Nothing new. :(

I've been in Dallas visiting family this weekend, and my child got horrificly sick. His temp spiked up to 105 today!!! We immediately went to the E.R. where he was diagnosed with an ear infection, but they arent sure if its a virus that just hasn't shown symptoms yet. So he was given a ton of meds and some prescriptions, and hopefully we'll make it back to Oklahoma City on Monday. Ugh. This is soooooo not the weekend I had hoped for!

As long as I arrive back and can get all of my stuff ready, keep my blog bookmarked for some great stuff! Flower Scraps and Nibbles Skribbles are having a CT Blog Train and you'll get all sorts of freebies...I even made my very first QP (Quick Page!). The June BAK will be going live at Stuff to Scrap, and a new kit is coming up soon from Jenasis Design! A big week for all of us, yay!

Jenasis Design Memorial Day Sale!

Jenasis Design is having a HUGE SALE this weekend for Memorial Day!!

Check out this awesome sale HERE!!!

This Scrappers Got Talent Week 1 Challenge

So the competition has started! I was stalking the thread this morning so I could see my options and plan what I wanted to do. Soooo exciting!

(note, you cannot sign up anymore!)

So the Week 1 challenge was to create a layout with only 1 or 2 photographs, as well as lines of text, but no complete sentences or journaling paragraphs. The words "I Am" had to be somewhere on your layout, essentially talking about yourself. Ironically, I completed a similar layout to explain why I started digital scrapbooking for the "My Life" challenge a few weeks ago in a similar fashion, which can be seen HERE.

So here's what I came up with.

I freakin' LOVE how this turned out. Seriously. I'm proud of myself. I guess that's the point of this competition! I used a kit called Fresh Air Adventures by a designer named Scrapalicious Cereal, which is available at Stuff to Scrap. The kit is amazing, lots of wonderful colors in my favs (blues and greens) and I think I can use the kit quite often.

I decided to be ME for this layout. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a comedian. I love making people laugh, I'm the person people turn to when they are really upset and need to get a laugh to make themselves feel better. As you can tell by the photo (taken at Christmas when one of my sister's six-week-old 'goldendoodle' puppies was going to town on my hair like it was her long-lost chew toy), I enjoy even having a laugh at myself! Since I could only use one photo, it doesn't show the series of photos that I took at this time to chronicle the dog attacking my hair. Its pretty funny...and I have funny faces in each photo to go along with the crazed hysteria of the attack. :)

The rules of this competition stipulate that people must complete their layout by the Sunday of each week. The judges take Monday to judge and eliminate some, then Tuesday they tell everyone who made it through. My goal out of this was to just make it past week one. :) Seriously! I'm such a new digi scrapper that I considered making it past week one to be a great accomplishment! If I could make it to week 3....well, I don't know what I would do with myself. Someone would have to scrape me off the freakin' ceiling, that's for doggone sure. :)

Feeling Lucky

Colleen at Pretty Pixel Designs asked me to play with her kit called "Feeling Lucky" to showcase that it is NOT just for St. Patrick's Day. While lots of the elements focus around clovers and the general green-ness of St. Patty's, I managed to create a very nice layout without anything to do with that holiday. :)

I like how this turned out. My husband I were so proud of ourselves for planting this tree. The sucker is HUGE. Seriously, like 12 feet tall. We had to have our builder meet us at Home Depot because the tree was so big it wouldn't fit in our SUV. And then to dig the hole...oh.my.lord. Seriously, took forever. Both of us were exhausted after it...and we had two more (much smaller) trees to plant in the backyard!

We're still not sure if any of the trees are "taking" to their change of environment. Home Depot is about 30 minutes away, and we unfortunately picked a very windy day to go get the trees. So the trees actually suffered "wind burn" on the drive back to our house. We also realized after planting them that we didn't follow the explicit directions on how to plant them, so we're not sure if we supplied enough loose topsoil for the roots to dig into (the roots may have a hard time getting through the wonderful Oklahoma clay that is extremely tough!). So the trees are still looking slightly forelorn and droopy, but they haven't completely died. So there is still hope. :)

Stay tuned for two great kits from Pretty Pixel Designs coming up in the next few weeks! PPD will be participating in the May BAK through Stuff to Scrap, as well as releasing a brand new kit that has some wonderful colors!

