Dreaming of Spring

While it's technically spring, our yard is still covered with about a foot of snow. It's melting though. already 4 feet are gone! oh yeah! we got buried this winter. It will be nice to see greenery grow again. Until then, I have to be content to scrap with green. Lime green! that's the color of the kit for the Featured Designer Challenge of march 15-31 at The Studio. It's called Lime Sublime by Digilicious Designs.

It's the 4th time I submit a layout at The Studio for a challenge and Ii find it's somewhat easier for me if I do it early on so I don't risk other's layout influencing my creativity or awing me so much I get intimidated. since it takes me quite some time to make a page and I already had made 2 this month. I took a bit more time to think about it. then I tried to make a little sketch on paper. I don't use templates, I'm still not quite sure how to use them yet but I remember seeing the wall/floor concept when I surfed for freebies, so that's what I decided to try for this one.

An other reason why I took a bit more time to get started on this one is because I'm still downloading freebies and the space on my hard drive is shrinking. after a year of downloading, I had nearly 50 Gb of .zip files to burn and remove from my system. I took 2 days to burn a dozen DVDs. An extra, LARGE, hard drive would probably be a nice b-day gift :p

any other digital scrapbooking hoarders? how do you keep your stuff organized?

Thanks for stopping by :)

Grand Maman Rose

For The Studio Color Challenge of March 2011, i decided to use an old picture of my grandmother to make a page in memory of her. i made it between sniffles and coughs. i didn't get many cold and flu this winter but it got me good this time.

i don't know if it's because of the cold but i'm more critical of my work this evening and i have this tendency to second guess myself. anyway, here's what i came up with.

Future Generation of Scrapbookers

the flu is making ripples in my world and i haven't felt very creative lately, but my kids have cheerfully taken on the challenge to learn of their own. so today, i'll post their first creations with as much credit as i can figure out. they have been dipping a bit all over the place for their layouts.

here's my 5 year old daughter's first attempt.

she used background paper, flowery heart, balloon and birthday hat from Digitreats Sassy and Charlie kits.
Chaos Lounge November color challenge for the bird house and February's color challenge for the gift boxes.
the word art and circle frame are from "Life Happens Sweetly" by Kay Miller Designs, offered as a freebie for the March "On The House Challenge" at After Five Designs

her second attempt uses mostly "Life Happens Sweetly" except for the ribon rose from Digitreats Charlie

My son's work was a bit more difficult to identify the source of his material. the bunny is from "Life Happens Sweetly", bingo card from Digitreats, felt bird and butterfly from Chaos Lounge. not sure about the circular frame and the star in it or the background. the little bird, same as from my daughter's first layout is a bird that wouldn't fly away in the snow when i went to refill the bird feeder. i was able to take real closeup shots of it.

my daughter is patiently waiting for me to finish this post so she can do some more scrapbooking. i'll try to go for a nap to fight that flu and see what she came up with when i wake up.

Fun with Mars 1-15 Challenge

Featured Designer Challenge from The Studio seems to get me motivated to do a bit of scrapbooking.

here's my layout submitted for the challenge

and while i was at it. i made an other one. it's such a lovely little kit, i love the lacy frame!

the mini kit is called Pansy Sampler from Deli Scraps by Min! you can hop on over to The Studio and see more lovely layouts by other scrapbookers and even grab the mini kit and try it for yourself if you felt like it :)

A Bit of Scrap Here and There

I never gave much thought to scrapbooking. i’ve gotten a digital camera when i was pregnant with Owen because i could not find my old 35 mm automatic camera. then, to edit the pictures, get the red eyes out… i got myself a small Wacom tablet that came with a limited edition of Photoshop.
I have a few relatives that scrapbook in the physical sense. it looked quite the expensive hobby. i figured, it’s supposed to be made with scraps, it shouldn’t have to be expensive. so i got myself some good old construction paper, foam rubber shapes at a dollar or two for big bags of them, some gel pens and edging scissors and did 2 pages after my son was born. i was planning to do more but with the care of a newborn i did not find the time nor the energy.

i did not find i had it in me to scrapbook. but when my son was born, some of the pictures inspired me to do a bit of editing.


