What??!? Get OUT - I Won a Lay Out of the Week??!?

Well, since my last post, I've been really amazed and humbled by the community of people who are on the digi-sites. I got 2 more layouts (LOs) submitted for Layout of the Day. Wow. Keep in mind, there are a few dozen layouts that people randomly find and post, but to have mine even viewed, I'm all a-giggle. (ok, don't throw up, I'm a little giddy cuz its all new... and cuz I'm me. lol) I have to admit, every time I see a comment to one of my LOs, I grin. And, stepping back a little, I never expected people to ever comment on my layouts, either, so that alone was fun for me.

What put a gigantic grin on my face was that, unknown to me, my very first challenge submission got selected by Gennifer Bursett of Design House Digital as their Layout of the Week! Wow. Every notice is a huge compliment but this one is particularly an honor because its the first 'real' thing I've done and the site gets hundreds of uploads every week - and someone who runs the site picked my page. Its so cool! And the cherry on top, is that I get a $5 GC to the store. (Of course that will mean, I spend another $20 cuz I'll see sooo much I like. lol)

Of course, I had to grab the page to show it off- because I AM that much of a goober.

and the lovely things she says about my page.

Note: the word art and the frames were part of the Deena Rutter's kit (Scarborough Fair Heirloom), not of my creation, so the compliment completely goes to her, but still.... I'm thrilled.

So, my new mission is to pay it forward. I've been scanning sites and commenting on pages I like but not as much as I should - mostly because I was shy and didn't know what I was doing, so after I finish my chores today I'm going to go spread the love. :)

Ad Challenge by Gotta Pixel

I am surfing around the sites (yes, procrastinating from completing the photo scrapbooking albums I started) and found these things Ad Challenges. A few sites have them where they find inspiration via print, posters, websites, online ads, etc.

Gotta Pixel (one of the sites that I've donated much of my 'play' money to on paydays) had this one:

What I loved about this Ad was the clean, white space, the similarity in not only the furniture but also of how they were shot. I didn't have any photos that I loved for this, but I really wanted to play with it, so ... here is my take:

Credits

Everything: SpinkyDinksScraps_FutureStar (Gotta Pixel)

LayOut of the Day

I found out that someone submitted my layout for the July 6 Layout of the Day on Gotta Pixel. Wow.

That is such an honor... to just join a site and post my first jpg and not only get viewed and commented on (which was so cool to begin with) but to also have someone like my page enough to submit it for layout of the day... wow. That is super cool.

I don't know if it comes through on my past blog posts (especially since they are mostly just pictures) but there is so much about scrapping that seems like a secret club with their own language and the people have been doing this for ages, they know the 'rules' and how to find things like hidden freebies and know when special sales are coming and all this 'in the know' kinda stuff. So its awesome that these people have taken note of my personal little pages.

Anyhow, this is the page that got submitted. I didn't win (which gives you a $5 gift card to the store) but as you can tell, I'm so thrilled anyway! (I cropped off the dozens of other submissions in between so I could show it with the site page header).

Smile

This was for a Gotta Pixel "All Stacked Up" Challenge (for July) hosted by Rachel of Captivated Visions.
I'm out of 'fun cash' this week, or else I would have bought a few of her papers and kits. Well, that's what a wishlist is for! :)

I've been toying with the idea of doing a few pages - or a theme album - of lyrics. So, that's what I started this page with, then realized that I'm so old and no one would know the lyrics I had in mind... so I went with an old quote. ha ha.

This page will go nicely into Mike's Father's Day album. (Correct, I haven't finished it, yet.)

On a side note, I submitted applications for a CT (which stand for Creative Team in Scrapping code). They give you the materials to work with and you create pages for them to show as examples of how to use their wares. There are all these rules, like you have to upload to certain places and create a certain number of pages, but there is a cool element to it, which is you interact with the other women who are part of these groups and get feedback and hints and its sort of a community. So, I'm putting a toe in the water there. I should find out by July 16th, I think.

