It's a birthday extravaganza!!

Design House Digital is turning three!  And we are going to celebrate!  Hope on over to DHD for the site-wide sale, hosted chats, and other fun.  While you are there be sure to check out the new January challenges and stop in the forum to say hello. 

Hope to see you at the party!!

Creative Home Decor

Little Birdie creative team member Heather Steed has posted a fun, inspirational project over on her website.  Using papers from several of my kits - several I wouldn't have even thought to mix up! - she has created beautiful wall art.  Not only is her project great, but the idea is also a wonderful idea for your home entry way.  While at her website, be sure to look around as she has a lot of creative inspiration to share with you!!

Grand Opening at Design House Digital!

The day has come!  You can now find my designs at Design House Digital!  I hope you will come on over and check out all the fun there with monthly challenges, designer collaborations, a fun team of inspiring decorators, and so much more.

As a special bonus to my blog readers, you can get an additional 10% off anything in my shop through December 31st using the coupon code: LBDHDOPEN10.  Please note that a minimum purchase of $1.99 is required.

I hope to see you over there for some digi-scrapping fun!

Creative Team Call!

Along with a move to a new store, I am hosting a creative team call!  I'm looking for some experienced digital scrappers to work with my new releases and help promote Little Birdie Digital Designs.

My requirements are pretty simple.

• You'll be the first to know about my new releases and will receive them prior to release FOR FREE! 
•  I'll ask that you create 1-2 layouts to help me promote the product.  
• You will be responsible for posting them at my store gallery, on your personal blog or any other social media you use for your crafting, and at any other store with an open gallery that you frequent being sure to mention the product and my name.
• You will allow me to post them on my blog and other media for promotion of new products.

***Hybrid crafters also welcome!!

I'll be announcing my new store on the 27th but it is a large and vibrant site with plenty going on.  I'm sure you will enjoy hanging out there if you don't already!

To apply, please contact me at littlebirdiedigi@att.net and include the following:

• Subject line "CT Application"
• Your name
• A link to your online gallery
• A link to your blog or other social media
• A little bit about you and why you are interested

I look forward to hearing from you.  I'm attaching a sneak peek of my next release to get you interested!

Grand Opening Coming Soon!!

I'm excited to announce that I will be re-opening shop at a new location on December 27th!  So stay tuned as I will be revealing the location and a special coupon just for my blog readers.

Under Construction

I'm feeling that the look of my blog should be updated.  Please bear with me while I make some changes and sort things out.  Now back to work!!

Wine Cork Christmas Tree

I'm sometimes amazed at the price people will pay for home decor.  Now I understand that not everyone has been bitten by the crafting bug, but there are some seriously overpriced goods out there!  I was flipping through our latest issue of Wine Enthusiast (we have received one each week for the last three weeks - even though we've never purchased anything from it!) and I saw a Christmas tree made out of wine corks.  I thought it looked easy to do and would be cute in our dining room which has a wine theme decor.  My husband was all for it since it would use up some of the many, many corks we have collected over the years.  I was already set to make one when I got some time but was shocked when I saw the price - $39.99!!  What?!?!

Using 39 corks, ribbon, and a hot glue gun I was able to complete my tree in 20 minutes.  The resulting product is only about 6 inches wine by 7 inches high and went together very fast.

I made mine by selecting similar sized corks and making sure any red (wine dyed) ends were not in front - although that might look kinda cool since red is a holiday color.  Then I glued together the rows and finaly stacked the rows upon eachother while gluing them.  The construction of this tree began with a base row of 5 corks and then 6, 7,5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  I found a scrap of ribbon for the top.

Next you can really embellish it however you choose.  I think misting sprays would be fun or some glitter or even making a tiny paper garland or banner to adorn your tree.  I found some old pearlized powder I had and dusted some on the end of the corks to make it a shimmery green.  I think this small, quick project turned out pretty cute.  I may even try making a bigger companion tree.  So have fun.  Give it a try.  After all if you mess up, you just get to drink more wine before trying again!

Gift money holder

Let's face it.  We've become slaves to the almighty gift card!  Not sure what to get someone, you grab a gift card.  Not sure what you want, you say a gift card to your favorite store.  For some reason it just takes all the thoughtfulness out of the gift for me, even thought I do love to both give and receive them.  In order to feel like I've put more thought into a gift of money, I like to dress it up a bit.  This year, I thought a fun little project in Photoshop would work well.  I currently only plan to give one gift of money (whoo hoo!) and it's for my brother.  In a few months he has a ski trip planned and I know he would appreciate some money to purchase a lift ticket.  So here it goes:

To Start: I made a pretty simple template in Photoshop.  I then clipped some Christmas-y paper to it and decorated it with my message.

