TEMPLATE TUESDAY TIME!

I'm running so far behind where I'd like to be.  It's been a long harrowing week full of all kinds of things I didn't have in my plans, but I'm going to post this before midnight and then just make some edits to it to keep adding!  Ah-ha!  Cheating to meet my own mental deadline, so how does that grab ya!  Oh well, sometimes we all work under the gun, and I am my own worst enemy about deadlines.  I hate missing my own mental deadlines.

First, I want to show you a layout a sweet lady from Australia sent me using the photo mat freebie I provided several posts ago.  I think it's beautiful, and the journaling under the photo is a long beautiful poem about Australia.  I may post the poem here later if I can figure out how to copy and insert it.  But here is the layout so you can see how beautifully she used the mask.

I'm just so honored that "haveachat/Bev" was kind enough to send this to me to show you all.  Now I've actually experienced the thrill of getting to see how someone has used one of my design creations!  It's a natural high, for sure!  It feeds our creativity and makes us want to make more things!  Thanks so much, Bev.  I have a feeling we are going to be super great cyber friends!

Now, I'm off to get the rest of this post packaged up and ready, and I'll be back after midnight (haha) to insert the rest of this!  My form of cheating my own brain!  Back later!

I'm back . . . oh, that didn't take long!  Right!  I've concluded that making previews, packaging, zipping and uploading definitely are my stumbling blocks in all this.  Designing is easy!

Here is this week's MASON JAR PROJECT:  One of my readers suggested making clipping masks with state names, so I'm giving that a whirl (maybe coming at you in alphabetical order) and will put these in the "Mason Jar".  Please refer to the labels on the right side of my blog and read up on "The Mason Jar Story" if you are not familiar with my project and what it is for.  I hope to bring you a nice variety of items in the "Jar", and any digi-scraps found in the jar will surely be kept most affordable for you.  So, with that said, I present for your consideration, my photomat, "ALASKA".  Here is the preview:

ITEM NAME:  SBS_Alaska_PhotoMat
PRICE:  $0.35

Enter Your Email Here

You can pay with Paypal or any credit card, and you do not have to have a Paypal account to do this.  Within 24 hours of payment, you will receive an email from me with a 4Shared link to download your purchase.  It's that simple!  Please be sure to include your email to me in the text space provided above the "Buy Now" button.  Thanks for your consideration.  (I'm an "oldie", so I like the sound of 35-cents, I can remember back when lots of things were only that price, like a movie ticket!)

Next up are two FREEBIES!  (Yes, I said "2"!!)  I'm feeling generous and spurred on by love of the clipping masks and your number of downloads on them!  So here's another sort of seasonal one for you!  This time "FROSTY".  Maybe you can think of a creative way to even use this mat for a summer photo (I can, like my grandchildren eating snowcones in the heat of summer!).  Always take time to think outside-the-box in all things creative.  Here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Lastly for tonight, since another whole week has quickly passed, it's Template Tuesday again!  This one was a delight for me to design, and I have a million (not quite, but close) variations on it which I may throw at you eventually.  The zip is complete with a psd file, a tiff file, and all png files saved, so hopefully many of you using various scrapping software programs will be able to use my templates.  This is #03 from me, and here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

