Heirloom Freebie Kit

I got an email from Persnickity Prints about a layout contest using Deena Rutter's free Heirloom kit. By simply doing a page and linking to it, I am entered to get $10 to Deena's store and $10 to Persnickity Prints site to print pages. I loved this kit and decided to create a page. Why not. Her kits are great and getting some of my pages printed would be awesome.

This picture was taken at the Global Village Festival in Ontario Oregon this weekend. We had a booth and also danced for 1/2 hour. I loved this picture and will post more later.

It's Coming Back to Life

My craft blog has been sadly neglected in like, totally forgotten about in over a year and a half. Since I am getting back into digital scrapping and have exciting news tomorrow about that, I decided to put all of those types of things on that blog since the exciting news should make posts over there rather frequent. I am super excited to get back into digital scrapping as I have found it fun and therapeutic. So head on over here and make sure to add it to your google readers or follow me if you want. I added a direct link to the right of my blog too!

New Member of the Sweet Digi Scraps Creative Team

So like I do often, I browse the free digital scrapbooking sites. A few weeks ago I happened upon one with pretty cute stuff. It is called Sweet Digi Scraps and the persons name is Liz. In her blog she also stated that she was looking for 5 new Creative Team members. I thought to myself why not and applied. Through tons of applicants I made it. Is that not the craziest thing. I have only been at this since the spring of this year. I was pretty excited. I found out right before Thanksgiving and have recently been getting into it. I have access to all of her stuff for free in exchange to creating layouts with it and posting it in 3 scrapbook site galleries. I have really enjoyed it because people post comments about your layouts. I really thrive on the comments. I love to read what others have written. It makes me happy to know that I have inspired someone else.

Being offered this experience has been fun. It has forced me to work on my pictures. It causes me to learn something new. The ladies there are also fun to work with. Can't wait to post more of my layouts in the future.

National Digital Scrapbooking Day

Today is the official digital scrapbooking day. To me this means fantastic freebies and fantastic deals and pretty much every digital scrapbooking site. Check out some of my favorites to the right of my blog or google some of your own. Great time to take advantage of some of the savings.

Into Vintage?

I ran across this site on another blog and thought that I would give it a try. It turns your pictures into very old looking ones in no time. Super neat. The site is a japanese sort of thing so if the language is not converted to English when you check it out, just go to the upper right hand corner to make the switch.

Mindy and Dan back in the day.

A scenery picture from one of Jeff's backpacking trips.

Little Gunnar around this time last year.

Happy Father's Day

I just thought that I would post a quick thing about the fathers in my life. I would like to wish my own dad a Happy Father's Day. I made this scrapbook page recently of him and Gunnar and love it. This is my dad. He is so silly yet serious and responsible when he needs to be. He always worked super hard at providing for our family growing up. We always had all that we needed. I never felt that I went without as a kid. He is so full of love for others. He is a friend to all. I don't know anyone that did not come to my parents house and leave feeling unwelcomed. Everyone was welcome. I love getting his phone calls from Iraq. I feel lucky that I am the one that he knows he can reach pretty much anytime throughout the day. Gunnar also loves talking to his grandpa and we can't wait to see him with the year again.

Jeff is the best daddy any kid could ask for. He is a hands on father and not a dad that states that he babysits his own kids. It drives me insane when I hear dads say that. He is a super hard worker to make sure that we are taken care of. He takes time for Gunnar each week and makes sure that he spends quality time with him so that I can have a little break from him. I love that. He lets Gunnar help out in whatever he is doing even if it takes twice as long to get it done. Gunnar knows that his daddy loves him and will do anything to make sure that he is taken care of. I think that is important. So Happy Father's Day to all of the dads and future dads out there.

My digital scrapbooking slide show

I thought that I would start a slide show of all of the pages that I have done. I can just sit here and stare at them over and over. For some reason I just love looking at stuff that I do. Is that vain?

Digital Scrapbooking Organization Tips

I am quickly accumulating kits, etc and would like to hear how all of you digiscrappers organize your "stuff" on the computer. I do have mine in seperate files like paper/kits, alphas, elements, etc but it still seems hard sometimes to find maybe a staple buried in a kit.

One of my friends also wanted to know if I miss playing with the real thing. You know, that is kind of a hard question. I do but I don't. I feel so thrilled and excited that I am able to catch up on some of these pictures without the huge mess or time spent on the other. I am in love with the fact that I can create one layout for multiple uses like siblings books. I plan to print a second copy of my sisters dress layout for her. No way would I recreate a paper one for her and I probably would have never scrapped it. I am also working on actual paper projects for Etsy or custom orders. So this is nice that I can take a break and get pages done without needing to clear my entire desk off to do it. Or wait until my paying projects are done which never seems to end.

The other thing that makes me really happy about this is that it is so cheap. I have been lucky enough to find all but two kits, etc. for free. There is SO much free stuff. If you have girly layouts, there is even more for you. I did buy to boy kits because they were so cute and boy stuff is not offered for free. However they are so cheap and can be used over and over again. They are generally about the same price as a packet of great 3D stickers. You can't beat that. It is then very minimal to have them printed off.

I do plan on scrapping both ways. Sometimes I will run across something in the LSS that I know will go with a great set of pictures. Of course I would traditionally scrap that. I have yet to run across digi stuff for zoo visits that I really like. However I have great paper for them that I will most likely use. Oh ya, the other great thing is that I don't have to pay to have the pictures printed the first time around and then I can tweak them and change them easily if I go the digi route.

Anyway, there are just benefits of both I think. And both right now work for me.

I really have to THANK my friend Amber for all of her help. She was so gracious to put together a Word document on getting started and email to all interested. She is one great friend!!

My latest

I sat down this weekend and worked on these three layouts. I love sharing these because I know that I love to see what others work looks like as well. Plus I am so new to this, I am slightly proud of what I have created. This also allows family members to see what I am talking about when I am trying to describe what I did. I have a long way to go. When I am browsing through pictures deciding what to scrap, I have forgotten about most of the pictures and am reminded of how many I have. This is for sure a never ending hobby.

I am slowly getting the hang of it

I have had a little time here and there to sit down and figure out digital scrapping a little. It is a lot of fun and I will still be doing some the traditional way, but this has allowed me to get a little more done much faster. Here are two pages that I did this weekend.

Going through the pictures and deciding which ones I want to work on has made me realize how many pictures I have that are not scrapped. There are a lot!

Another one down...a million to go!

I worked on another page last night. This too is from a quick page. Pretty soon here I am going to need to actually put them together myself. It is just so nice to do these because of the limited time that I have.
I posted the picture of my brother the other day but this is the entire series of pictures that I took of him and Gunnar. Gunnar is up to having a tickling war with anyone!

My first in Digital Scrapbooking

Lately I have been dabbling in digital scrapbooking. Not really to replace the traditional kind. More to catch up a little and do something new. Boy has the learning curve been steep for me. This really is not my element. Thankfully all of the papers, embellishments, etc have been free and printing them is pretty inexpensive.

One of the things that I really like about it is that when I have more kids, it is easy to print out multiple prints instead of creating multiple prints the traditional way. I can already see the effectiveness of it now. It has also been pretty fun to mess around with it.
My very first layout was done using a quick page. It is kind of like a fill in the blank type of thing. You just feel in already created areas with the paper that you want. These things were harder to figure out than I thought. I have Microsoft Digital Image Suite 10 and most instructions are not written for this program. Thankfully I found some incredibly helpful tutorials online just for this program. They have been a lifesaver. Look for more layouts in the future as I really start figuring this out.