We actually took a family picture!

Even though it's not at the quality I would prefer, it was a Mother's Day miracle that they were all looking at the self-timed camera without me having to photoshop their eyes open ;D!

Nana's Turning 3!

Wednesday is Nana's official Birthday--6:30 AM mountain time :DThis is the most recent (the others are from 3 months ago) picture I have of her actual face--she's kind of smiling. . .

Cool Digi-Scrap Sites

Don't have an image editing program, but you'd like to try digi-scrapping? Try Phoenix at the aviary, or Picnik. Paint.net--although I don't know where to find it (Hava?) sounds like it is free to download (and you don't have to be online! Major Perk!). Phoenix is a lot like photoshop. . . Picnik is kind of it's own style, but it also has a lot of the same actions. The only bummer is that you have to upload all of your photos to the internet (Picnik uses programs like facebook, picassa, and flickr, I think Phoenix does too--or both can uplaod a pic online if it has an html code attached, or one straight from you computer).

Now, if you don't have any neat "paper" or "embellishments"--download some from shabbyprincess.com, or ikeagoddess.blogspot.com will show you some neat freebies she finds and where to download them.

Back with more later tonight!

Finally, I don't feel like I have to embarrass myself. . . lol. We're finally to the part where my pages look pretty good :D. Unfortunately, there's not as many of these. . . I haven't had as much time to scrap lately. But I'll post more later--The weather outside is frightful, but the heat-from-the-modem is so delightful. . . and since we've cancelled all the places we'd-a go--Let me scrap, let me scrap, let me scrap (Maybe I should try to get out of the house anyway. . .).

This is a picture of the first Lemon Meringue Pie I ever made! It was DELICIOUS! I plan on making a recipe book someday. . . a really BEAUTIFUL recipe book. . . MmMmMmmm

This page is probably my favorite (Lincoln). I never know what to do with LO's (layouts), but this one just kind of made itself--and I LOVE it! (I don't love that I had to blow up the metal ring so much that it's pixelated, but one day I'll learn how to make my own metal rings, so there).

Okay, I cheated here. I used a QP (quick page) for this layout from Akizo (or Aziko or something). But I think it's GORGEOUS--and I have the skills to make the same thing--if I wanted to ;D.

What in the World Was I Thinking?

Tomorrow I promise to show you what my skill level is like right now--I'm still learning, but I think I do pretty good. Okay, so some people can do these awesome-tripped out layers on their scrap pages--mine usually just look kind of weird (but I'm getting better: I hope.)--case in point:

The "Enlightenment" of Digi Scrapping

When I got to the Shabby Princess--I was a little ashamed that I thought I was doing so well. Look at all of the cool stuff out there that I was missing! I didn't know they could be so creative! I made this shower invite right after I found out about the site. The rest are from all sorts of different times since then. I don't remember exactly when--I bet you can tell which ones I did later on (hopefully I was improving. . . oh, and they're actually in chronological order again from the ones I did first to the last).


Eehhh. . . Needs something more--still pretty 2 dimensional. I may come back to this one.


Still a little 2D--this was a "piece-a-cake" page. Obviously, you can tell about when I did this by how old my kids are (about 9 months ago).

I cheated on this one too--the papers are from shabby princess (moody blues--I made them green), but the template is from epson.
I think I'm getting better--this goes to an album I'm making to document the 2nd most horrible month of my life (lol). I'm hoping to just turn it in to something positive :D.

A Revelation

This is the invitation I made for my brother's somewhat casual (as in they put me and my family in Utah in charge, and we held it in my in-laws beautiful backyard) wedding openhouse. My other brother's wife was the photographer for their FL wedding--she's amazing. I felt pretty comfortable with my program and with my shading and distressing at this point. You can't tell, but I'm pretty proud of how the ribbon in the middle of the picture turned out--it has grains on it and everything!

It was nice to see Brandon and Rachel (they are really fun, loving people--especially Rachel. . . lol). And becasue of this invite, I got to see some of my brother's old friends--and their wives. One wife in particular was my favorite. Kira is sooooo cool. She told me about shabby princess(dot)com, and my digi-scrapping life has never been the same! (She's really nice, too.)

Sorry this is so fuzzy--I didn't have a jpeg or png, so I had to take a picture of my computer screen, and this is the best I got. The colors are off a bit.

