Tiddly Dog Walking

Post Script: A BIG THANK YOU to Judi M. aka. Crafts aka. Watercolour Wizard, this card was noted on the Splitcoaststampers: FAVORITES for the week ending June 19, 2011. Wow, other then regular "reply"s, I have never been mentioned on Splitcoaststampers. *Blush*

Today's Tiddly Tuesday Challenge is the perfect opportunity to get me out of my comfort zone and colour an actual scene. Tiddly Challenge #54- Simplify: create a single layer Tiddly card. Don't forget to check out the DT's amazing single layered cards and play along, you don't need a lot of supplies for today's challenge. Don't be intimidated, you just colour once and then you have a versatile card that can be quickly mass produced for any occasion.

I perused the awesome Tiddly Store for the perfect image to go with my doodled "Zoo" background. Yes it was a Zoo scene originally. I scanned my Zoo, then used PS to erase the animals and Zoo letters. Christy's Walk the Dogs was just the right image for my new little park setting and to fill out the right side, I also added Tree Hugger, I ADORED the shape of the tree. This card was made from Xpress It paper and coloured with Copics and watercolour pencils. Submitted for the In the Frame - One Layer card challenge at the Less is More Challenge Blog.

For anyone who's interested in learning how to combine digital images to a background, here is a great tutorial by Make It Crafty.

Okay so now that you've spent all this time on one CAS card, here is a kewl trick - SCAN IT. Now you have a ready made image that you can reproduce or drop into a digital card, or just print like it's an uncoloured digi and set it into your layered card and away you go. Colour once and enjoy many times.

This "completely digital" layout used a modified card sketch from Our Vintage Affair. All the digital items are from various Shabby Princess kits, except the brown cardstock paper from Peppermintcreative - Momitude kit, the stitches by Christine Smith Digital and the blank dog tag from The Elemental Pixie.


A special thank you to Mutnik on Splitcoaststampers for emailing me her tip to colour the background lightly with watercolour pencils then go over it with a lightly moisten Q-tip. I modified this and used a SU colour blender. X-press It! paper will lift and pill if too wet so quick and light blending is best.

Colored Monster Party N Boots

"Knock-Knock. Who can it be? Won't you come in to my Monster Partyyyyyy? Open the door and let's hear you roar - ROAR!" Chorus - Monster Party by Splash'N Boots.

I played along with the Party In Color Challenge over at Dustin Pike's blog. The task was to incorporate 2 of the colors from Dustin's blog header and a Doodle Dragon image in a party themed craft . I chose Dudley green and a darker orange found in the paint drippings above the header. I merged "PresentMonsterB" and "BalloonMonsterB" with We're All Goin' to a Monster Party! The banner on the bottom of the page is "Open the door and let's hear you roar!"


Here's the back story: My four year old son adores the singing ensemble Splash'N Boots. His most favorite of all their tunes is "Monster Party". How excited was I to find a Party Monster set included in the new Blogiversary 2 digital release by Doodle Dragon Studio's. Just perfect to immortalize the Splash'N Boots concert from March. This release by the way was over 200 images for only $20 - WOW!


I used artistic license and bent the rules slightly for this challenge. Technically I didn't make a Birthday themed craft, but the Splash'N Boots concerts are certainly a party for my little guy. As well I may have gone brighter with my 2 blog banner color choices, particularly the orange. Hopefully that will not disqualify me. It was a fun challenge none the less and the largest image I have colored with Copics, so it was great practice. As well it was the first time I ever merged digi's. Photoshop is so much fun!

This last Splash'N Boots show in March, my son won a copy of their new CD for dancing so excitedly during their new single "For the Love of Dance". He now thinks their new song was written specifically for him. The funniest part of his dancing is that he try's to keep his pants up at the same time, but grabs his pants at the thighs. So he basically pulls his pant up to be floods and jumps up and down excitedly mosh pit style. It puts me in stitches every time, it is so funny!

DP: Echo Park - "Little Boy" DP package
Ink: Copics
Accessories: dark blue heart grommets.

