MY FIRST BLOG AWARD!! YIPEE!!

I'm so honored!! Dear, sweet Amanda of Scrapping Words has bestowed upon me my very first blog award, and I couldn't be more thrilled! It was such a nice surprise to find! Thank you, thank you!! Amanda is a CT member with me at DK Designs, and she has an awesome blog herself just chocked full of delicious word art for all your scrapping needs, so be sure to check it out for yourself or you'll surely be missing out on goodies you really need!!


Here are the rules of the award:

1. Put the Award on your blog.

2. Include a link back to the person who gave you the award.

3. Nominate 7 or more blogs to receive this award.

4. Leave a message on their blog letting them know they have an award on your blog.

Here are my 7 nominees:

Teri Mayo

June

Crops

Joni Gray

Valerie

Scrapin Granny

Anna

It's all about spreading the love, gals! The ladies above inspire me! For me, it's difficult to stop at 7 blog sites because, believe me, I'm a blog hopper and visit oodles of scrapping blogs, and there are too, too many totally awesome ones!! I shall treasure my first award because inside myself I still rate myself as a newbie to digi-scrapping, blogging, designing, forums, html, etc., and I know I have much yet to learn to get where I personally desire to be! Thank you sweetly for this kindess!!

And now, for tonight's FREEBIE!! I have for you the 6th in my Blooming Borders paper pack collection. There are four 12x12", 300 dpi textured powder blue papers with coral-pink floral impatiens borders in various positions. Here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Leave me some love if you like! Enjoy!

I'll be back around midnight on Friday night with a really nice bunch of freebie surprises for ya'll, so don't miss tuning in again! I promise it will be worth it!

Tootles!!

NEW KITS! NEW KITS!

Hi everybody! I have a lot to show you, so lets just roll on . . . . . The design team at DK Designs has a wonderful new kit for you to play with called "WHITE CHOCOLATE", and it's in the store at iscrapbook. Here's a preview:

It's great and girly, and it has some fantastic sort of brushed metallic elements which I just love! They have even worked up a Quick Page album for those that have less scrappin' time:

I just love how they make it so easy to become a great scrapper! Here's what our fabulous CT has done with this awesome kit:

By Amanda . . .

By Anjanette . . .
By Brandy . . .
By Cynthia . . .
by yours truly . . .

Be sure to check out DK Designs blog too! I picked up some free newspaper frames there that are going to come in soooo handy in my scrappin'!!

Next, be sure to check out "TIME TO GET AWAY", the July Mega Collaboration Kit at Scrapable! Here's a preview:

My designer's (Genia Beana Scraps) contribution to this mega kit looks like this up close:

The papers remind me so much of many wonderful hotels I've stayed in during vacations, seminars, etc. Many compatible photos kept popping in my head while looking at these sharply detailed papers. I'm sure I'll work with this one a lot, but here's my first layout with it for now:

There's always a story behind our pages, right? This is a friend who grooms dogs in my daughter's shop, and we were all attending a big annual dog grooming expo where they were on their feet all day in grooming competitions, and you can bet they were DOG TIRED!! Teehee! Just had to get that pun in!! Seriously, a hotel bed never looked so good as it did to those two groomers! Me, I was along just for the fun.

I'll be back soon as oodles of new things are popping, and I received a nice surprise from another blogger which I want to share here in the next day or two as well as my normal freebies I hope! So do stop back by!

Tootles!

I WON A FREE KIT! YIPEE!!

I've been hanging out in the forums of digi-scrapping sites like DigiShopTalk (DST) and DigiScrapAddicts (DSA) to mention only two of MANY! You get to know a lot of great folks that way, and there are fun scrappin' challenges going on every month to participate in if you want to strive for more experience. I even won a free kit from a very lovely designer, Emma Moore/Eyelet's Scrap Designs, who sells her designs at Divine Digital, which is another of my favorite places to shop for wonderful kits! I won her brand new kit, "Summer Grunge", which is just so colorful for scrapping all your spring and summer shots! Personally, I will always be in love with the grunge style! Here's her kit preview and two layouts I did with it just tonight:

The first LO above is of my DH taking an early walk on Easter morning, and the second is just random shots of my brood. I wanted to show some of the very different pieces to the kit, and there's a lot more. The papers are just awesome; I love the window type frame and the stitched outlines, and there's another frame I just couldn't work into these two layouts . . . but I'm for sure not finished with this great kit!! Ya'll jump on over to Divine Digital and check out this great kit! Tell Emma that Janytime sent ya! Thanks, Emma, for your generosity; and it's nice to get to know you!!