Dusty Rose Garden #2

I did another layout with Jenasis Design's Dusty Rose Garden. Very pretty kit! Unfortunately, the fact that I have a boy makes it slightly more difficult to create wonderful layouts that aren't feminine, but I think I did okay. He won't die of shame with a little pink on a layout. :)

The frame featured here is one of the elements in the kit, how nice is that! I don't think I'm creative enough to think about doing multiple frames, so I'm glad Shelby created a frame for geeks like me to just shove on there. :) I did, however, create my own little tag using a circular piece of one of the papers included, as well as the small pearl-like frame that is included. The word "reading" is part of the alpha included, and the words "with gamma" are a font called LT Chickenhawk, which is one of my favs.

Check below to see another layout using this kit!

I have to post a link to this kit I just found, which is one Jenasis Design did (not sure when she released it). Its called "Enchanted Evening". How pretty is this??? Ahhh, makes me relax and think sleepy thoughts just looking at it. Totally have to grab this kit, I only have a thousand pictures of Cameron sleeping that I could use!! :) She also has a kit called "Posh Baby" which is considered a mega kit because of the number of elements included...it has FOUR alphas!!! Must.Grab.Soon. Gee. I'm such an enabler. :) hee hee

Dusty Rose Garden

A new kit is now available at Stuff to Scrap by Jenasis Design! Its called Dusty Rose Garden, and has beautiful soft-colored papers and embellishments. Really pretty kit! Its versatile too...while the theme might be around gardening and/or flowers, I've managed to create a wonderful layout that showcases NONE of that. :) Ahhh, the joy of kits like this, you can create ANYTHING you want!!



Here's my layout. The kit seriously has great embellishments, lots of frames for photos and extra bits that make a page so special. LOVE IT!!

I'll be working more with this kit in the next few days, so keep a lookout for more goodies. Also have tons of other things I'm going to hopefully finish this week. Lots of challenges on various websites I'm trying to finish, as well as the new competition at Stuff to Scrap called "This Scrapper's Got Talent" which starts the last week of the month. It is essentially like any reality competition you see on tv: we get a set of directions, complete them, and each week people are removed from the competition. Every week we go further we get goodies, and the grand prize winner apparently wins some good stuff. :) I'm just hoping to make it through week one!

Flower Scraps Release Time!

Flower Scraps and Nibbles Skribbles have collaborated to create a wonderful kit called Bubble Bath Buddies! Its adorable...I seriously have about one thousand photos I can use this kit on. You know, babies in tubs are too cute to NOT catch on camera. Except, of course, my child, who seems to only be enjoying bathtime if he's emptied his bowels. At the same time. And can I just tell you he's 19 months old...and he had NEVER done this before?!?!? Now its an every-time-in-the-tub kinda thing. Yep. Not my idea of a relaxing bath before bedtime. :-/

But I digress! Here's the kit!



And here are two layouts I made with it. Lots of great embellishments, as well as a full alpha. Great kit!

Check it out at Stuff to Scrap, and be sure to hit up both blogs for Flower Scraps and Nibbles Skribbles to see more!

Pretty Pixel Designs Mi Amore Kit

Colleen at Pretty Pixel Designs asked us to fiddle with a recent kit she created called Mi Amore. It was a kit she created during a designer competition at STS. It is now available in her store, so go pick it up! Its quite purty...very romantic. :)

Here is what I created. Yep, actually did a page without my son in it. How exciting! You just can't do a pink page for a little boy. I've already done purple with him, I simply couldn't do pink. :)

For once I decided NOT to journal. I wanted the simplicity of the picture and the elements to speak for themselves. Its my wedding day, do you guys need a play-by-play? Nope. :)

Flower Scraps release!

Flower Scraps is releasing a brand new kit called Choo Choo. It is soooo cute!

I didn't have any appropriate train pics to use, but obviously this kit is versatile because I made two wonderful layouts with the materials. There are alpha's in this kit, and they are awesome! I'm such a sucker for alphabets. :)

One thing I simply cannot do is leave a scrap page without journaling. I'm a journaling psycho. Seriously! I always feel a story needs to be told. Yes, my pages might be slightly busy, or seem off-center because of journaling, but I always want there to be a story that my son can look back on 20 years from now and completely understand the point of the picture. So while this might not look as pretty as it would without the journaling, its MINE and I like it. :)

Finally on to a new Jessica Sprague class!

