Archive for June, 2009

I decided to celebrating the people I love who are serving the wonderful USA with a little gift….a unique photo profile for Facebook.

This first one is for my BIL Eric, who is a police detective.  The photo was taken at my in-laws in the woods where my dh likes to shoot at targets with my BIL and FIL (Army Veteran.) I love the mix of Army green grunge and splash of patriotic glitter. It has a little bling, but it still very manly!

Credits:
Photos (BIL & enhanced clouds): Me
Photoshop Brushes: Obsidian Dawn
Olive Stars/Brad/Alpha1: Christina Renee
Olive Splatter: CShep
Star Cluster: Kasia Designs
Red Butterfly Cluster/Paper Bit: Jofia Devoe
Tin Frame: Katie Pertiet
Star Pin: PKnox
Alpha 2: New Life Dreams

This next one is for my Cousin Dave who is a career Navy man. He is celebrating the fourth in Singapore with his lovely wife Dawn, gotta love it! He may have preferred a more manly design too, but I couldn’t help giving it a fun ocean theme. I told him it could be his wife’s badge if it was too girly!

Credits:
I made the frame w/ a brush from Obsidian Dawn and an Atomic Cupcake action.
Paper: Cathy Ann
Wreath/Sailboat/Wheel: Bisontine
Bow/flowers/Pollen/Water: Jofia Devoe
Flowers/Gemdrops/Lantern: Holly Designs
Tag: SuzyQ Scraps
Font: MKDesigns
Microferk: Word Art
Alpha2: Christina Renee
Staple: AHeimann
Water2: NLD

I’ve got “digi” on the brain and so naturally I turned to my computer stash to make my husband’s Father’s Day card. I am hoping to get my fingers a little dirty with some paints and distress inks soon though!

He really liked all three cards we made him. I may just have to photograph the other two as well! Danielle kind out-did me on bolstering Neal’s ego, she wrote that she liked his “musls” (translate muscles) and lifting “wayts” (weights) with him.

My husband is a man of many talents, and I wanted him to know that I appreciate everything he does for us girls and our house!

Product Credits:

Castle/grass/ladder/frame/orange wood heart/stacked boxes-New Life Dreams (NLD), heart 1/heart2/heart3-On designs, paper-Holly Designs, stitching-Christina Renee, tiny heart-MK Designs, alpha1-JBullock, alpha2 Tracy Ann (TADA)

Danielle just finished her first year of dance. She loved being on stage but doesn’t want to do it anymore because she tired of the weekly classes. She is in love with the idea of doing cheerleading. Well, she certainly has the personality for it as is obvious in these photos. She came up with all the poses herself. She is signed up for cheerleading for next year and is very excited about camp this summer. I’ll miss dance and her teachers Miss Patty and Miss Becky. It is such a nice family friendly atmosphere at Miss Patty’s in Sapulpa, I’d highly recommend her to anyone.

This layout was also inspired by Tracy Ann’s paper which I got in a duo pack at 50% off. I decided to play off of the blue sky and color of the cattails. Danielle sitting in the swing was my first “extraction” in a layout. I used the “quick selection” tool and I have to say it worked really great.

By the way, I’ll share a tip I learned in a forum a while back. I tried it with these layouts and it worked like a charm. Keeping track of products used is very tedious, but necessary if you are going to blog your work. I’ve been putting off blogging because I’ve been so busy trying to start my Scrap for Hire business and didn’t want to go back through and figure out whose products I used. So, this time I left the art I used open until I was done and then went to “File Info” in Photoshop to record it all when I was happy with my layout. After I blogged Raeleigh’s layout I realized a really great added benefit….when I uploaded the photo the product names came with the photo into WordPress and I just copied and pasted them into the post!

Product Credits:

Paper-Tracy Ann’s Digital Art (TADA), Ribbon-Holly Designs, Cloud1-Bisontine, Cloud2-New Life Dreams (NLD), Cloud3-NLD, Cattails-NLD, Swoosh-NLD, Angel-NLD, Butterfly-NLD, Frame-Christina Renee, Alpha1-TADA

Here is a fun layout of Raeleigh. The photo was taken on a warm day this past January. I shared it on the blog that week, but here it is again in a digital scrapbook layout.

I was inspired to work on it when I bought the paper on sale at Tracy Ann’s store. She is having a really great $1 sale because she is trying to clear old stuff off her server. Since I have not been focused on “digital” scrapbooking long I really benefit from these sales because it is all “new” to me!

I had Raeleigh’s page almost done and was looking through Bridge in slideshow mode for some bling to finish it off. She was sitting in my lap and saw the star balls and asked me to put them on there. I’d have to say for a three year old she has great taste!

Product Credits:

Heart-New Life Designs (NLD), Paper-Tracy Ann’s Digital Art (TADA), Bling-Jofia Designs, Ribbon-Kasia Designs, swirl-TADA, bird-NLD, birdhouse-Lotta Designs, both hanging stars-Bisontine, blue heart-Kasia Designs

This is a slide, for my latest video template, is a picture (from the local newspaper) of our family touring Holland in the early ’70’s. I used the bird graphic from Tracy Ann’s Graphics because there are other photos of me from that day standing among pigeons looking at the miniature city exhibit.

Journal strips are something I have not purchased yet because they seem too easy to make.  The other night I needed some and didn’t want to pay $14 to buy the ones I sourced with “Scrap For Hire” licensing. I polled a message board in search of someone else’s product with cheaper professional fees. But, I didn’t get a reply in time so I made my own.

First I painted my strips with an oblong brush set at 180 pixels. I set the brush up to have a hard edge and checked “shape dynamics” so it would start small and get bigger as I pressed harder. Next I clipped a plain aged looking paper to the brush strokes. I merged the layers and then applied Atomic Cupcake’s Pristine Chipboard action. WaLa, cute journal strips with a photo wrap layered on top! This mock up was done after the fact to show the stages. With this technique the shapes will differ because you are freehand “painting” the shape which is why my final chipboard strips are shaped differently.

Just for fun I did one more quick sample with tonight’s strokes and the “sketch and paint” action from Atomic Cupcake.

Later I went back to my ISO post (In Search Of) and there were some great options that were less than the $14 option I sourced. The hand doodled ones are especially cute, and I think the ones with the text paths might be a time saver? I’ll probably add some of these to my wish-list:

• http://www.sweetshoppedesigns.com/sweetshoppe/product.php?productid=18288&cat=0&page=2
• http://www.elementalscraps.com/shoppe/product.php?productid=19913&cat=0&page=1
• http://www.oscraps.com/shop/product.php?productid=22414&cat=0&page=5
• http://www.sweetshoppedesigns.com/sweetshoppe/product.php?productid=18406&cat=0&page=1

Products Used In The Layout:

Artists include Christina Renee (frame, flower, paper), Tracy Ann (bird and paper overlay), Bisontine (paper), Lotta Designs (greenery), New Life Dreams (greenery), Katie Pertiet (ribbon) and Atomic Cupcake for creating the journal strip.