 Step 1:After printing my design, I folded it in half.

 Step 2: I scored the edges that I will fold inside and glue together.  The scoring just gives me a nice, clean fold.

 Step 3: I punched a hole through the top and fitted each side with an eyelet to dress it up a bit.  Regular holes are just fine too - you simply need a place to put the ribbon.

 Step 4: Put a little glue down on those edges and fold the two sides together.

 Step 5: Insert cash or gift card and close with ribbon.  Ta Da! (as my toddler likes to say at the completion of anything!)

Just remember that if you want to label the back with To/From information, that you will need to rotate your text both vertically and horizontally so that it appears proper after folding.  If you would like to download a PDF version of the template that you can print, cut, and trace on any paper you have, you can do that here.   Or you can download the Photoshop template file here.

A simple little banner

With a new baby in tow, it's been hard to juggle getting any projects done let alone all the day to day upkeep of a home!  So as we neared our new son's baptism day I felt a little sad that I had not made anything to decorate our home with for this special day.  Enter last minute crafting.  I decided I needed to do something large since I'd only have time to sneak in one project so I choose to do a banner to hang from our fire place.  I wanted to spell out "God Bless" thinking I could also use it for Easter by choosing some soft tones.

To keep it simple I opened up Photoshop and made a big circle and cut it in half.  My banner will be made out of half circles.  Then I choose some light blue and tan papers to clip to them, selected my font, and went about typing the letters and positioning them.  Once printed and cut, I decided to embellish them a bit by using cut pieces of text paper.  I took an old book (bye, bye International Tax Law!) and cut out one inch wide sections of text paper.  You can really use any size you like but I wouldn't do smaller than one inch wide as it would be hard to work with. I folded the paper accordion style with no real perfection to it and crumbled them in my hand a bit.  Then I glued them around the back edge of each banner and scrunched them as I went to make a ruffle look.

 Next, I wanted to spruce them up a bit so I used some Tattered Angles Glimmer Mist (Trunk Bay) to add some colored shine to the text.  Again, no perfection just a mist on the edges here and there.  Then I used some Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam (Chandelier) to add even more sparkle and to stiffen the text book paper so it would hold up better.

 And here is a shot of the banner hanging by the fireplace.  I punched two holes in each half circle and threaded some simple ribbon through to hang it.  It really added a nice touch to the day and was a great place to take pictures in front of. 

Last Day at NDISB

It's the last day that NDISB and my store there will be open so stop on by to grab any of my kits at 50% before they are gone.  While I'm sad to see my store close, I think it is time for me to move on and find a new venture.  I'm not entirely sure of what that is yet but I know that I'm not ready to give up on Little Birdie Digital Designs.
As this closing approached, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would take my next steps and I learned a few things.  First, and it seems simple, but I need to design for me.  I often spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the marketplace or the visitors to my site wanted from me.  That led to me making a lot of fun kits, but not many that I LOVED and wanted to really use all the time.  So I've been working on kits that are for ME first. And some made it into my store but others are still in progress.  I hope to find a place to sell them in the future.

Second, once I design for me, I find that my pages are better and better display my work.  I hope that will make others more excited about using my designs as well.

And finally, I've learned how to expand my digital skills in new ways - like decor and invitations - and this has helped me to think about how to design digital kits that not only help scrap important memories, but are useful for fun projects as well.  Why not get the most out of what you purchase?

Well, I'll still be on the blog doing new projects and hope to inspire others in that regard.  The holidays are upon us and there is a-plenty to get creative with!!

Update & Sale

I'm dropping by to announce a 50% off sale on all my goods at Natural Designs in Scrapbooking.  They will be in store until the end of November and, again, everything is 50% off!

I've been a bit slow at designing these last few months as we have recently welcomed home a new little baby boy bundle that is keeping us very busy.  Before that, well, pregnancy made me very sleepy when I wasn't busy chasing around an energetic toddler.  I hope to be back designing once our household settles in a bit.
Happy Scrapping!!

New release! Girls

I have a new release in store for those of you wishing to document the fun you have with your sisters, girls, or girlfriends.  It's called "girls" and includes nine designer papers and 46 elements.  And, until the end of June, it is 40% off!  Head to my store to check it out!

