Catching Up

Well, it looks like I neglected this blog for way too long!! Obviously the SAS designer contest is over and three very deserving designers now have stores there. It's well worth heading over to SAS and checking it out!

It's been a busy time around here, and although a couple of days ago I posted a new mini kit called Autumn Days on my design blog, I actually haven't done much scrapping or designing. I am currently working on a another batch of old photos that I got from my Mom. Mostly they are of her and her siblings as they were growing up, but there are also some of my Dad's side and even some of my brother and sister and I when we were young. I am scanning them and trying to organize them on my computer. (The scanning is taking forever!!) Many are in a small, square snapshot format, so I am scanning at a very high DPI with the hopes that I will be able to capture enough detail to enlarge them for scrap book layouts. There are also some old Polaroids which have gotten very dark. Hopefully I can lighten them up a bit in PSP so that they will be usable too!

I still have hopes of creating one or two photo books before the holidays. I've more or less dropped out of the Lifebook series over at HeritageScrap. There are a couple of reasons. First, I am thinking a photo book will look much more polished if the pages are made from the same kit. It would have to be a fairly large kit, however, so the exact sames papers and elements would not have to be repeated over and over and over. I am thinking about putting together my own kit for this and doing that would take some time. Second, I am thinking more of making a photo book than a life story book. Practically speaking, photo books (or printing photos to add to an album) are somewhat expensive, and I would rather spend the money on layouts containing primarily photos rather than layouts containing primarily words.

Well, that's about it for now. I still have to run some errands before the kids get home from school!!

September Challenges and Contests and a New Blog

In the digital scrapbooking world, I mostly hang out at three sites (in alphabetical order): HeritageScrap, RAKScraps, and StoneAccentsStudio. So I just thought I would post a little update on what's going on at these sites.

Over at RAKScraps, the monthly Mega kit has just been released and is available free to members until the end of the month. At the time of the mega kit release, they post the color palette and theme so that members can make coordinating kits. Mine is called Grungy Graffiti Girl and is available on my new design blog - designsbyjmdt. Click the link to hop on over and check it out.

SAS is continuing with their birthday bash. Voting should be in for the second round of their designer contest tomorrow. The field will then be narrowed down to 19. In the end, the top 3 designers will get stores at SAS. Hop on over there to pick up all the free minis the perspective designers are creating. In addition to the birthday celebration, they are also running their monthly challenges. I am hoping to finish up a mini for the color challenge soon, so check back for that.

At HeritageScrap they are starting up their second Lifebook Challenge. Each week you scrap a different aspect of a person's life and at the end you have a book chronicling the subject from birth on. This is the first week and the project is the cover. I haven't started mine, but am thinking I will probably join in this time around - just have to decide on the subject of the Lifebook. Now that I am posting my kits elsewhere, I will probably be posting more of my layouts on this blog, so that would include my Lifebook layouts.

That's about it. Check back soon.

Kit for SAS Birthday Bash

Over at Stone Accents Studio they are celebrating their birthday -- I think it's their second birthday. They are having a lot of games and challenges and also a big contest for new designers. I did not join in the contest, but the ladies that have are posting some awesome mini-kits. You can go on over to the gallery at SAS and check them out and snag them for free.

In addition to the designer contest, they are having a Member's Mega Kit challenge. I decided to make a mini-kit for that. So far there aren't many contributions to the Member's Mega Kit, but I expect more people will contribute as the month goes on.



If you would like my mini-kit, download here. (Sorry - freebie retired)

Hope you like it and don't forget that you can hop over to SAS for lots more goodies!

Art Studio - A mini-kit Freebie

Here is another free kit -- this one was made for this month's RAK Member Mega Kit challenge. The theme this month was Art / Art supplies. I decided to do something a little different and make elements that you might find in an art gallery or art studio. There are 8 papers and 20 elements - all made in PSP. The preview is below. By the way, if you go to the RAK Scrapbook site, you can join for free. Each month they have a free Mega Kit. After the Mega Kit is released, they post the color palette and theme so that members (like me) can make and post additional coordinating kits.



