 8am CST.  It's going to be fun so get ready.
It all starts October 24th!!  Here's a sneak peak at my contribution to Color Me Beautiful:

Today only - Sweet Avery Stickers for $1

That's right! You can pick up this super cute element pack in my store for $1 today only.  While your there, be sure to check out the other Naturally Guilt Free Thursday deals in the shop.

New Release - Boho Chic

Feminine.  Elegant.  It’s Boho Chic.  A collection of coordinating papers, elements and brushes suitable to scrap the everyday to the very special.  Comprised of three paper packs, each with nine papers, you will find elegant patterns and beautiful solid color distressed, texturized papers.  The brush set is available as both .abr files and .png colored files that perfectly coordinate with the collection but are sure to be useful in a wide variety of scrapping and artistic needs.  

The elements are comprised of the following pieces:

·         37 stickers

·         2 banners

·         3 borders

·         8 epoxy buttons with metal rims

·         2 paper flowers

·         5 frames in black for your personal re-coloring

·         5 pieces of word art in both color and black for personal touches

·         5 ribbons

·         1 brad

·         7 tags

That’s a total of 27 papers, 75 elements, and 3 brushes which will provide you with a versatile palette to beautifully capture your precious memories.  Available separately or as an entire collection.  Personal use only.
Head to MY STORE to pick it up!

Hybrid Halloween Project

I had some fun this morning decorating for Halloween.  Unfortunately, AJ is scared of some of the decorations so those went back to storage for next year, but oh well.  I decided to have some fun and try out a few simply hybrid projects.  I have just started to get into this hybrid world, espeically now that I have a super cool printer to work with!  I pulled up my kit Altered Art Halloween and here is what I made:

Not too bad for my first project!  For the candles, I used battery operated candles instead of the real thing so that there is no danger that the paper will catch on fire.  I picked out one of the papers and printed it onto 8x11.5in white cardstock.  Then I cut 2 inch strips and wrapped them around each candle.  Next I picked out a few elements I liked for this, printed them, and adhered them to the strip wrapped around each candle.  Pretty simple but it really adds to the display.
For the banner and flower (on a candle) I chose two differnt papers and printed them onto each side of white cardstock.  I cut the flags out and placed some old sticker letters I had on them.  I went around each letter in black ink to ensure they stood out.  Next I sprayed them with glitter spray to add a little sheen and also to get them to curl up a bit and not lay so flat.  Using brads I secured each one to my ribbon and ta da!  With the extra double sided paper I cut out four different sized circles, alternated the pattern by later, and then folded each lite a pie crust to give it that crumpled look.  Then I added a simple pearl to the middle to finish it off.
It was really a lot of fun to see this come together and it went rather quickly.  Have fun making your own holiday decorations!
If you would like to purchase my kit Altered Art Halloween, you can pick it up in my shop by clicking on the image below. 

It's Naturally Guilt Free Thursday

Did you know that by signing up for the Natural Designs in Scrapbooking Newsletter you will get our weekly Naturally Guilt Free Thursday ad where you can find amazing specials?  No, then head on over to http://ndisb.com to sign up!
This week I have two items to offer you for just $1.00.  So drop by my store to check them out!

Anatomy of a Page

Halloween is almost upon us.  It is this holiday that I miss being a kid the most!  Costumes and parties just don't seem to come my way as often now that I'm all grown up but I still love to delight in the holiday.  Although this year, I've been slow to get out the decorations.  See my first one didn't go over so well.  I picked up this singing and dancing broom at a craft show last week because it seemed so fun.  I also thought it would keep the dog busy, and I was right about that.  What I did not anticipate was the terror it would cause little AJ.  He doesn't like it at all.  If the music goes off in another room, he cries.  If he sees it, he turns away.  If you take him near it, he trembles.  Oh boy, hopefully next year AJ and the broom will be on better terms.
Well, that's the story behind the page.  Here's a look and a few things I want to point out.

The papers and elements are from Altered Art Halloween.  To create a border for the page I placed the golden tan paper on top of the gray paper and shrunk it down by 5% of it's original size.  I had selected two plain papers to start knowing that I would add in some pattern and interest with the circles and elements, but when I got done it just looked a little plain for my taste.  So I grabbed a pattern paper from the kit and placed it on top of both of the bottom papers.  I changed the blend mode to 'overlay' and changed the layer opacity to about 75%.  The blending mode and opacity you choose will depend upon the paper you start with. 
The overlay mode is a contrast mode.  This means it both darkens and lightens the layer to which it is applied.  Using any one of the contrast modes - soft light, hard light, vivid light, etc. - will generally help the pattern on a patterned paper show up best.
Lastly, I wanted to further add interest to this layer by taking away some of the pattern.  I added a layer mask and choose a grunge brush from Sara Schmutz to knock out some parts of the pattern.
Hope you can try some of these ideas on your own pages! 

New Halloween Release

I've been working on a fun Halloween kit that I hope you will enjoy for those spooky, frightfully fun photos you capture this trick-or-treating season.  I know we are looking forward to getting our little one all dressed up and while he won't be trick-or-treating we hope he'll love seeing all the neighborhood kids out in their costumes as well.  You can pick up this new kit, Altered Art Halloween, in my shop!
Here's a look at the goodness in action...Happy Halloween everyone!

It has arrived!!

What IS that you ask?  Well, it's my brand spanking new Epson Stylus Photo R2000 printer!!  I was so excited when I came home from running a few errands and found that my printer has already arrived on the early FedEx route.  How exciting!!  It was very well packaged and easy to get into - always a plus. 

Just look at this beautiful machine and all those pretty ink cartridges!  I'm pretty sure I forgot to tell my hubby just how big it is, but I'm sure he'll manage when I get to work on making beautiful projects that come out of this machine.  So, there is still some setting up to do but I am just itching to get some pictures and pages printed!  I'm also dying to try out some hybrid projects as well.
Ok, off to enjoy the new printer some more!