WHERE YOU'LL FIND MY HANDCRAFTED ITEMS

WHERE YOU'LL FIND MY HANDCRAFTED ITEMS
Visit often, new things always being added

A sample of my handcrafts for sale

Thursday, April 24, 2014

MISTY MORNING QUICK PAGE FREEBIE

Hello fellow scrappers!  I hope you had a wonderful Easter spent with church and loved ones, maybe a good meal and some relaxation time!  My employer is open for business on Easter Sunday, and, being that I worked it last year, I asked for the day off this year.  I had such a nice day off, and, of course, it just seemed to fly by so quickly.  My little Mason cherub (who is 8 yrs. old now) traveled with his dad to Florida to get in a quick visit with his paternal grandmother who winters down there from Pennsylvania.  The kids were on Spring Break combined with Easter, so there was plenty of time for travels.  My other two grandkids had traveled north to WV to visit their paternal grandparents, but they were back home in time for Easter.  My daughter did the cooking and hosting of Easter luncheon at her home, and I made two cakes, plenty of my special deviled eggs, and a huge pitcher of strawberry/peach sangria.  We served a total of eight guests, and it was so pleasant.  My baby is such a superb chef and hostess!  I took plenty of pictures to scrap soon!

FYI:  Click on my "Recipes" tab at the top to go visit my recipe page.  On April 8th I posted an ample recipe for my "White Bean Chicken Chili" made in a 6-qt. crock pot, complete with photo!  I must say, it is super yumo!!

However, I've been delayed in getting this post made as I've been fighting with my computer again for a few days.  It takes bouts of working well, and then not working well at all.  I've spent since last August deep in it's guts fixing this and that, and it flies well for a long time, but then all of a sudden when I least expect it, something causes it to go crazy on me!  I've learned how to do a selective start-up, which allows me to at least work around its problems, but I don't consider that to be a cure.  Arrghh!!

I want to thank you ladies who take time to post a comment after downloading my freebies!  It's so nice to see a few words of encouragement as I plod along in my designing efforts!  I appreciate you all so much for taking a second or so to make a comment for me.  It sort of makes all this very real when someone will speak to you occasionally.

My FREEBIE for you today is a Quick Page from my participation in the monthly Quick Page Contest over at Ivy Scraps.  We got to work with a beautiful kit by KatLen Kreations called "MISTY MORNING", and here is her kit preview . . .


My QP can hold three photos, or one photo and two papers in the photo place-holders, however you like.  It is a 12 x 12-inch, png format at 300 dpi.  You can, of course, size it down to an 8 x 8-inch page easily in your scrapping program.  I haven't worked up my own layout with it as yet because of my computer issues, but here is the preview of it . . .


DOWNLOAD HERE or HERE

Now don't forget if you are interested in collecting all the FREE QPs from the April Challenge, just visit the April QP Contest thread in the forum over at Ivy Scraps.  You will need to register in the forum if you are not already, so you can see the posts which contain the direct download links to each participant's page.  There are normally enough to make a wonderful album!  If you like to make Quick Pages, think about getting involved in these monthly challenges.  Everybody is so helpful there, so if you need any help along the way making your page or cutting out the holes for the photos, someone is always ready and willing to help you.  So dive in and don't be afraid.  It's great fun and great experience!

Now just for inspiration, I'll show you two layouts.  One is mine and one belongs to another gal.  There is a template making challenge over at The Studio during the month of April to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of Toiny owning the site.  I love templates and pretty much love to make them when I really have enough designing time to myself.  I posted the one I made as a FREEBIE in my previous post.  Hope it inspired you and that you snagged it already.  If not, you will want to get it after you see what Foxinsocks did with it!  Just have a look what she created below . . .


She won "Layout Of The Day" with this, and deservedly so!  I think it is just gorgeous beyond belief.  The photo is so perfect for the mask, and her kit colors are a spendid match for the photo!  I'm so pleased to see how she used my template!  Makes me so happy!!

Before I made my template, I had grabbed one that she designed from the contest and made myself a layout of my little Mason with the Easter bunny this year! 


I'm telling you, getting involved in some of the monthly forum challenges at the digi-scrapping sites is so much fun and a wonderful way to further your skills, not to mention getting some scrapping done in the process!  I'm so looking forward to the day when I can call my own shots and create more time in my days, weeks, and months for lots more scrapping!!  I'm so addicted; it's definitely my favorite hobby!

Of note, just FYI, I've been a faithful user of Carbonite backup service for many years, and it has definitely served me well right up until my computer problems started occurring in August of 2013.  From then until now, it has been touch and go getting anything to work correctly.  I've had to change my backup service, so I just recently (after much studying up) selected BackBlaze as my service to continually backup my entire system.  I signed up for two years with them; my monthly cost is $3.96, and it will backup my two internal drives, and any USB external drives that I plug in at least once every month.  Not bad, hey??  Just passing along some good information for you all.  You can have a 15-day trial of BackBlaze free so you can see just how easily it works.  Their website is great, and you can read all about it there. 

That's all I have for you today, peeps!  I hope to chat again soon and have some more goodies for your stash!  Don't forget Mother's Day is coming soon!  I should design something for it for you to snag up.  Check back often!  Happy Scrapping!

TOOTLES!!

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

TEMPLATE FREEBIE FOR DSS 5TH ANNIVERSARY!

Yes, The Studio (Digital Scrapbooking Studio, i.e., DSS) is celebrating it's 5th Anniversary with Toiny as owner!  To help celebrate, designer Manu is holding a template exchange!  I LOVE using templates, and the only thing I LOVE more is making them and exchanging them!!  Visit the Template Exchange forum thread under "Special Events"/"5th Anniversary Celebration" to collect some new free templates for your digi stash.  The direct download links are posted there as well as under the pictures in the Template Exchange Gallery.

But for now, you can get my FREEBIE right here! 

 
DOWNLOADS HERE or HERE
 
Below is  a layout I made using one of the other free templates I've already gathered up for myself!  It's of my little 8-yr. old grandson and who else but The Easter Bunny!!
 
 
Is'nt that just a great template to use over and over??!!
 
Keeping this short and sweet for today.  Stop back by soon because tomorrow I will post my freebie Quick Page from the Ivy Scraps QP contest for ya'll.
 
Leave me some love!  I'm starving from the zero comments!
 
TOOTLES!!
 
 
 
 

Thursday, April 10, 2014

ENHANCE A QUICK PAGE

I'm mentoring a couple of digi-scrap newbies, so I'm dropping in to show off how I enhanced a free Quick Page which I obtained as a FaceBook freebie from Chrissy W Digital over at Gotta Pixel.  I had downloaded the matching kit which was a free daily download also from Gotta Pixel.  I simply placed lots of additional photos on top of this QP (it held just one nice size picture), then I used some kit elements with some text word art and a few words and journaling of my own on top.  Just giving some ideas here so you can see what you can do with a simple Quick Page.  I've always loved them and collected as many as I can.  When you acquire a kit, you can make oodles of QP's from it just to play around designing, then you can go back and use them later.  It's a good way to learn your digital scrapping software program and what it can do if you're a beginner.

Here is the QP as I acquired it . . .


And here is how it ended up after I playd with it for awhile . . .

 
This has one picture underneath where the cutout was when I got the QP, and the rest are placed on top of the QP and then I did a stroke frame around each photo.
 
Hope that gives you some ideas on the endless possibilities of a simple QP.
 
I'll be back soon.  Working on some free masks to come, so stay tuned in.
 
TOOTLES!!