Surprisingly, I talked my wonderful husband into letting me purchase the next Jessica Sprague class, called "Now We're Rockin". Of course, I think I purchased it two weeks ago and today was the first time I could actually sit down to do a lesson! The amount of goodies I had to download for this class took forever...seriously, I think it was 5MB of templates, papers, embellishments and whatnot. Then there were other freebies we got to grab along the way as well, including some downloads for a quickbook that is our "bonus lesson"...and I haven't even downloaded it yet, can't even think about that right now. My brain is on PSE overload!

So now that I'm apparently "rockin" in Photoshop, the tasks are getting more intricate and involved. We learned how to erase today. WOOHOO! I thought that was funny. But the big thing we learned, which honestly if you asked me to replicate without directions, I so could NOT do it, was how to take a photo in sepia tone, then pull color from the original photograph. See below to see what I'm talking about, I pulled the color of the flowers behind Cameron. Pretty cool...takes for.ev.er. Not kidding.

So this layout pretty much took me all day. I kept getting interrupted. Damn husband and son for trying to spend time with me on Mother's Day! Sheesh. :) So I got interrupted right as I was trying to get the major template positioned. Bsically we were given a template with the ripped paper, and we were supposed to position it slightly higher than what I did. But because Cameron woke up from his nap and we needed to go to the store, I sorta just stopped. And then about 30 steps later, I realized WHY it needed to be higher...and I couldn't go back and redo the whole damn thing again.

In any case, I've learned how to flip pictures and brushes, install brushes, work with sepia tone, finally remembered again how to fiddle with shadows, and various other things. I'm seriously exhausted after this lesson. :)

Two layouts for Challenges

Another website I peruse often is called Divine Digital. This month they started a monthly challenge where you have to complete 10 out of 12 challenges to win some freebies. All I read was "free" and I started to do the challenges. I'm all about some free loot!



This first challenge is called "Use It Or Lose It". You download a mini kit, and you have to use everything in the kit. You can add things that you already have, but you MUST use everything in the kit. I admit, this is not my style. Its too romantic and floral...I don't mind flowers, but I'm more of the type that likes flower buds, not leaves and baby's breath and all that mumbo jumbo. Just give me the flower. I like tulips, they are easy. :)


In any case, I'm proud of myself for going outside my comfort level to tackle this challenge. I thought the picture of Jason with Cameron was appropriate, because Jason is looking at our son with unconditional love and support in his eyes, while Cameron is looking at me with bright-eyed enthusiasm and innocence. Love this picture!!

The only thing I added was the alphabet (title), and that was from a Team Divine Mega Kit called Bless Our Nest. Seriously a HUGE kit, with like 5 alphas and countless embellishments and papers. I bought it on sale the other day for 3 bucks!!! Totally worth it! Ironically, I just tried to find it on the DD website so I could link it here...and it is miraculously gone. I don't know if they've deleted it, or if its being revamped...who knows. If I see it again, I'll post it on here. Cuz its an awesome kit!


This next layout was for a "Font Challenge". They choose the font, you have to use it. Some fonts are very big and bold, which may be used for titles and dates. This font was more flowy, so I chose to use it in journaling. Its slightly hard to read, but its fine when its on your computer screen in PSE.

Everything from this kit came from Bless This Nest. Great kit. Seriously.

So I posted this pic on Divine Digital...and I got a very long email from someone else on the forums who essentially critiqued my layout and told me what to do differently. WTH?!?! I was very taken aback by this! I have never done that to another crafter. While I may not agree with what someone does, it is there perogative and their page! If someone ASKS for my opinion, I'm likely to give it to them, but in a constructive criticism way. I never say "Wow, that sucks. You really shouldn't have done it that way."

I will say this woman was very clear in stating she was not a designer, she just felt that the journaling was hard to read and that I should change my page to put the font as the title, then a different font as the journaling (in order to still qualify for the challenge, I have to use the font somewhere). I think she felt odd emailing me about it, and she said she just felt that I deserve to know a way I could make my layout better and more appealing to an audience.

