Archive for the ‘Digital Scrapbook Layouts’ Category

Recherché by KH Designs finally opened today! And, in case you were planning on some holiday weekend shopping…..all the brand new products are 30% off through July 5th! Cute banner, huh?! I love the new logo!

Today I will share my layout for the kit I named! Bohemian Blush. I really enjoy giving a little input on a new kit! Isn’t it fun?!

My layout is about potty training! The kit matched the PJ’s my daughter is wearing, aren’t they adorable? I’m so sad she will be outgrowing them soon. She was a little late in the second stage of potty training. We finally remembered the Dora playset we’d bought a piece at a time for our oldest. So, we recycled it and used it as incentive again. It worked like a charm. I gave her little pieces, promising the big house when she finally went number two. Her smile in these photos says it all. It was a big day. We even made up a song!

Other Credits: Balloon and swirl are MK Designs. Template is Studio Nee.

This is a first for me! A page created completely for free thanks to a chat and a challenge! Thanks to Scrappin with Liz for the template, part of her “Heart Templates IV” collection. And, to Lauren Grier Designs for the “More Than Stars” kit!

So, if you are new to digital scrapbooking, here’s a hint….you get free goodies in chats!

Other Credits: Titles were made with Atomic Cupcake actions and the mask is by New Life Dreams.

Kiki is bringing something fresh and new to digi-land. I can’t wait to share it with you. But, for now all I can say is she is looking for some new talent! Please think about applying for her CT, she is great to work with!

There is something about making a Dandelion necklace in Spring that brings back magical childhood memories. I remember playing in the woods at our summer cabin. (We lived the rest of the year in the Middle East because my dad was in the Oil Business.) And we would do things like fold notes up into tiny bundles and hide them in the knot of a tree. I remember actually believing a tiny little person might find the note.

When I watch my kids play I hope they are building lots of happy memories. This day I tried to show my four year old how to make a Dandelion necklace. She liked picking the flowers, but she was a little too impatient to learn how. I was happy to get her to lay down in the flower bed for this photo. I only wish I’d done it the week before when it was covered with little purple flowers!

To create the photo I played with all kinds of artistic filters and blending options. The middle of the photo was selected with a messy painterly mask and then I applied the woodcut filter. Then another copy of the photo on the layer behind has a couple of different filters applied. Next I clipped it to an aged piece of paper and also used that paper as an overlay.

I really wanted the necklace to pop, so I painted it back in from the original photo, duplicated that layer and applied another art filter. Then, I applied a shadow to the necklace layer. Dawn Inskip’s child-like doodles were the perfect finishing touch, they really helped capture the magic of playing outside in spring time!

Here is the original photo of my daughter Raeleigh:

Credits: Several kits from Dawn Inskip, Bokeh paper from MK Designs,  Sunburst Overlay from Spinky Dinky Scraps, Scallop frame from MMullens, glitter style from Flergs, Ribbons by Amanda Heimann

Well, I missed getting photos in the Daffodils this year. But, I did get some quick snapshots with the Azealias. It was kind of impromptu. My sister called to see if we wanted to have a playdate while she watched my other sister’s kids. Danielle had worn this pink wig to school for “hat day” and I wanted a photo of her in it. So, I grabbed my camera as we headed out the door. Good thing, because I think the Azealias will be almost gone by next weekend!

This kit was a freebie collaboration that a slew of artists put together for Digi Shop Talk in honor of (inter)National Scrapbook Day. If you are a member at Digi Shop Talk and have at least 5 posts in the forum you can upload a layout using the kit by midnight tonight for a chance to win a fantastic prize. A lifetime membership to the forum where you will get a free kit each month.

The layout also uses a template by Bella Gypsy that I found on sale yesterday, and an AWESOME glitter gel style by Flergs. I love to use styles and actions on fonts because it is so much easier than grabbing one Alpha at a time to build your title!

Wow, I’ve been a little busy. I’ve been building a blog and two websites with Joomla! I won’t be done with both of them until the end of April. But hopefully I’ll still have time to exercise a little creativity.

Kiki Halbert came out with a pack of papers in lovely spring colors. Creating this layout from last Easter made me even more excited that it is spring! Catch Kiki’s “Olivia” on sale through today at Scrapbook-Elements.

