May 22, 2011 | My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
Tonight I decided to play around and make one more page in My Digital Studio. Remember the one I showed earlier in the week – it had one picture with my three boys and one of our dogs. Well this page shows all the pictures I had to take to get to that one.
I took 5 pictures before getting one that was OK and before they were all ready to leave again. Mostly it was Ryan that wasn’t cooperating – he had his eyes closed every time and the last picture they are just barely open – but that’s as good as it gets.
To make this page I wanted it to be quick and I knew I wanted to include all of these photos – I decided to browse through all the 12×12 designer templates that I had on My Digital Studio. I found this one in the Rock-a-bye Boy album. I made a few changes to it – switching around the picture and the punch on the bottom row. Adding the text along the outside and the arrows. Replacing the boat with a heart. And adding my title and journaling. But starting with a template makes things go very quickly so this didn’t take long to create.
Today is Sunday and I’m having a My Digital Studio class at my house. I will be showing the ladies about Hybrid projects and some things they can do with punches. I’m also trying out using my son’s TV as the screen to show what I am doing on my laptop – we’ll see how that works. We tried it at my downline meeting last weekend and it seems to work great – but we had everyone standing up near the TV on my kitchen counter. This time I’m planning to still have it on the kitchen counter but on the other side so the ladies can sit at the table with their laptops and copy what I’m doing. I hope it goes well. These classes have been good so far and always full – I think I’m going to have to add another session maybe during the day.
Enjoy the day!
May 19, 2011 | family, My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
Tyler, my middle son, is graduating this year – in about a week actually. He has been in the high school band for all four years and each year the Band Boosters give the seniors a gift. I suggested that we give them photo books for their senior gifts and the committee agreed. We spent the next few weeks gathering pictures of all the band seniors – we had 20 this year. For the past couple of months I have been working on their books using My Digital Studio.
I started by creating a book for Tyler – I designed all the pages – creating pages for each of their four years of high school. I used a combination of individual and group/full band photos. Luckily we have had other band parents taking photographs each year and the band has a website where we have many of them loaded. Then to make the rest of the books I started with Tyler’s completed book and then did SAVE AS (important to remember this part before you make all your changes or you’ll lose the original – ask me how I know). I saved a copy with the next students name and then switched out the pictures of Tyler for that student. In some cases where I didn’t have as many pictures – I added in other group or section photos or made changes to some of the layouts. As long as I had pictures I was good. I had a few students that needed a bit more editing – one that wasn’t there during the freshman year – so I deleted those pages and added pages in other places, two that were Color Guard so they didn’t have concert season photos, and one that wasn’t in marching band for the senior year (and that was the biggest section of the book).
I was excited that Stampin’ Up! was having the sale this month on print products – I was able to print all 20 books at 30% off! I ordered on the 1st so they would be here in time for the banquet which was this week. I showed the band booster committee a few days early and they were so excited. We presented the kids their books at the banquet and they loved them – the band director played a special good-bye song for them and I felt bad because I don’t think they were even paying attention to the song because they were looking at their books and at each other’s books. I hope they will be cherished memories for them – if not the mom’s will love them!
Here are a few pages from Tyler’s book – and the matching tag that I made to go on them after I wrapped them up – I used the new swatchbook option for the tags.
For each book the first page was their Senior Night Photo with their parents. I listed their name, the instruments they played during their four years, leadership positions, and special honors. While Tyler didn’t actually play flute at any time in the band, he participated in a student led Flute Choir last year and they played as part of the concert that year.
This page was from their senior year and Tyler played a solo at the beginning of their show. He was also the brass captain so the lower photo is all the leadership at one of their competitions.
This is the back cover of the book. I wasn’t originally sure what to do with the back but I when I saw these photos that some one took from the back of all the students marching in formation to the football field. And I thought the quote from the Word Play stamp set was perfect for this – and coincidentally was the same quote they used on the banquet program too.
And here is that tag – you can see it matches the page from the Senior year I posted above.