In conclusion, I must share with you just a hint of how my week went.  We had a bad wind/rain storm with gale-force gusts throughout one night which took off numerous shingles from our place and several of our good neighbors.  My DH volunteered to make all the repairs (he's a good guy).  I stepped outdoors the morning after the storm to a circle of landscaped area to view my own roof damage, and, low and behold, I stepped right on top of a small fire-ant hill.  I was only there no more than 5-10 seconds at most with socks and shoes on, mind you!  Nevertheless, the damage I suffered in that length of time from the fire-ants was hideous!  The bites or stings, whatever, were too many to count and by the time I felt the first one, it was too late to prevent the number that I received in total.  OUCH!!!  I even had on long slacks, but it made no difference.  If you could have seen me dancing across the pavement to my front porch, hopping, swatting and ripping my clothes off all the way you would still be sore in the tummy from the laughing!!  I was half-naked coming back in my own front door, stood in my kitchen on tile and peeled off the rest of my bottom half clothing.  Let me just advise that the uppermost fire-ant sting in that short length of time was too close to the Crown Jewel for comfort!!  I took 50 mg. of Benadryl even though I'm not allergic to these devils just because of the number that had wounded me.  When the wounds progressed from the stinging stage to the itching stage, I applied an anti-itch stick called "After-Bite" which I keep here for my grandchildren.  I'm sure it contains a combination of alcohol and/or ammonia and something, and it helps a great deal.   - - - You folks in the North don't have to deal with these critters; they are definitely a terror of the sandy South, and winter temperatures are not frigid enough here to stomp them out!  I simply forgot that for 5-10 seconds while I was looking up at my roof instead of down at the ground first!!!   I must say though, that after the Benadryl dose, I didn't get much else done for a good 24 hour period.  I tried to continue my day but dropped everything I touched, so I finally gave up and took to my Lazy-Boy and slept it off.

Lastly, this past Friday my hard drive decided to crash in the middle of some major work I was trying to accomplish!!  Oh yes, the event we all dread but can't seem to prevent at some point in time.  Are you ever psychic enough to feel it getting near???  I am, but not well enough.  Haven't learned to pinpoint the exact day yet, but I've got the month down pretty well.  It took three solid days, but I was able to get my system back up and running without losing any files this time!  Yeah!!  I've judiciously surmised that I caused this HD crash myself, it was not due to HD mechanical failure this time.  I had been moving large quantities of files, copying large quantities to other locations, dumping the recycle bin repeatedly and was unaware that my last scheduled defrag was for the night that we had the above mentioned storm that knocked our electric out for 6-8 hrs. during the night.  Consequently that defrag never happened, and I believe my HD was overly fragmented and just went down.  I was close to having the HD about 20 gigs from being full when I decided to do all this monumental work, which causes resources to be on the low side I'm so sure.  Anywho, I was able to use the windows recovery system to finally get to that HD and do a complete backup to a different external drive to save it, then did a system restore to an earlier date of only a few days.  After intense tweaking, I think I've got things pretty much as they were before the crash.  Plus, I went one step further and added a secondary internal hard drive of 1 terabyte for more storage space.  I work also with three external drives, one is an eBook type of 250 gig and the other two are 500 gig pocket bay drives (they are so nifty and small).  The last piece of advice I will pass on to those interested is CARBONITE!  If you value your precious photos and files as I do, please visit http://www.carbonite.com/ and read up on their online backup service.  They offer a free two-week trial of the program, then it's a subscription annually if you want to use it.  I've got it, and it's flawless, easy, and awesome and will give you the "peace of mind" you have been searching for.  I found this tip in a newsletter from Ro at Scrap Girls.  She is of the opinion, as I am, that everything mechanical will fail eventually, even our external drives.  Disks can become scratched over time rendering them unreadable.  Think about it.  Carbonite offers unlimited storage space, encryption of your files twice before they copy them into storage, you can download any of your files at any time, and they even offer remote access in case you need to download files away from home, such as when you travel.  Very cool.  It's a small program that runs in the background while you're connected to the internet, pauses if you use your internet, and resumes if you become idle on the net.  You can let it do its thing automatically, or you can hand select which files, folders, drives, etc. you want backed up.  I'm very impressed with it and have personally been searching a long time for this kind of peace of mind.  It comes highly recommended if you read up on it, and all for just a little over the price of a carton of cigarettes these days!!  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Okay, sorry, I've managed to talk your eyes out again!  My intent is to keep these posts short, but it never happens.  I promise to practice more on that one!  In the meantime, HAPPY SCRAPPING!

TOOTLES!!