This week’s journal prompt at the Art Journal Caravan is “Collection.” I was working on this layout anyway and it struck me that bubbles are a collection. They give kids a lot of joy just like our collections. But they are too fragile to touch just like all of my late grandmother’s carnival glass. And, I thought of other things we can “collect” to make us feel good or bad. Like compliments. You can go chasing after compliments because your self esteem needs them but then that good feeling doesn’t last…just like a bubble. My best source of confidence comes from God, and I give him credit for every ounce of creativity!

Credits:
Frame is Paislee Press all else is Kiki Halbert. Papers from new kit Olivia. Tab and filmstrip are LeGrunge. Butterfly is from Neopolitan Sundae. All other elements are from Cool Nights Blue Skies. The alpha was created with Atomic Cupcake’s Pristine Chipboard.

I am not the slightest bit musically inclined. I wish I was. Music can get my creative juices flowing, not really that it gives me ideas, more that it just puts me in the right frame of mind to be creative. I was wondering, does art do the same thing for musicians? I have a friend who is a musician, I might see if I can get her over here to comment.

This week the part of the journal prompt at the Art Caravan that inspired me was, “What music really inspires you? What gets your toes tapping involuntarily? How can listening to music while you art journal influence your work? How can music change your mood?” To tell you the truth music has not been a huge part of my “down-time” since I’ve been married. So, thinking about what music inspired me took me backwards in time.

The first person that came to mind was Lyle Lovett. He and Sheryl Crow are probably two of my all time favorite musicians. I guess I love folksy, bluesy, alternative country music with a bit of gospel thrown in. Lyle Lovett is really a category of his own in my opinion! I saw him on the “Big Band” tour at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, I think the year before he married Julia Roberts. I was on the 2nd row center aisle and it blew me away.

His “Church” song brings a smile to my face, it hits the climax around 3 minutes and 15 seconds. It reminds me of growing up in the Baptist church. I remember many a sermon where I was hungry. But, momma was not home cooking dinner, she was at church. And, cooking didn’t start till we got home, which meant even longer before the stomach would stop growling. So, pot roasts on Sunday were common at our house, they could be cooking while we were at church.

Anyway, the reason I like Lyle is that the humor and sarcasm in his songs make me smile inside. And, it seems that he stays grounded in his Faith despite the twisted turns life brings his way. That is what made me relate to him way back then. So, when he married Julia Roberts and the world was stunned I wasn’t, I got it. He sang to her soul and made her laugh. It made me sad that they didn’t make it. I hope all of the “Beauty and the Beast” tabloid stuff was not responsible. According to the oh so reliable press, they are “still friends.” That picture was their wedding day, don’t they look happy?!

Credits: Church photo is mine. Photos of Lyle and Julia are borrowed from the Internet. Lyrics from “Church”, “She’s Already Made Up Her Mind” and “She Makes Me Feel Good.” Several element’s from Bisontine’s Song of Love kit. An altered abused film border from CRenee. Music alpha from As You Wish Designs. Swirl from Rhonna Farrar. Papers from Blyth Evans.

The art journal word prompt this week is bliss. The first thing that came to mind was ignorance is bliss, but I think “Innocence is Bliss” would be kinder and more accurate for children. So, that is the underlying theme, but the photo painting is hopefully making you think of a cool breeze warmed with sunshine on a fresh spring day.

I’ve done a scrapbook layout with other photos taken on this day. It was taken on the first day of spring in 2009 at a graveyard. The building is sort of an old gatehouse made with rough stonework and it has an amazing red wood door. You can see the door from the road on the way to my husband’s work. It was calling my name every time I drove by…so one day I took the girls on a photo shoot. I told them it was castle ruins. It just added to the magic of spring.

I decided to take my husband’s recent advice to a friend and “not pull a Gilligan.” I asked him what in the world he meant and his answer made me laugh out loud. He said Gilligan and team never tried the same thing twice. If a boat didn’t work then the next time they’d try a plane. That they had a bunch of great ideas, but they never stuck with any idea long enough to perfect it.

So, I decided to keep working on my digital painting technique, using my own photography as the canvas.

This time I started with a wonderful freebie glass plate negative. I used a few variations actually, stamping them in different shades of cream/tan/brown.

I drew an outline around the girls, tree, door and some bricks in a brown color. Then I clipped the picture to a glass plate negative, merged the two layers and used it as my “paint”. I made a new layer under that layer and “painted” the majority of my “painting” using a bunch of free brushes from the BitBox site (thanks to someone in the Caravan forum for posting about them.) And, added the distressed scrolls from BitBox on a layer above the “painting.”

Then I used Kim DeSmet’s bright grunge papers as paint over the photo layer. I painted highlights with a yellow paper and used a pink paper for a nice color cast and slight texture. This helped it look more like a painting and less like a photo.

I used the cloning tool with the original photo as reference to paint in shadows on the dresses. And Kim’s pink paper helped make their faces more painterly.

Finally I started adding some bling and dimension with elements from New Life Dreams and Jofia Devoe. In the end I decided to stylize it just a tad more by making my “drawing” and text have a bit of bling, using Microferk’s glitter styles.

Here is the original photo for reference.

The Art Journal Caravan verb this week was “simplify” and you were supposed to journal about yourself. While this doesn’t look like it is about me, in a round about way it is. My mom and stepdad square dance. I’m thrilled that they have such an active social life. A few years ago they tried to recruit us to join and learn. It was sweet…but so not anything remotely of interest to us.

Anyway, one evening Neal was otherwise occupied and, I decided on the spur of the moment to take the girls by a dance. I just love that recreational center, it is a huge room with gorgeous old wood floors and “church-style” benches all the way around the room. So quaint. In fact, we had our rehearsal dinner there. It was simple and laid back. We had red checkered table cloths and catered barbecue. My MIL picked sunflowers that morning and put them in old tin pails. It was completely understated and we loved it.

This was the first time I’d been there for a dance. It was really sweet watching all the couples have a ball dancing. And even sweeter letting Granny show off her grand-babies.

In this photo Danielle is joining her Granny for a line dance. She had recently seen the Hannah Montana movie, so she totally thought it was COOL! She wants her granny to make her a big fat skirt so she can go dancing again. I love it that *she* thinks it is cool!

And, I want to make it a point to take her back…it is just always after bedtime…such an effort to get there…but such simple pleasure once you are there.

Here is the photo I used to “paint” with:

Here is a photo of the girls dancing on a break:

For the journal page I scanned in a page from a very old songbook. Next I used my Wacom pen to trace an outline of the ladies in the photograph. I tried to be slightly more precise on my main subjects and purposely jagged on the background dancers. I then brushed with a slightly translucent wet black brush roughly behind the people in the collage. That layer was clipped to an off-white painterly brush stroke by Dianne Rigdon. It helped tone down the music in that part of the collage, I was going for a “wash” effect. Then I “painted” with slightly translucent wet black again on another layer, this time staying inside the lines of the people. I wanted the colors from the photograph to show through so I clipped that layer to the photograph. I love how the reflections of the dancers show on the wood floor.

The alphabet is a music sheet alpha by Blythe Evans. “Simple” is blended as a linear burn and on “Pleasures” I deleted the base layer of music to let a pink paper show through with the blending options.

I hope this is a reminder to me to force myself to do stuff even when I really don’t *feel* like it!

A friend of mine commissioned me to create a wall hanging for her husband’s office. I know he will not be on my blog, or Facebook, so I am giving you a sneak preview. The adorable photos of their family have been removed.

Shutterfly is having a great special on wrapped canvas prints. This will be a 16 x 20. My client didn’t even have to pay shipping because of their Valentines day special!

It is probably a little late for me to get another one done. But, be thinking of Fathers Day, it is just around the corner!

Thanks “Just Shoot Me Girl”….that is my husband’s nickname for you. He came up with it when he met you years ago and I’m sure you know why! LOL! This really doesn’t do it justice because your adorable family makes the layout!

Credits: Tracy Ann, Nicole Seitler, Blythe Evans, Mira Designs, Paislee Press, Vicki Stegall, Microferk Designs, Obsidian Dawn