I needed an 8 x 10 photo to go above my new ledge shelf now that my Halloween montage has been stored away for next year. I new I wanted to use my kids Christmas card photo from last year so went digging around my digital scrapbook files for some fun shabby chic images.

I found this wonderful freebie kit by Courtney's Digi-Scrappin' called

Vintage Boy. Her one sample page has a little boy near the same age as my guy and they have the same name. It was meant to be that I download this kit. Check out the vintage hinges, too cute! She has some fabulous Quick Pages too, I downloaded more then a few.

Free Digital Scrapbooking Credits & Links:

Background paper: Shabby Princess.com - Dinner Party

Everything else (except fonts): Courtney's Digi-Scrappin' - Vintage Boy Freebie Kit

The fonts were in my CS2 menu.

Ba Humbug - Cards!

I have not been in the Christmas spirit this season. To makes matter worse, every time I tried to do something for this years X-Mas card, I hit a major roadblock.

After much hard ship I gave up and didn't revisit it until last night. Ditching my original plans, I went online and grabbed a pre-made photo-card template from Shutterfly.com.

You would think that printing your own photo cards would be cost effective - NOPE! My brand new ink cartridge is more then 3/4 gone, at $60 bucks a pop for a replacement cartridge, not cheap, not to mention the matte photo-paper which I already had on hand.

Oh well. Here it is, this beautiful template was created by Jen Wilson . Much nicer then what I have ended up making.

To make matters worse, when I dropped my cards off at the post office this morning, I checked and in order for the USA bound cards to make it to their destinations before Christmas Day, they needed to get into the mail YESTERDAY. Can you Say BA HUMBUG!

Oh and another kicker, posting this card was a hassle too. For some reason my newly installed Photoshop CS4 wouldn't allow me to save to web, even though I verified that the file was 32bits/channel and not 8 or 16. Had to email it to my hubby because his save to web feature wasn't greyed out. Apparently changing it to 8bits/channel was the solution - the exact opposite of what it said to do online.

Now I am off to make snowman soup packages for my daughters Kindergarten class, wonder what problems I will run into there.

Hope your Holiday preparations are going more smoothly then mine.

Fall Digi

Here is my submission for the layout challenge on ESS Enchanted Studio Scraps: November Build A Fairy Treehouse challenge #1 with Robyn Pali Designs and Jewelscraps. I really loved this layout and had started downloading portions of The Blog Train Blog's - October 2009 kit - Thankful, so thought it would make a perfect autumn leaves page.

Details:
Blog Train Blog - Thankful Kit Oct. 2009:
Designers used:
Captivated Visions Digital Designs: stitched circle, paper 04 (burlap),
Delicious Scraps: paper 2 (background)
JW-DigiScraps: tree,
Robyn Pali Designs: stitched leaf,
Scrappin' Page Designs: maple leaf,
Foxy Designs: leaf 1 & 2
Kevin and Amanda Fonts: digsmyheart, http://www.kevinandamanda.com/fonts/
Free Digital Scrapbooking: Hot Brass Alphabet (title)

DGC051 Wiggly Concert

Today's Digital Scrapbooking Challenge DGC05 on Splitcoasstamper's was use the clone tool to remove something from a photo and then make a scrap page with that altered photo. I cheated slightly, I had already made this page on the weekend, but hadn't flattened it because I was unhappy with a few of the items. I retouched the items, as well as used the Marquee tool tricks my hubby showed me to hide the strings in and through some of the green frames. I am loving the Marquee Tool.

I also experimented with the Liquify Tool around the half circle striped paper.

As you can see from the original photo there are heads of people in front of us that extended just above the stage line.
I did use the Stamp Tool in Photoshop, but also used the Marquee Tool to cut out larger section of the photo such as the draping on the bottom of the stage and saved as new layer so that I could cover up section while repeating the pattern of the drape.

Details:
Wiggles Concert Brochure: Go Banana & Wiggles Logo
Fab D*zines - Basically kit: blue diamond paper, prongs
Free Digital Scrapbooking: Building Block Frame Set,
Kevin and Amanda Fonts: hisnameishoney
Ella Hippy Hoppy - IBDH Desperate Housewives:strings

My First Ribbon Knot

I made my very first every ribbon knot in Photoshop, with the help Stacy Carlson's Gotta Pixel tutorial found here. I first tried making a striped knot with very little success. The stripes seemed to throw off the realistic look of the knot.

As well a special thanks to my hubby for showing me how to use the Marquee tool in order to hide sections of layers under other layers such as the paper clip through the ribbon or the scissors blades under the cardstock.


The one thing that concerns me about the digital stamping pages I have made is that I don't know if I am sizing the embellishments correctly. My fear is that once they are printed the scale will be off. I won't know until I print them.

Details:

Layout borrowed from SU Stamping Technique booklet.

• Kevin and Amanda Fonts: hisnameishoney
• Shabby Princess: Urban Kiwi - paperclip
  
• Michelle Underwood's Family Fun kit: distressed crazy sripes, distressed dots, brad1, 3, 5, & 6, ribbons dot 4 (altered to knot), folderback 3
• Free Digital Scrapbooking: ms absolutely autumn - orange wavy ribbon (altered to red), alphabet Get Stamped
  
• Scrapbook Presentations.com: scissors 01 & 05
  

Sweet Kid

I have seen many multi layer pages and wanted to give it a try. Still working on it, but I think I am improving.

As part of the online digital scrapbooking pool, you are obligated to give credit to the designer or distributor of the items used to create your page. I certainly hope I haven't forgotten anyone in the details. I'm nervous the Digital Scrapbooking Police will come and arrest me.

Details:
Free Digital Scrapbooking: Absolutely Autumn Mini kit - orange wavy ribbon, Beautiful Baby title, frame circle,
Kevin and Amanda Fonts: hisnameishoney
Aquarius Designs: SD Raved - SDRD paper #10, SDRD embelisment #2
Shabby Princess: Promise - papers stripes, swirlie stamp
Sharia Braxton: Sweetiepie kit - paper2
Ziggle Designs & Elephant and Lemonade: aliceBB2 - flower bracket frame

First Digital Layout

Literally last night - I decided I need to give digital scrapbooking a whirl. I am WAY behind in my kids books and always seem to be out of tape, ink or one embellishment or another.

I have created digital greeting cards before as well as digital baby announcements using an older purchased greeting card software, but have never tried to make a digital scrapbook page.

So I jumped on Google this morning and found ShabbyPrincess.com. Everything I needed to get started was right there, including some awesome video tutorials such as working with PhotoShop. I just watched one video, it was enough for me to get going. I already knew how to resize, rotate and flip images as well as adding text and such, but I didn't know about all of the saving options. Very helpful.

All in all I am very pleased. I can't wait to do some more. If any of you have any suggestions as to some good sites for Digital Scrapbooking, please let me know, I'd appreciate it.

Ornamental Card & Scrap-pages

I first thought of making Christmas ornaments with my large circle punch last Christmas season, but never saw it to fruition. I found some lovely striped Christmas paper last month that just begged to be made into ornaments, so the idea was born again. Originally it was just suppose to be for a card, but when I was shading in all of the circles to give them depth, I loved them so much that I decided they would make a great scrapbook layout and although I try to make my kids pages look different from one another, these darling ornaments made it into both of their scrapbooks over the weekend.



Last night I worked on a card using an ornament that I embellished with Versamark and copper Ep. I am not sure that I LOVE the Ep, it didn't turn out as I had envisioned, but it an interesting look, but I think it takes away from the 3D effect.



Details:
various Sandylion Dp, punch with a large Megapunch, edges antiqued with bronze pigment, and adorned with copper paper cut onrnament tops. I also used the antique feature in iPhoto before printing my photos.

Scrapbook Alert

I have no cards to post this evening, but that does not mean I haven't been up to my elbows in ink and paper. I did 5 scrapbook pages as well another from late last week and that's not counting one more page that is on my desk waiting for some journaling. I've been busy!

The layouts of the snow pages in pink and in blue were cased from SplitCoastStampers, however I made my own pink paper.

Pink page: stamped in white color box pigment using various Hero Art Stamps, Cuttlebug snowflakes, dollar store sticker letters. I like the affect of making my own patterned paper, I've never done that with a scrapbook page before. Original here.

Blue page: Figgy Pudding Dp - Silent Night, Sandylion Dp - Let It Snow, Hero Art Stamps, Cuttlebug snowflakes, white ep, corner punch, traced dollar store letters. Original here.

Christmas page: My Mind's Eye Dp, Sandylion DP - O Christmas Tree / Florentine Ribbons, Sentiment Sandylion - Season's Greetings, Quick Kutz - flourish, Distress Ink

I love this Harvest layout , it is simple, but very effective, I borrowed the layout from Scrap Maps.

Harvest page: My Mind's Eye Dp, Scenic Route Dp, Title by Bo Bunny Press - Pickin' Pumpkins, Michaels Dollar stamp, Distress Ink, bronze brads.

These last two pages are photos from the same day. I was planning on doing a double page layout, but when I put the pony photos onto the brown gingham paper from My Mind's Eye, it didn't work because of the orange ribbons I used. I kept going back to the polka dot paper also by My Mind's Eye which is almost identical to the hat my daughter was wearing, hence no more double page.

Harvest page: Bo Bunny Press embelishments - Pickin' Pumpkins, My Mind's Eye Dp, coorinating ribbons from the kid's nana.

Pony page: originally the journaled tag was going to go on the upper left hand corner and the Title where the tag is now. I glued all the photo's into place then started moving things around and liked the journal on the bottom better, but now had a big blank space in the upper left hand corner so I borrowed the layered bubble idea from my son's swimming page. I like the effect of writing around some of the bubbles, although in this case I guess they would be polka dots, not bubbles.

Hey, I think that's all of them "phew". Have a great day!

Birthday Blitz

Hurray all my birthday pages are caught up until this October. The DP is all from Michael's and I think the flames on the Hot Wheels page was Harley Davidson. The Wiggles and Hotwheel's embellishments were cut out from either the party invitations or other party supplies.

It's Halloween Winnie the Pooh

As I posted earlier, I am desperately trying to catch up on my kids scrapbooks, so I may not be posting many cards for a while.

I actually accomplished 2 pages in one night which is a miracle for me. It usually takes me all night for just one page. I know I have read that others knock off a page in an hour, not so for me. Maybe I over think it, don't know.

I was 3 Halloween pages behind. One page for 2006 and 2 for 2007. My daughters 2006 page I had all planned out in my head before starting, it was inspired by a page I saw on Penny Black found here.


However, it was an interesting challenge to use the same paper for my son's 2007 page, trying to make the two pages look completely different. I like both pages, but I think my son's turned out better. Funny how no pre-planning yielded a better result.


DP - Sanylion (Kelly Panacci): Halloween Stripes, Halloween Circles, Orange Mini Dots
Reminisce: Pumpkins for Sale and Spiders Web
SU: Dots & Dashes, purple cardstock

Stickers: Sandylion

Water Baby

Alright so I haven't been so good about making cards lately, but with good reason. I am unbelievably behind in doing my kids scrapbooks. I made a run to the local scrapbook store and purchased a bunch of paper to make myself get caught up. This page was inspired by a card challenge for July 18th on TayloredExpression.

When I saw the card sample I thought it look liked water bubbles and thought I would attempt to make a card some time in the future. However, when I sat down to do my son's swimming page I remembered Taylor's card challenge.

All the paper is Studio Basics 101 - Creative Imaginations which oddly enough doesn't say the names of each print.

Holly Jolly

My sister mentioned her frustration that she can make beautiful scrapbook pages while at a scrapping party, but finds it hard to come up with ideas when she is alone at home. Here is a Holly Jolly 2007 page that I made for her. I gave her the option of picture sizes to play with on the top left hand side.