I don't know about ya'll, but I'm having a DIGI-BLAST lately!!! Sure hope you are too!!! And, yes, I'm trying to keep up with my real life daily duties also. Today I helped my DH with his maintenance duties on a large home we caretake for an elderly man in our area, baked a yummy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, made a huge bowl of chicken salad for dinner, picked up my granddaughter from her preschool at 5:30pm, fed her and her mother (my youngest DD), cleaned all that up, took a walk about the neighborhood just for the exercise, all before scrapping a thing today! So there!! I am desperately trying to manage my addiction! Teehee!! Pays to be a "night owl" like me! It's such the solution !! Oh to give you an idea about the rest of that dinner we had tonight and the heat of July here in the coastal south, we simply slapped that chicken salad on whole grain buns, added good ole greasy chips to the side of the plate, cold fresh peaches over cottage cheese, a slab of carrot cake for dessert, all washed down with freezing cold limeade (what a thirst quencher) and a slice of watermelon to boot! One tries very consciously to not turn on the oven just for meals during the summer, so the grill is imperative, kinda like your washer and dryer. I made sure everybody really wanted that carrot cake too before I turned the oven on for that this afternoon. I had to see the drool come off their tongues first! Haha!!

Sorry, didn't mean to make you hungry! (Grin)

I'll be back soon, hopefully with your next freebie or maybe even two freebies, as I feel a little behind on those.

Tootles!

CT 'ing FOR A SECOND DESIGNER!!

Just a quick pop-in to let you know that I've been accepted on a second Creative Team just this month! I'll be working with Genia Beana Scraps, and her gorgeous designs are available currently through Scrapable. Be sure to check out her blog to keep up with her latest kit releases and any freebies she may be kind enough to post for us! I'm so excited to be on her CT as it's quite large and I'm going to have the opportunity to get to know a lot of great scrappers and have loads of fun. The first kit I chose to work on for her is TRANQUILITY which is loaded with all of my personal favorite colors, teals of all shades, so this kit will be among my favorites forever!! Here's the preview:

Here's my first layout with this kit, and I'm sure I'll enjoy doing oodles more over time with this gorgeous kit.
I posted this layout in the Scrapable member gallery, and it was chosen for LOTD (layout of the day) on July 18th! Yipee! That's quite an honor for me! I was thrilled! I entitled this "July 4th My Style" because I took the photo on the beach that evening as I was people watching while waiting on the fireworks display at the local pier. It does look tranquil, doesn't it? We post our work for Valerie at DSA and DST in the galleries and forums there, so do hop around and check all the interesting things happening!

Below is a "welcome board" that Valerie of Genia Beana Scraps posted to welcome all her brand new CT members, and these are just the newbies with her. She has a large team of well seasoned scrappers as well, so I've got a lot of new friends to get to know!

We are deep into chattering back and forth already, and we are spread all over the country, so I'll have some new things to keep you posted about in the future.

Hope you are enjoying your summer months and some rest and relaxation along the way. Doesn't the time fly?!!

I'm trying to squeeze in some personal scrapping and take more active part in some monthly challenges in the digi-scrap forums, and one of my personal favorite places to hang out for that is Designs in Digital. Check it out!

Do come back by as I have plans to give away some really nice textured papers very soon and some brand new beach theme quick pages that are of my own design that I think you'll like.

Talk to you soon! Tootles!

NEW KIT ANNOUNCEMENT AND A FREEBIE!

The ladies of DK Designs have another great new kit ready for your pleasure called "DENIM RUST", available at iscrapbook. This one has a bit more boyish or masculine feel, so it's super great for scrappin those guys you love! Here's the preview:

They have also worked up a darling Quick Page Album for those with less time on their hands, so check this out too:

Here's our CT creations with this kit:

From Amanda . . .

From Anjanette . . .

From Brandy . . .

From Cynthia . . .

And from me . . .

What fun we have!! Hurry on over the iscrapbook and check out all the wonderful creations awaiting you by DK Designs!!

