FREEBIE - JULY PAPERS

I feel like that rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, "I'm late, I'm late - for a very important date!"

My philosophy as I age is better late than not at all.  LOL!  I'm talking about giving you this FREE PAPER PACK on the last day of July!  For shame!  I just didn't have a lot of spare time to play designing this month.  My DH tore into remodeling my first floor inside, and, as you can imagine, I've been a little distracted with all that going on.  However, it's worth it!  I'm loving the end results! 

I tried to stick with a July 4th, patriotic theme this month with these papers.  I'm happy with 7 of them, but I'm including 2 more that I wasn't sure about as a "bonus".  These are 12 x 12 inch, 300 dpi for print quality.  I played around with some texture overlays on some.  Hope you like and can use these in your scrapping needs!  Here is my preview . . .

DOWNLOAD AT EITHER OPEN DRIVE OR 4SHARED

I'm puppy-sitting with Miller, my Duffy's brother, and the house has been wild for a couple of days with their continual romping.  They are just a tad over 4 months old now.  I had to leave the house this evening to scoot about for groceries.  When I returned Miller had chewed up the bottom of my foyer skinny blinds at the front door.  He is needy and is missing his Mommy owner, so I suppose when I left he went nuts on those blinds while whining and trying to see where I went or if I was still out there.  My Duffy has been good not to chew up anything important like that.  He doesn't seem so nervous when I leave him alone for awhile.  He is pretty chilled out.  Here is a page of recent shots of them together on my kitchen rug . . . template is from JS PhotoShop Friday 2012 lesson . . .

and here is another one of those lesson templates that turned out so nice, and I love this focal photo of this precious little gal who is growing and changing daily . . .

and one of my DH sitting oceanfront on the 4th waiting on the fireworks to begin at our pier . . .

and a couple random pages of my grand-angels swimming . . .

and did I mention that I won $5 for the page I made for a JS challenge about "summer defined"?  The layout is two posts back and is called "Summer Memories".  Was thrilled with that!  I am not one of those lucky people who wins all the time, so this was super for me! 

Okay, jumping off the "puter" for now.  Enjoy the rest of summer which is speeding by so rapidly!

HAPPY SCRAPPING!

TOOTLES!!

FREE QP - VINTAGE AMERICA

Good Morning, All!  As each week passes, my interior painting project is one step closer to being finished!  DH and I just spent the last two days doing the dining room which entailed moving some quite heavy iron and marble furniture and a couple set of bookshelves to boot!  We clean before painting and after painting, so I've spent quite a few hours on my hands and knees also.  I've developed a severe "crink" in my lower left spine that tells me that it's time for me to back off a bit.  Time to sit or lie still till the old back recovers.  It actually feels good to sit quietly in front of my computer.  Aahh!

Guess what!  I won the "Summer Defined" challenge I did last week at Jessica Sprague.  My layout titled "Summer Memories" is shown in my previous post.  I won a $5.00 gift certificate to the JS store!  Yeah for me!!  Doing the "happy dance"!!

Today I'm bringing you a FREEBIE QUICK PAGE made from the kit, "VINTAGE AMERICA", by Throwing Some Scraps Around - Designs by Jodi Watson.  I involved myself in the July Quick Page Challenge Game in the forum at Digi Scrap Station where we got the kit for free in return for designing one 8 x 8 inch QP to share in their gallery.  I just found this contest myself, and it appears that it goes on each month; so I'm already looking forward to participating again in August.  This is my kind of fun!  If you would like to collect all the QPs from this game, simply visit the forum or gallery at DSS where you'll find the direct download links for each QP.  The links will be available through the month of August for the pages created in the July game.  I made my QP in both the 8 x 8-inch and 12 x 12-inch sizes, 300 dpi, so you can take your choice.  My download in the DSS forum is the 8" size so it matches all the others there.  Here is the kit preview . . .

 
and here is a look at my Quick Page . . .

DOWNLOADS:

12 x 12-inch, HERE

Both sizes, HERE

I hope you like this page and will be able to use it in your scrapping.  This collection will be good to scrap up most any patriotic holiday or memory.