Epson(dot)com--we'll call it "The Iron Age" of Digi Scrapping

One Saturday, when I still lived in Wymount, I saw a scrapbook show on BYU TV. They had a segment on digi scrapping, and referred their viewers to the epson website to download free papers and embellishments. (The older the download, the less attractive the pages). These pages (and many others) followed. I don't remember the title of the show, but they have tutorials online that are worth looking up, especially if you have photoshop or a similar program. I would say these pages each took me about half an hour--I was getting better. All of them are my own layouts--that's what takes me the longest time--TRYING to figure out how I want the layout to look and what pics to use.

I actually created all of this one (even the brads),

except I downloaded the orange, patterned page in the middle.

Just enough shading (yay me!), but not enough distressing.

I changed the colors--it looks weird

(it wouldn't if I'd deleted the buttons),

but these colors matched better.

If only I had used more shading!--and distressing!

Finally, the downloads are starting to incorporate distressed edges!

I didn't do this layout. It was all put together for me.

I just had to find a picture, resize it and drop it in.

Love it! Of course, I have the papers if I ever want to do my own layout.
I don't use pre-made as much, becuase I usually have specific things I want to do,

and it's hard to find matching pre-made pages for free.

Some Digi Invites--still mostly primitive

The very first thing I EVER made digi-wise was our wedding invitation. I started mostly with invitations, actually. Then when I discovered epson(dot)com, they got a little more interesting. I still didn't realize that there were so many sites out there with even cooler freebie papers and embellishments, so these still aren't my best work--the shading could definitely improve--but I like them--especially the ones with my hot hubby in them. (These ones are in sequential order from what I made first to last).

This took me forever, because we both had sunburn really bad (you can still tell on my arm), this was our best photo (we actually busted out the tripod for this one--none of that cheap hanging from trees stuff), and Robert was across the Atlantic, so I couldn't get another one. I learned how to take the red out of people's complexions, though--a very helpful skill. It also took me awhile going back and forth from the printers, because the green on the side wasn't right the first few times. Printer's ink does NOT exactly match your computer screen, so if you need to match embellishments, or envelopes, or something, make a couple of examples to take to the printers, or just focus on something that won't clash instead of something that will match.

Maybe not the most impressive invite,

but I like it because I learned how to make the words triple-toned :D.

Yes, I know I spelled Marriott wrong. . .

but I put shading under the pictures. . . so I pretty much rock. I wasn't sure of all of the information for Nana's 2nd B-day,

so I wrote that on later with a marker.

Obviously, I've discovered epson at this point. . .

just not the value of shading everything.

Primitive Digi Scrapping

These are a few of my firsts. (I thought I'd put them up before the nice ones so my more recent ones look really impressive. . . lol).

There is either little or no attempt at making 3D effects. Everything focuses on the layout with very few embellishments. I was also still making my own backgrounds (I had not yet discovered the shabby princess or epson dot com). These pages took me up to an hour each. (I was still learning a LOT, and I usually take a long time with my paper scrapping, too).

This plaid took FOREVER. I didn't know about the aviary yet (I'll talk about that later). This is actually one of my later firsts (the pictures came up backwards, so read them backwards if you want the full effect ;D). There are a lot of tricks in this one: shadow, embossing, cut outs, ribbon (or rather my first attempt at ribbon--it gets better), vellum. . .

One thing I did use right away (becasue I already had been editing photos) was the option to enhance the coloring of the photos--see how rich the colors are? These Christmas pictures were actually really dark and wouldn't have been worth printing if I'd been paper scrapping.

All of these pictures were in drastically different lighting, so I gave them all a pink tint so they would match better. I like how it turned out. And is that a little shadow around the letters I see? Hmmm. . . I must be getting better at the 3D stuff already. . . lol.

Yes, I made all of those stripes. I actually made this one more as a template for the boy (Eenie) that I was expecting at the time. No, I never put a picture of him in the template. Go figure.

I was naughty. I lifted this from a design contest online. That is why there are actual embellishments. It was very fuzzy, so I had to replace everything (except the embellishments, of course). There are lots of places online to get ideas, though.

You can still make some neat things without knowing much about special features.

Not a single shadow. I still like it.