This is a page from the swatch book and I just exported them to .jpeg and printed them at home on my computer.
I think I have rambled on enough today. Have a good one!
May 18, 2011 | My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
I was working on a page in My Digital Studio and I had most of it down but something was missing from it so I left it alone for a couple of days. Well today I was checking in on Heather’s blog (yes I check hers almost every day) and her blog post said RUN …. the BEST MDS download ever is here. So what do you think I had to go do – run right over to the Stampin’ Up! website to see the new downloads – almost every Tuesday they are releasing new downloads for My Digital Studio and the one Heather was talking about is called Simple Stitching and Corners – it has lots of different stitching including corners and circles – in White and Chocolate Chip – but there is a trick in My Digital Studio that you can do to get them in other colors – I’ll be trying that out soon. Anyway I bought the download and loaded it to my laptop and guess what – I added stitching to my page and that was exactly what it needed.
It’s a picture that I took on Mother’s Day. Prior to that weekend I saw a page that someone created about her boys. At their age my boys really don’t like me to take their pictures. So I decided for Mother’s Day what I wanted was to take pictures of them. And for them to cooperate until I got as many pictures as I wanted. This was the best one of the three of them (and Aspen is in there too). They are all up on the play set in the back yard so there was a very natural back drop that I like. And I like that they are at different heights.
To make my page I actually started with a 12×12 template from the Hip & Handsome Overlays stamp brush set. It is another download that you can add to your My Digital Studio. I made some changes once I got the template – first I changed some of the colors to match better with my photo – I used browns, blues and greens. I also widen the vanilla strip through the center because I needed some more space for my journaling. I switched around some of the overlays and added another one called Textured stamp brush set – it comes with the My Digital Studio disks. I added my photo – with a drop shadow, the journaling (font is called CK Wood House and it was a free download), added the tree stamp from Forest Friends stamp brush set – both with drop shadows.
Then with my new Simple Stitches and Corners download I was able to add all the stitching – the two corners and then between all the different color panels – so it looks like they are all stitched together in the background.
Those are my boys – Kyle is 19 and a student at Ga Tech, Tyler is 17 and about to graduate high school in about 10 days, Ryan is 14 and finishing his freshman year – and there’s Aspen one of my JRTs – and he is actually 5 years old already – he still seems like a puppy to me. That means Magnolia is 6 – she is a year older. I also tried to get some pictures of the dogs so I’ll have to create a page with them too.
Have a great day – and get some scrapbooking done – its National Scrapbook Month!
Apr 30, 2011 | Designer Series Paper, Occasions Mini 2011, Scrapbook Pages |
My upline, Wendy, always create beautiful scrapbook pages. I always loved going to her monthly scrapbook class. But last summer she moved away and I have missed attending her classes. A couple of months ago she created a beautiful layout using the Nature Walk stamp set and Botanical Gazette Designer Series paper. I asked her if I could use it for my scrapbook class. I had my class yesterday and we made this layout with a few modifications.
The Very Vanilla background is wheeled with the Very Vintage Jumbo Stampin’ Around Wheel and Versa Mark ink and then used a cotton ball and Stampin’ Pastels to rub the color over the ink. Now I couldn’t decide which way I wanted to do my background – so if you look closely the left page is wheeled on the diagonal and the right page is wheeled straight across. Which one do you like better? I still haven’t decided but when I do I’ll have to redo one of the pages to match.
The Botanical Gazette Designer Series papers were cut into 2″ squares – I used 4 of each double sided print. I changed the right page to have the squares in the opposite corners of what Wendy did on hers.
I stamped the Nature Walk stamp set and Wendy used it and also the Sale-A-Bration set Bliss. I was trying not to use it since Sale-A-Bration has ended but I did put the word “Bliss” in the hardware label on the right page – I couldn’t find anything else that I liked to put there. You could just add a date in there that corresponds to the pictures you put on. I haven’t decided yet which pictures to put on here so I didn’t add a title yet either.
Today is the last day to order from the Stampin’ Up! Occasions Mini catalog. The Botanical Gazette Designer paper and the Nature Walk stamp set are both in there. It’s possible we will see the stamp set in the next Idea Book & Catalog coming out in July (I’m crossing my fingers!) but typically they don’t carry over any of the designer papers. Occasionally Stampin’ Up! will keep the prints and release them again in different colors. We can only hope – but these colors seem so perfect I don’t know what other colors you would use. On the other hand you can get these as Digital Downloads for My Digital Studio and just print them on your printer at home when you need them. But unless you have a 12×12 printer you won’t be able to print the full sheet.
Have a great day and weekend!
Apr 7, 2011 | family, My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
It’s Prom season around here and the boys high school had theirs the other weekend – during one of our storms. Tyler went with one of his long time friends – Afton. They were part of a group that met at one of the girl’s homes and then they all went to dinner together and then to prom. Last night I decided to put together a quick My Digital Studio page with a few of the pictures of Tyler and Afton.
I used a photo template that was in My Digital Studio that happened to suit my photos – one vertical and two smaller horizontal photos. I also have some group shots from everyone but those will be added to a second page. I decided to use Basic Gray for the background since Tyler had the silver tux accessories. Looking back I wish we had gotten silver ribbon on Afton’s corsage – oh well. I added a mat in Basic Black around the photos and a drop shadow.
The digital stamp is Baroque Motifs – they are all in Basic Black but the ones in the background I changed to be 50% opacity which makes them look more gray. There is also a background overlay that gives it a more distressed look – it was also changed to a lower opacity – I think I started with 50% and then went back and made it even lower – just play around until you get the effect that you want. I added the journaling and move my stamps so they didn’t cover any of it. Finally I added some pearls at the corners just because.
Did anyone watch American Idol last night? I did while I worked in my craft room on Easter invitations for my family (I’ll share those later) and the final packaging of the March Ribbon shares (I’ll share that too). I have no idea who to pick as going home – I really thought everyone had a good night. Which is something that normally doesn’t happen when there are still 9 people in the competition. Usually someone has an off night. If I were picking my least favorite – I would say Haley – but I’d hate to see another girl go since there are only 3 left. But I did say the boys were much stronger this year than the girls and so far that seems to be true. Another guess for the bottom 3 might be Stephano (although I do think he probably sang his best yet). Not sure about who else – I guess it could be any of them – who is the most/least popular may be the deciding factor because right now they all seem talented. Just my thoughts – ignore them if you don’t care.
Back to spring cleaning – we are tackling Tyler’s room today – oh boy! Maybe I should take before and after pictures of his…..he may not appreciate that.
Mar 28, 2011 | Bingo, My Digital Studio, Scrapbook Pages |
This My Digital Studio scrapbook page was super quick to create because it was a Designer Template that came with the Love Letters Designer Series paper Digital Download. All I had to do was add the picture in the photo box and my journaling in the text box. And I was done – it took me longer to find the picture than anything else. This is an old picture from November 2002. For my journaling I wrote –
One of our trips to Washington D.C.
A fun fall afternoon in the city.
The five of us together.
Under the trees.
November 2002
Kyle was home this last week – it was his spring break from college. I took him back on Saturday. I’m so glad he isn’t too far away. Tyler won’t be either he will be going to KSU in the fall. We need to look and see what else we have to do for him.
I have another Bingo Winner – Heather (and JoAnn) have Bingo -Congratulations!
The prize is the Botanical Blooms stamp set – a retired Sale-A-Bration set from 2009.
That’s three down and two to go. Will the next one be you? Here is the next piece.
images copyright Stampin' Up!
I’ll be back tomorrow with the UDI color challenge – see you then.
I took 5 pictures before getting one that was OK and before they were all ready to leave again. Mostly it was Ryan that wasn’t cooperating – he had his eyes closed every time and the last picture they are just barely open – but that’s as good as it gets.