When Vivian was born, i decided to make her a page in the sky like Owen’s, but this time with a photo background. while i was at it, i decided to remake Owen’s too.

the last 2 would have been from 2005. i didn’t play much more with photo editing after that for a while.
last spring, while my daughter was in pre-K the teacher had 2 turtle plushies. each week, 2 kids would have their name drawn and would take one of them home for the week. pictures would have to be taken of what was done during that week with the turtle plushy. i didn’t know what to do and i felt intimidated by what the others had already done with their pages. we went to the dollar store and i picked a few sets of papers, some ribbon and alphabet stickers. i’m kinda happy with how it turned out but i found it rather pricey for just one double page.

then the idea came to me to look for free digital scrapbooking stuff. i found a few sites, and a few blogs, then some of those blog mentioned their friend digi scrapbookers and along with some blog trains, the list kept growing where i had to subscribe in a blog feed reader to be able to keep track of them all and yet i can fall behind easily. so now i have plenty of digital scrapbooking material and still keep finding some prettier stuff all the time. just like font collecting, collecting digital papers is addictive!
last summer i decided to try some of those freebie goodies on a page. it didn’t quite turn how i wanted. i had just recently switched to Gimp and didn’t quite have the hang of how layers worked in that software. the layers would lock together and i couldn’t edit them separately once they were anchored together. since all the tool functions weren’t located at the same places i was used to with Photoshop, it took me much longer to accomplish the same task i could do in Photoshop. i was wondering at that point if Gimp would be practical at all.

oh yeah, before this one, i tried to make a cover for Wii Sport, to fit in a regular DVD jewel case because it only came in a little cardboard pocket. it might have taken me 7 hours while it would’ve taken me 1 hour or less with Photoshop. was somewhat frustrating but at least Gimp is free, right?
i have to find a way to tag the credit for my pages in the image file itself because after a while, i forget who’s paper and elements i used. is that possible?
my second attempt went a bit better, i figured out what i was doing wrong that the layers would automatically fuse together. i had just taken pictures of my son, going on his bicycle without training wheels for the first time!

last halloween, the school asked that our kids be dressed in black and orange and have silly hair. i didn’t know what to do so my dearest friend Nancy suggested i look online for tutorial on how to make a yarn wig. after some digging around i found some info on how to make dread falls. i made some around midnight to the wee hours of the same morning she was to ware them at school. after she came back and took them off, i decided to have some fun with them too. i took a few pictures and decided to add a bit of background to it.

last fall, there was a school field trip to go see a movie. knowing too well my daughter, she would be scared senseless from so much action. and i don’t agree with letting my son see so much action either so i declined to send them on that trip but i took them on a trip of our own. i took them mini golfing. they had a great time. after that. my daughter sat with me while i was sorting through some scrapbooking papers and she told me how she loved a pink paper and how she wanted to scrapbook with it. so i picked the picture and let her choose the rest. i let her decide where she wanted things to go, how big… all i did was the digital manipulation of it.

starting to enjoy the possibilities that scrapbooking offers. i decided to design the Christmas cards that my kids would give away to their friends at school. i made 2 versions of it.

and that’s about it! that pretty much sums up my scrapbooking experience before i stumbled on The Studio’s Featured Designer Challenge around mid February. Darlene Haughin Designs had such a lovely add-on that i felt inspired to try it on the spot. the prospect of winning the full kit was also a nice bonus. so i felt i had nothing to lose by trying to submit my own layout.

i even surprised myself with that one. i like it so much that i’m afraid i’ll never be able to make anything that i’ll like half as much. i find it neat that Vivian’s dress has pretty much all the same colors as the background paper.
this post is getting insanely long. hope i didn't bore anyone to death.
this post is a copy/paste from an other blog i was going to recycle until i decided to start fresh :)