Mini Hybrid Album

I recently had the pleasure of helping to throw a surprise birthday party for my mother.  I was so excited to see her on that day and knew that she would have a great time with the family and friends that were able to attend.  And she was certainly surprised, which made it all that much better.  I wanted to provide her with some pictures from that evening but thought I'd dress them up a bit in a small mini album.  This was just a quick project and I think she'll be pleased to have something fun to look through and remember the event by.

I began by creating a fun shape in Photoshop which I completed by merging some general shapes into one fun swirly rectangle.  Once I liked what I saw, I laid out two on a 8.5x11 inch page.  Rotating one of the images so that it was the mirror (back side) to the other.  Then I clipped digital papers to my shape.  I choose to use papers from my kit "Inspire".  I printed these out at home onto Epson Premium Presentation Paper.  If you do not have a home printer, you can always save your files to PDFs and take them to your local office store for printing.
After cutting them out, I assembled them in the order I preferred, selected my pictures, and then placed some of the "Inspire" elements onto another sheet and printed it to use them as embellishments within the album.  I pasted the cover pages onto a cracker box and cut them out.  I then proceeded to paste together each front and back page. 
I allowed just over a 1/4 inch from the edge of the album to be used for binding and scored each page at that point (allowing for some bend) before punching holes and putting some ribbon through to hold it all together.
After my pages were complete, I used Jim Holtz distress ink around the edges.  This helped to hide any areas where the pages didn't line up correctly and provided for a nice, finished look.  And, ta da!  It was all complete in just about 2-3 hours time.  And it makes a great way to share the pictures with my mother. 
It's just one more way to get creative with your digital stash!

A few layouts

Check out these gorgeous layouts by ndisb.com creative team member Linda Djokic!  Didn't she just do a great job with my kits A Little Beachy and Elephant Party?  There is a lot more to see at the Gallery at ndisb.com.

Check out these new releases!

Available in store now and priced at 40% off for the rest of June, along with the rest of my shop!

I need your vote!

A short while ago I wrote about a design contest I entered. See Here.  Among other prizes, the winner will see their design printed and distributed by Echo Park Paper Company.  I'm excited to say that after the pool of entries I have been selected into the remaining top 25! 
The next part of the contest involves a public vote.  So that is where you come in!  More info on voting here.  But I need anyone and everyone to head over to jessicasprague.com and vote for my entry, "Girls by Sarah Sullivan".  You can find the top 25 entries by going to the site and clicking on the "gallery" tab.  Then scroll down and you will see a gallery with the heading "Designer Discovery Top 25".  My design is on the 2nd page of the gallery.  You do need to be a registered user of the site to vote, but it's simple to register.  You just need to create a user name, password, and give them your email address.  Then you will be on your way to voting!  Registration can be found in the top right corner of the site.
Myself, as well as the other entrants, greatly appreciate any time you take to view these designs and cast a vote!!

Homemade Scrapbook

I obviously love digital but sometimes it is great to get back to paper and make something fun.  I no longer scrapbook via paper but I have wanted to try making a mini album for some time.  A few months ago I took a class by Heidi Swapp and Jessica Sprague and made a cool mini book for my mother celebrating her first year as a Grandma.  It was so much fun and I was so excited with how it turned out.  I was able to fit so many great pictures in this small album and also a ton of fun embellishments.  My mom was taken aback and truly enjoys it.  Here are some photos to share:

June Designer of the Month

I'm excited to be the featured designer of the month this June at ndisb.com!  Be sure to check out the blog on the main page each Saturday to learn a little bit about me through a four-part interview.  And don't forget, my entire store is 40% off for the entire month!  You can also check out layout using my products in the gallery.

40% off sale starts today!!

Don't miss out!  All month long my entire store (including new releases) will be on sale!

Enter Design Contest...check!

For the last month I have been working away at a contest entry and today I have officially uploaded my designs to be judged.  The contest is hosted by JessicaSprague.com with Echo Park, called the Designer Discovery Contest.  The rules were fairly simple - design a mini kit using one of the 5 themes provided by Echo Park Paper Company.  Each entry must include 5 papers, a sticker sheet, and a border/tags sheet.  Along with a few other prizes, the winner will have their design printed and distributed worldwide!

I'm sure the competition will be stiff but it was a fun challenge to undertake and I went with the theme of "girls."  Parts of this came together easily for me but other parts were tough and I had to put them aside to re-assess later on.  The judging begins officially on June 2nd where the entries will be narrowed down to 25, put to public vote to get the top 10 and then the winner will be selected and announced on June 22nd!  I'm excited to see all the entries as one of the things I love most about design is that even if you give 10 people the same project, you will always see something new and creative.  Good luck to all the contestants!

Here is a preview of my entry to enjoy: