Holiday Happiness!

Well, It's Time for Another Post...

It's the Christmas Season and I have been hard at work in my Etsy shop making stockings and tree skirts to don the homes of Santa hopefuls.  I have had the pleasure of meeting lots of new people and sharing my creations with them.  Here is a picture from Melissa who did an awesome job decorating her mantle!

If you haven't popped into my store, you can do so by clicking here. I have added some new "buntings." If you adore the shabby chic look, you might want to check them out. Buntings or banners, as they are also called, are great ways to set a mood with a single word.  You can string them on your mantle, a cupboard, bookshelf or between two posts. I did two for Christmas and one for all year long.  Here are the photos.  I look forward to adding to them as the year progresses.

All three of the buntings are extensions of my stockings and tree skirts.  I try to use as much of the fabric scraps as possible so that very little goes to waste.  "Waste not, Want not" as the old saying goes.

Hoping you and your family have a joyous Christmas!

Northside annual barbecue Saturday, September 24 5:30 PM in the gym $8 per plate kids under 12 eat free.


Diane Turpin

Jeanet Almhøj: 3 Reasons why you should try out for the DET

Since I'm too lazy right now to do my own post, I'll send you over to Jeanet's blog. She has a lovely post about the most fabulous Creative Team in the digiscrap world! I am pleased to have served on the Digital Elite Team for three terms, with my current term ending next month. I love DSP and all the designers there are wonderful! If you are ready to take your digiscrapping to the next level, sign up for the elimination style contest and put on your leather skin! This contest is not for the faint of heart!

Jeanet Almhøj: 3 Reasons why you should try out for the DET: ¨ The deadline for signing up for the next DET contest at Digital Scrapbook Place is getting close now and I know that a lot of members hav...

Photoshop Tips

Most of you know that Photoshop is my friend. I love Photoshop! It is truly an extension of the art of photography. I love taking my photos making them pop! Adding drama that grabs your attention. Friends often ask me how I do it and it's hard to explain. There are tons of little tips and tricks that I have picked up along the way from more advanced users. As most of you know, Digital Scrapbook Place is my home on the net for all things scrappy, including great tutorials on using PS. Recently, I have found a great new website via Facebook - PSD TUTS+. They have tons of free tutorials for Photoshop and most are videos so you can be mesmerized by the wonderfulness of all things PS! They have a great collection of tutorials called Photoshop Basix by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor Martin Perhiniak. If you want to broaden your skills, checkout these tutorials. They are shown in PSCS5 but I think most are adaptable to older versions, such as the PSCS3 that I use. Several will translate over to the later versions of Elements too!

Here are a few scrapbooking layouts from our beach vacation last week. Hope you enjoy them and YES, those sunrise pictures were "enhanced" just a tiny bit. Layer masks were involved...and some opacity changes...multiplied layers...oh...such fun!

This week on the DET

It is so much fun being back on the DET at my favorite online home, Digital Scrapbook Place. I have made several layouts this week and I will share them with you in a moment.

First, congrats to my friend and DET alumni, Jeanet Almhøj. Jeanet and I served together on DET 8. She is such an inspiring scrapper and I am so excited that she is now designing for DSP. Check out her store items here and her fabulous layout gallery here.

Now, to the layouts!





















My sweet niece Lauren and her fiance, Jonathan as he popped the question at Disney World.

Credits:
Minty Fresh Page Kit by Christine Gundersen























I have been waiting on a gold and blue cheer kit and the Sports CD has it! Yeah! I love the sparkly elements! It was perfect for my daughter’s squad photo.

Credits:
Lets Go Cheer Page Kit (Scraps of Fun: Sports CD) by Carole Hardin























This year I am "attempting" to do a layout each week that will record our year. So far, I'm miserably behind. I love the blue hues in this fabulous kit and I'll be using it again for my P52 layouts.

Credits:
Tranquil Tones Page Kit by Lauren Bavin























Teal blue is one of my favorite colors. It reminds me of the white sand and gorgeous ocean water off the coast of Florida. Lauren’s kit, Contemporary Tones was the perfect fit for some beach sunrise photos.

Credits:
Contemporary Tones Page Kit by Lauren Bavin























The minute I saw CarolAnn’s Urban Station Value Collection, I was in love! I love the grungy, heart of the city feel it has. Earlier this week during a power outage I snapped some photos using a cross-section filter on my camera to make the candlelight sparkle. The photos and the old world accents in this kit were a perfect combination.