FYI:  I have previously been able to bring you free QPs courtesy of the monthly QP Contest at Cool Scraps Digital, but unfortunately Addie (the administrator of CSD) had to close down her forum, so that contest is no more.  I was saddened by that news recently as I had found that forum to be a very friendly, helpful, and well-run place to hang out and learn. 

That's all I have for you today.  I'll be back soon with more of my creations.  Meantime, check out the cards I made recently by clicking on the "CARDS" page I added toward the top of my blog.

Stay cool!  It's so hot here that my smoothie machine is my daily right arm!  I make fruity nutritious smoothies on a daily basis all summer long!

TOOTLES!!

TRY ART JOURNALING !!

Have you tried your hand at digital ART JOURNALING?  I took a class in it, pre-Christmas I think, over at Jessica Sprague taught by her and the awesome Nancie Rowe Janitz, formerly of CatScrap (which is now ScrapFlower) but now on staff at Jessica Sprague.  I wanted to get more familiar and more comfortable with just what Art Journaling is all about.  It's very free-spirited, yet very introspective at the same time.  Almost anything goes, basically like back when you were a first-grader and learning to draw and color with different mediums. 

I was loafing at JS in the forum waiting on my PhotoShop Friday class to be posted when I became absorbed in several of last weeks challenges, one of which was for Art Journaling which they do in the forum weekly.  One of the store's team leaders will post a prompt to have in mind while you create your page.  The rest of what you do is pretty much up to you and your interpretation.  Last week's prompt was the word, FREE.  So with that in mind, here is the page I created . . .

I used a paper from Art Journaling Backgrounds 2 by Jodie Lee (another one of the JS designers), a photo I had taken of seagulls on the beach, a soft air brush eraser, and the font is Fiolex Girls.  After I got happy with it, I lowered the opacity on the photo to around 80% so it appears softer.  This was fun!

Another of the three challenges I did last week was to write down at least 5 (or 5+) words or short phrases about our summer and what it is to us.  That was to be the journaling on our layouts using as many photos as we each had words or phrases.  We were to also have "Summer" in the title.  So with that in mind, here is the page I whipped out using some very recent photos and again Aimee Harrison's portion of the Divine Digital collab kit, Family Funtown which was a June D-A-D.

One of my most recent mental projects is to make sure I create a totally summery album this year for printing, so with what I'm into lately, I'm getting a good start on that.

Alrighty then!  In my next post I should be bringing you a FREE QUICK PAGE and news on where you can pick up a whole lot more Free QPs to make a matching album.  I've got to size my web preview down, and then I'll be ready with it.  Do stay tuned!

KEEP COOL!!

TOOTLES!!

LATEST LAYOUTS

Try saying that three times fast!  LOL!  Hi, Everybody!  Just wanted to pop in here and show you three of my newest layouts.  They are simplistic, but none-the-less were fun to put together using Aimee Harrison's portion of the June D-A-D at Divine Digital called "FAMILY FUNTOWN".  My large title font is called ERASER, and I most likely picked that up at DaFont for free.  Here's a look at my "hot-off-the puter" pages which are nice and summery . . .

What do ya think?  Leave me a comment.

Hubby and I have undertaken painting the interior of our house ourselves, and we are in our second week of the work.  We normally do all of our own work of all types, as he is one of those "Jack-of-All-Trades".  He is a perfectionist, so I never have to worry about getting a quality job done; and he does carpentry, plumbing, tile work, flooring, electrical, masonary, and landscaping just to name a few of his skills.  The only things he won't tackle are major auto problems and air conditioning repairs.  Anywho, we are only painting in stages on his two days off each week, and because we are covering a darker shade with a lighter shade, it's taking 3 coats.  I know, you're thinking "they should have gotten paint with the primer in it".  Well, we did that, and it's still taking three coats to cover a buff beige with a sunny bright yellow.  Yeah, we decided to really brighten things up around here!  I have three grandchildren who frequent my place fairly often to play, eat, swim, and just hangout because I'm a goovy mimi, so my paint is a good quality washable satin finish.  The trim is getting a fresh coat of white semi-gloss, and I'm then going to undertake changing my general theme from Tuscan wine country to something more beachy since that's where we live and I didn't go that route when I moved here in '95.  I'm now ready to submit to brighter colors.  So far with just the painting, the downstairs foyer, hall and living room are done.  The dining room is up for next week, then the kitchen, then the left wall heading up the staircase.  We are saving the den downstairs for some other color and theme.  It's our only downstairs room that still has wall-to-wall carpet instead of tile floors.  Tile is much easier to keep up here at the sandy beach, and it's all around better when you have always had dogs like we do.

Okay, my puter is annoying me wanting to do a restart to finish it's Windows Updates, so I'll jump off here and let it happen.

Be back in the next few days with a FREE QUICK PAGE for you, so stay tuned.

STAY COOL!!

TOOTLES!!

FREE INDEPENDENCE DAY MASK

Hi all!  I hope you are keeping cool.  We are now in our peak season of heat and humidity here at the beach, and it's cranking up past 100 degrees daily complete with intense humidity that literally knocks you down when you open a door to the outside.  I talked with my dear brother in AZ this evening who tells me his temperatures are at 112 daily but without the humidity, which he finds very tolerable for the most part.  One of his sons is in the military and stationed on the east coast right now in my home state, and he reports to his dad that he is literally melting away in the humidity because he is so not used to it at all, having grown up all his life in AZ.  We do somehow get used to it and just spend a lot of time in the water for the next few months!  There is always a breeze at the shoreline, so you don't notice the humidity there.  Sunblock applied daily is used as if it were a daily moisturizer!  I consciously prepare meals that are cool and refreshing by nature during this time of year.  And think how we save on laundry as we are always scantily clad!  It just has its good points.

Two nights ago back up North in good ole WV, my parents witnessed a powerful storm through the night with winds exceeding 75 miles an hour.  They are still without electric as are many hundreds of thousands.  My mom was almost hysterical when I got to talk with her by cell phone to ascertain any property damage they may have suffered.  Dad is 89, mom 84; and they tell me they have never seen such strong winds that made their trees bend halfway over and go in circles.  I've lived here in the south in hurricane alley since '95, so I've witnessed quite a few storms with winds up to 125/hr (which is where I draw the line to move out of the storm's path).  I do remember what it was like to see and stay through my first hurricane here and watch the winds build and blow like mom was talking about.  They live nestled in a deep valley town in the Appalachian Mountains, so that kind of wind and storm never happens there.  It's odd over the last few years just how much the weather patterns across this country have changed to be so radical.  My daughter and I have rustled up some strong young folks to go check on my parents and help them clear their two acres of the debri blown in by the storm.  That's where Facebook contacts come in so handy!!  What technical miracles we have at our disposal these days! 

Before I show you today's FREEBIE, I have to share another layout of my sweet Duffy and his brother Miller (who belongs to my daughter).  I whipped this one together last night using Katie Pertiet's weekly challenge template of 6-30-12 (Designer Digitals), and the kit used is "Good Dog" by Lady Bug Designs of Digital Design Den.  I love this kit so much I'm doing a whole album of Duffy using it.  This was Duffy & Miller's second play-date, and was after Duffy had his first groom by my daughter that same day.  Get a load of that larger photo on the top right!  Hysterically funny!

Alrighty then!  On to the FREEBIE I have made for you.  I wanted to give you something you could use when you scrap up those photos from our Independence Day holiday this week.  So after I made the layout above last night, I cleared my PSE screen and started playing around with one of my favorite things to make, i.e., clipping masks!  Below is what I came up with to start us off.  This is a 300 dpi png and is about somewhere between a 5x7" or 6x8" size.  You can easily resize this larger or smaller.  You can use it as a photo mat simply by clipping a paper to it and then popping your photo on top, or you can clip you photo to it directly as a mask.  Also, you can recolor this and probably also apply certain styles to it if you like.  In your layout, you can apply a drop shadow of your choice to it for depth as you desire.

DOWNLOAD AT BOX OR 4SHARED

I adore making masks and love to use them in my own layouts.  I made quite a few last night from my main idea above and they have to do with a summer theme.  Check back often as my intention is to package them up as FREEBIES to come to you over the next couple of weeks.

Have a wonderful INDEPENDENCE DAY celebration with your friends and loved ones!  Be back soon with more goodies!  Stay tuned in!

TOOTLES!!