Well, I finished my two-week class at Jessica Sprague online in Photo Editing: Frame-ups & Special Effects. I'm feeling like I'm sorry that it's over, it was so much fun and totally self-paced. It was a groovy thing to look forward to her daily class notice in my email box and know that I could work on my class and projects at my own pace when I could find the time. I'm just going to have to take some more of her classes; they're GREAT!! I took the ones for my software I'm trying to learn, PSE6 & PSE7, and it totally helped me sooo much! I don't feel so very lost now inside that software, so I'm going back for more of her step-by-step instructional videos!! Yipee! With her and with Linda of Scrapper's Guide I am bound to conquer that software eventually!! I'm determined. Let me show you a few things I learned how to make that I'm so proud of (I can't show you everything, too much, just the ones I am super-proud of):

Here's a storyboard I made; too cool to now know how to do these so easily!!

Then I learned how to make what they call a 9-grid (9 identical photoholders in grid shape); take a look at these (one in natural color with a little brush work, the other with hue and saturation adjustments except for the middle photo which is a really neat technique too):

I'm just all enthused with what I've learned in just two weeks! The nice thing too is that the class and instructional videos are always on the site in your account so you can go back and refer to them and watch them over and over again. You'll never have to feel like you forgot a technique. How nice!!

Well, if you've made it this far with me, you certainly deserve a Freebie! So here it is; #7 in my Abstract QP+ series. I believe this one has a light plum frame, and here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Have fun with it. I have about three more of these to give to you, and then I've made some brand new grunge papers, both plain and floral, that are coming to you free soon!! Yipee! Who doesn't love grunge?!! Leave me some love if you download.

I have a lot more to share with ya, so I'll be back posting soon! Stay tuned in!

Tootles!

NEW MONTH - NEW KITS & A FREEBIE!

Hope you had a GREAT weekend and celebrated July 4th in a style that was pleasing to you! Ours was relaxed and, since two of our three children had their own plans with our grandkids, we took our son and his sweetie out to early dinner in a fine steakhouse on the Strand. After an enjoyable meal together, we all headed for the beach to jockey into our sand position to watch the fireworks display put on by the owners of our closest pier. They built a resort in front of this pier last year, and the fireworks display gets better there every year. Needless to say, the crowd on that part of the beach gets larger every year also! It's a great place, and it's free! We arrived on the sand about 3 hrs. early before the scheduled fireworks because my DH is like that when he has to fight the crowds. We took fold-up chairs, the cooler filled with liquids, and I was armed with my trusty digital camera for three hours of "people watching"! I love to do that, and I've made a collage from what I captured. Wanna see?

The background paper and all the frames used in this page are from Teri Mayo's new kit, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" which is available at Scrapable. The sand background is paper#06 from Linda Cumberland's part of the kit "Beach Cottage", which can be found at Digital Scrap Boutique. The word art in the middle is by Kathy Winters, and you can find her at Word Art Fun.

And now on with the real show! The designing sister team at DK Designs is rolling out the new kits for this month, and below is the preview of their gorgeous new kit, WEDNESDAY, which is available at iscrapbook.

They have also designed a fabulous Quick Page Album from this kit for those who don't have a lot of design time, so look for this in the store at iscrapbook too!

Here's what our CT designed so far using WEDNESDAY:

From Amanda . . .

From Brandy . . . From Cynthia . . .

From Josie . . .
From me . . .Pretty kit, right?!! Be sure to check out their blog, there's a great template freebie for grabs right now, looks like this:

Hurry on over there and snag yours to play with! I'm taking on online class right now for two weeks over at JessicaSprague in Digital Editing and Frame-up. It's helpful with teaching me to use the functions of my PSE6, PSE7. I've got two days under my belt - yeah! In lesson #1 we played with cropping and keeping the proper aspect ratio, framing with transparent png files and moving and resizing them. Lesson two was the loading and using brushes. Here are my two projects to this point:


It may look simple enough, and it actually was, but for me it's all about learning the software that's been sitting for so long installed in my computer. I've used FxFoto Creative Edition for a long time because the learning curve is not as stiff as PSE, but there are a couple of things it won't do for me that I know PSE will, so I'm determined to whip Photoshop. My biggest problem is finding time to focus with peace and quiet so I can learn something! Always too much going on around here!!

Alrighty now! If you've made it this far with me, you deserve a FREEBIE! So here is #6 in my Abstract QP+ line for ya! I have a few more of these to give away, and then we will be on to something new. I've been designing some more subtle papers, so I do hope you'll stay tuned.

DOWNLOAD HERE

This zip includes the QP in png format, the background paper and frame as separate files so you can play yourself! Enjoy and leave some love if you like it!

I'll be back soon with more to show and more to snag!

Tootles!

HAPPY HAPPY JULY!

I'm HAPPY and in a really good mood! I've just mastered designing my first real digi elements tonight, so I just had to rush over here to my blog from my design screen and give them to ya'll. Hope you like them and can find use for this pack. I've been on an "abstract kick" which is likely to last with me for awhile, so I sure hope you don't get sick of seeing all these vivid color contortions! Hehe!

What prompted all this excitement you may be asking yourself? Well, with a new month comes my wonderful weekly newsletters from Scrapper's Guide along with my Premier membership free kit, quick album, and PSE tutorial videos. So exciting to download all that and open it up to see all the goodies inside! In the most recent newsletter I found a wonderful tutorial by Jenny Binder on how to install and use brushes in PSE, and she even gave a free scalloped edge brush set download for a limited time. I snagged it and went right to work with it tonight! Alas, I love good directions that I can follow and things actually work like they're supposed to!! Yeah!! I took the recent abstract paper I've been giving away in the QP+ freebies and made some trims with this tutorial. Here's my FREEBIE preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Isn't it just wild looking! There are 13 (lucky) scalloped edge trims in a range of small, medium, and large sizes and all are in png format at 300 dpi. The kinky one is an example of me going wild in the midst of following directions. Haha! That's for sure the "free spirit" coming out when I least expect it. Just my nature. OMG! I'm lovin' every minute of learning to use my PSE6 and am now spurred on to install the PSE7 I got on sale recently at Costco! Wow! I know, you seasoned scrappers are laughing at my newbie excitement, but it's so great I can't contain myself! My DH went on to bed laughing at me sitting over here in my computer corner of our den oohing and aahing at myself. We have dual computers; his in his corner and mine in my corner. He's been addicted to playing Delta Force (all versions) for well over 10 years (if it's been out on the market that long - ha!) online with his friends in the evening, and what's held his interest in that software so long is the fact that he can design the game environments, missions, etc. and surprise his buddies with sneaky things coming at them in new surroundings (he's like a sicko Stephen King) when they join up to play. It's the endless design factor that has him hooked. He would be a great scrapper, but I can't get him to think that way (at least not yet). Hehee!

Okay, enough of my rambling excitement and on to your next FREEBIE for tonight! I told ya I was in a good mood, so here is #05 in the Abstract QP+ series from me. Here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

This includes the 12x12, 300 dpi png Quick Page PLUS separate files for the background paper and the lime green glass frame. Hope you like! The scalloped trims above were made from various segments of this paper.

Oh heck, why not one more FREEBIE tonight before I sign off?! I've got a GREAT scrapped recipe that's a family tradition in my house, and it's so super-easy to throw together and so refreshing for summer that you just may want to make it for your own July 4th picnic with the family! I scrapped this up for the June Recipe Challenge over at DID, and since June is over now I guess I can be giving this away here on my blog. For July their challenge is into a chicken containing recipe scrapped up in red, white, and blue. Sounds fun, hey? I've got some doozies for that, so it's going to be difficult to pick only one. At the end of the month when you participate in that challenge, the host sends us all a zip file containing the high resolution originals of all the entries. It's a great way to collect scrapped pages for recipe albums as gifts for later on, like bridal showers, housewarmings, birthdays and Christmas!! Oh yeah, I'm way ahead!! Here's the preview to my June scrapped recipe; we had to use a picnic type element in the layout:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Leave some love if you like getting freebies, and even more important . . . ENJOY! Get ready for a busy holiday weekend everybody! At least I don't have to travel, I'm already at the beach!! Hehee! I do my grocery shopping in the middle of the night so I don't have to fight the crowded stores and long tourist check-out lines! I love it when other people are sleeping!

Stay safe! If you have to drive somewhere for your weekend, do be careful out there. I'll be back soon with more goodies! Don't forget your sunblock!

Tootles!