Notes:
I enlarged the overlay and the two lightest background papers to use the lightest portions of these papers. I placed the brick paper (60 % opacity) over the light plaster paper and blended them together. I also flipped the Grungy Dots and used them in the corner behind my title. I lowered their opacity as to not compete with the title. The rest of the elements were used as is from the kit.

Journaling:
Storms rolled through Nashville today and we lost our electricity for about 7 hours. Savannah and I stopped for fast food on the way home, from a couple of places that still had power. We ate dinner and watched the sun sink behind the horizon. We lit the candles and grabbed the Uno Tippo game. We played for a while, but it is hard to tell the difference between the blue cards and the green cards by candlelight. We bored of the card game and decided to tackle folding the laundry. We laughed that we hoped the socks matched. After that I settled into check my email on my Blackberry and Savannah played a few games on her iPhone. Savannah had enough battery on her laptop to charge her iPhone when it ran low. And that was how technology met candlelight!

Credits:
Urban Station Value Collection by CarolAnn Gray






















I Love You Man by Marcee Duggar is an awesome kit for all the guys in your life. These are the guys in my life: hubby, 2 grandsons and a SIL. I paired it with Love To Overlap Quick Click template by Carole Harden.

Notes:
I used the template as is. The only changes I made was to add a screen overlay at 100% to the Red Decay paper. It was a little darker than I wanted and the screen complimented the orange in my photo! Everything else is just layered and grouped.

Journaling:
Ron, Brady, Brooks and Walt riding the range at Latimer.
12.2010

Credits:
I Love You Man Value Collection by Marcee Duggar
Love To Overlap QC by Carole Harden

April Club Digital is Here!

Each month, DSP creates a gorgeous collaboration of digital scrapbooking supplies called "Club Digital." It's a subscription that comes to your e-mailbox every month. Here is a layout I created with one of the kits, Forever Now. It's fresh and funky and I loved the little touches of orange that complimented this recent photo of my daughter, Savannah.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3. I have had it for several years and it is like an old friend to me. One of my favorite "extras" that I use with my program is AV Collector. I know that PS has the same ability built in, but I have been using Collector for a long time and it too, is an old friend. When I start a new layout I do three things.

1. I open all the backgrounds and elements in Photoshop that I want to use in my Scrapbooking page. I usually add everything from an entire kit, and sometimes a few other bits and pieces from other kits.
2. I open all the photos that I want to use in the layout.
3. Lastly, I create a new blank scrapbooking page and run the AV Collector script. The script "collects" all the things I have open and places them in the active window, which in this case is the new scrapbooking page. Each element or background is on a separate layer and they are all named with the file name.
4. Actually, there are 4 things I do! I save my new page and then "Close All" open windows. This closes everything, including my new scrapbook page. After all is closed, I reopen my page (using the Recent Documents) and am ready to start scrapping with only one window open!

AV Collector is a free script and works in all versions of PS. It does not work in PS Elements. For PSE I have to manually drag each item into my layout.

Digital Elite Team at Digital Scrapbook Place

Every 6 months a new creative team is chosen at Digital Scrapbook Place. As most of you know, DSP is my home away from home. I served 2 terms on the Digital Elite Team (DET) in the past and was fortunate enough to be chose again. I love getting to sample kits from all the talented DSP Designers and help them promote their products. I'll be posting my layouts here along with some tips on how I made the layouts. I hope you'll join me on this journey!

Love Blooms Scrapbooking Kit!!!

It has been a long time since I designed a kit, so I am proud to show you this one! It is my submission for SNL over at my favorite home away from home, Digital Scrapbook Place! I am looking forward to using it soon!

Happy New Year!

I suppose it's about time I did my annual blog post! LOL! At least that is what it seems like! Last year was a year of trials. First the May flood and then I broke my leg and had surgery on my ankle in August. We are blessed with wonderful family and friends that helped during both "adventures."

My Etsy store had been doing well, especially during the holidays. I hope to add some new items soon. I have been blessed again with successful items that where overly popular during the holidays. Hopefully now, I can concentrate on some new endeavors.

Savannah continues to blossom as a young lady. Her interests continue to revolve around music. She made both the Mid State Chorus and Band this year.

Ron is still building a Boy Scout Camp. His website, chronicles the progress at camp. He enjoys it immensely and gets completely frustrated all at the same time. If you are ever in our area, we would love to show you the camp. It's truly a beautiful piece of God's handiwork.