Is it wrong of me to feel slightly angry about this? I really don't know. I haven't responded to her...I've just never had anything happen to me like this before. Weird.

May font Challenge at STS

How cute did this turn out?? Seriously, I'm totally tooting my own horn here. I just {heart} it! I can't believe how "in" to colors I've been these past few weeks. But I love how bright and cheerful this page is. While the kit I used may not have been Birthday centered, it shows that you can make ANYTHING. :)




The title is actually made using a font, which was for the May font challenge over at Stuff to Scrap. It is appropriately called "Rebekah's Birthday", as STS is celebrating their birthday in May. I love this font because it can be used as a regular font, or as a title. The journaling font is from Creating Keepsakes, also a freebie, and is Ali Edward's handwriting font. The kit I used is Bliss of Both by Jenasis Design.



I really have nothing else to post. :( This week has been chaotic so far, as I've been really busy, started a new workout program that is completely whipping my butt (literally and figuratively!), and my son has been less than thrilled with our hectic schedule. He has been downright awful at times, even surprising his physical therapist with his tantrums today (then he wouldn't let her go, wouldn't come to me...she HAD to hold him. He screamed when she got there, screamed during the session, then screamed because she left. Gotta love toddlers!). So I'm hopeful both of us get a good nights rest tonight, because we have another crazy busy day tomorrow!

I'm hoping to have a lot of time to scrap this weekend, and a new release is coming up on Monday for Flower Scraps! Be sure to stick around for that... :)

I was a Night Owl last night...

Which was perfect for the MLAS (My Life And Scrap) Speed Scrap Night Owl challenge, which was at midnight EST.

A speed scrap consists of a specific time limit with set directions. Jac, our hostess, was "easy", as she put it, and wasn't too concerned about the directions. So I may have deviated from her specifications slightly, but not too much. Of course, twice I read the directions incorrectly and basically had to completely redo my layout. Who would have thought that I could somehow read the word "right" and interpret it as "left"? I can't even blame dyslexia on that one...that's just plain stupidity right there!

Anyway, I used the kit Summer Garden by Flower Scraps. I just love these colors!! So cheerful. I have to admit I forgot to put a date on it, so I'll have to edit it and resave to ensure I have that to remember. I like this kit because it came with not one but TWO alphabets to match. I'm seriously matchy-matchy that way! I got into a discussion with Colleen, who is Pretty Pixel Designs, about alphabets recently. She explained how difficult they were to create, which makes a lot of sense. So I have made it my goal this week to download some more cool fonts that I can use instead of relying on alphabets. I downloaded a couple of free journaling fonts off Creating Keepsakes today, but I need more block-y style fonts that can be used for titles. So that is my goal.

I grabbed a few of the freebies for the STS blog train yesterday, did you? Check out two of my designers, Pretty Pixel Designs and Flower Scraps for their submissions. Great colors this time! I've also grabbed the Jenasis Design freebie she created for the STS May Color Challenge, which is also free. Ahhh, freebies. Gotta love 'em!

Lots of new things coming out this month, keep an eye out! I'm going to be busy creating!! :)

May BAK by Pretty Pixel Designs

At Stuff to Scrap, designers can participate in a "Build A Kit" design, thus allowing customers to purchase multiple small kits to create a mega kit with a specific theme. In the post below this post, you'll see what Jenasis Design chose to create for the theme. Here is what Pretty Pixel Designs came up with!

Here's my layout. I like that I could show how this kit can be used for things other than barbequing. The colors are fantastic, very vivid and red!

You can purchase the kit HERE, and be sure to check out Colleen's website at Pretty Pixel Designs for more info!

May BAK by Jenasis Design

At Stuff to Scrap, designers can participate in a "Build A Kit" train, where a theme is covered and the designers choose what they want to do. Here is the May BAK by Jenasis Design, as well as two layouts I made with it. Very cute kit!!

You can purchase the kit HERE for only $1.99!!! It has 6 papers and 12 elements!

My layouts!

Jenasis Design has also created a QP kit (quick page kit, where all you do is insert a picture, add some journaling and/or a title, and you're done!) which is also available on Stuff to Scrap. You can purchase it HERE and it is only $1.99 for four quick pages.