In order to keep the zip file size down, I had to upload the kit in three parts: elements1, elements2, and papers. They can be downloaded with the links below. You can choose to download from 4shared or mediafire.


elements1 - 4shared
elements2 - 4shared
papers - 4 shared


OR


elements1 - mediafire
elements2 - mediafire
elements3 - mediafire

Sorry - freebie retired.

As always, please let me know if any of the links are broken. Also, I guess I have never mentioned this before, but if you create a layout with this kit or any of my other freebies, I would love to see what you've made. If you post to a gallery, feel free to email me a link.

Enjoy the kit!

A Day At the Beach -- Freebie Mini-Kit and QP

I noticed that over at RAKScraps their theme this month is beach/ocean breeze/etc, so I decided to participate in their Member MegaKit Challenge. At first I wasn't sure about the color palette, but I must say that it really grew on me!! The kit I made is pictured below.



Download from 4shared
OR Download from mediafire

Sorry - freebie retired


Whenever I make a kit, I always like to give it a "test drive" to check it out -- make sure the elements aren't too small, see how things go together, etc. And so here is the quickpage that I made with the kit. There is plenty of space for journaling and personalization.



Download from 4shared
OR Download from mediafire

Sorry - freebie retired.

Hope you like it!

PSPU - senior lesson

One of the things I did not mention in my last post was that I was taking lessons through the PSPU yahoo group. I started in the spring and made it through the freshman, sophomore, junior and half of senior lessons before I had to take a break because of the slide show. I just recently went back and finished up the senior lessons (still need to take the final), but I wanted to show you the layout I made for the last lesson. Most of the elements on the layout were "drawn" by me in psp except for some of the flowers which I tubed from a photo. As for the background, the sky/cloud background and the bricks are patterns included in psp. In addition, the textures I used on the grass, mulch and patio were also part of the program. The elements, including the staircase, window, flower box, trellis, birdbath/fountain, birdhouse, table and chairs, were the parts that I made. I was very happy with how it all came out and really wanted to share it on this blog. Between PSPU and some other tutorial sites, I have learned quite a few new techniques and am anxious to get working on a new kit.

Catching Up: Slide Show, Contest, etc

I can't believe how long it has been since my last post! It has been a very hectic time. Most of May I was consumed in putting together a slide show. Let me explain. For several years I have been the parent volunteer in charge of my children's elementary school yearbook (some years by myself and some years with partners). Since this was my youngest's last year at the school, it was also my last year for the yearbook. Well, the yearbook went to the publisher in April (it came out awesome by the way!!), and about that time I was asked about putting together a slide show for the end of year awards ceremony and also the end of year party. Since I have been taking digital photos of the kids the past five years for the yearbook, I had tons of pics. In order to have a lot of pictures of all the students in the class and still keep the length of slide show to about 10 minutes, I had to "scrap" the pictures to include multiple photos on each slide. This became a HUGE job!! I will probably shortly write a separate blog entry on how I did the slide show and the lessons learned since I had such a hard time finding information online. Fortunately, the slide show was finished on time and was a big hit with the students, parents and school staff. (Yeah!)

So after the slide show was finished in the beginning of June, it was on to fixing some computer problems. My older son's computer has a very serious virus and we still don't have it running, but we have managed to salvage what he needed from the hard drive. Then it was time to try to get the wireless network printer to work again. It stopped talking to the computers after a short power outage in mid-May. Luckily, I was able to get that working in spite of the lack of help from HP technical support - who informed me it's out of warranty! So with the printer back up and running there was partial success on the computer issues! I also needed to catch up on some genealogy correspondence and postings, and I really, really wanted to get back to scrapbooking - both layouts and design.

Earlier in May, before the slide show completely took over, I posted a layout at SAS for their heritage layout of the month contest. I was absolutely thrilled to find out I won the challenge and got a gift certificate to their online store!!! So, I think on that note, I'll end this rambling and post the layout below. The kit used is LilyPond - a free a SAS welcome kit. The photo is four generations of my Evans/Shaner/Miller line. The man holding the baby is my great-grandfather, Harry Evans. Standing next to him (probably on a box to make her taller) is his wife, Minnie Shaner Evans. Next to Minnie is her mother, Adeline Miller Shaner. Seated in the front is Adeline's step-mother, Elizabeth Fritz Miller. The baby is Harry Evans Jr. and the little girl is Cora Evans. They are the older siblings of my grandmother.