Credits - everything is available at Gotta Pixel except for one paper (identified below):

PAPERS: B.Miller GP Welcome pack; Sweet Digi Scraps At Work, Little Engineer; Colies Corner Shy Guy; JBaechtold Little Dude (ComputerScrapbook.com)
ELEMENTS: Sweet Digi Scraps At Work, Little Engineer
ALPHA: Sweet Digi Scraps At Work
FONT: Baby Boston

Fourth of July 2010

As I was typing the journaling, I wanted to highlight some of the copy and chose the blue of Lindsey's stars. Then thought... why not make my journal copy a flag, too? I might still change some of the kerning, but I'm pretty happy about how the word flag turned out. :)

 PS - I LOVE the shots I got of the fireworks themselves. May have to make a page of just those. lol

TEMPLATE: Lindsay Jane Designs (Free Template - Gotta Pixel+Pickleberry Pop)

PAPER: Anna Aspnes, Tattered Paper (Designer Digitals)
TEXT LAYOUT: Scrapporreia


FONT: Digs My Hart

Boys of Summer - June 2010

This is a quickie page using a freebie template that I have no idea when I got. The point of this one was to play around with Word Art - and of course, use some photos from our recent vacation in Myrtle Beach.

TEMPLATE: Ana Cabrera (Craftification.com)

ELEMENTS (metal clip, ribbons, string, tag): Audrey Neal Organic (Design House Digitals)
PAPERS: Audrey Neal Organic

BACKGROUND: MaryAnn Wisen GrundgySolidPapers (Design House Digitals)
WORD ART: Scrapporreia
FONTS: Arial, Arial black

Pearl in the 50s - 70s

This is the first page I've done for the album I'm making my mom for her birthday. I hope I get this done on time. I'm notorious for incomplete projects. Just ask Mike about his US Flag blanket. :)

CREDITS

TEMPLATE GP_TDC_KLewis

PAPERS SBG_Ztampf_ChinaRed

EMBELLISHMENTS KLewis (from template), KSC Oriental Mini

FONT Reisling

MScraps Challenge 6.18-25.10

I've never uploaded to a challenge before and I think thats the biggest 'challenge' of all for me! This was a template challenge by EHStudio.

TEMPLATE ehstudio

PAPERS and ELEMENTS: Sonny Hearts Candy

WORD ART Rachness_Scribbles

FONTS A Little Pot, Typo Slab Serif -Lt

I finally got it to go live on the site. Here are the things that I think made it work (I have no clue what it was, really, this is all just guessing).

1) I posted to my personal gallery, 2) I copied the link THEN, I realized that I'd forgotten to give credit for the stuff I'd used, so 3)I went into 'edit photo', while I was there, I noticed an area that said: 4) 'send to (challenge gallery)' - so I clicked that, too.

and it finally worked! :)

Flergilicious Paradise layout

TEMPLATE Tiffany Tillman
PAPERS, ALPHAS, ELEMENTS & FRAMES Flergilicious - Welcome to Paradise
FONTS Andy, (more TK)

Persnickety Prints Layout Contest

Here is my first contest layout, using only the items from Deena Rutter's Scarborough Fair Heirloom Kit freebie. Wish me luck! :)

My First Full Template

PAPERS Gotta Pixel SweetDigiDesigns_MissMae:
TEMPLATE KP_SummerMemories;  recolored string wrap to brown

Father's Day Gift 2010

My lofty plan was to download as many freebies as I could from all the cool sites that Jenn showed me. Then there was the National Day of Scrapbooking. Things were 70% off some places. $1 for a ton of cool things that I had no idea where or how I would use them. I didn't understand most of the terms. Credit cards weren't even necessary, once I joined, I could just use Pay Pal. It was like I wasn't even spending money! I spent full days in front of my laptop to the point where my eyes were suctioned to the screen. I spent more than I care to admit.

Jenn is very strategic. She's been checking out kits and things she's wanted, put them in wish lists, and waited for the kajumbo sale. Me? I'd never even seen these sites before and all this new and wonderous stuff was before me. I just bought. And bought and bought and bought. I don't even know what I have or where I got them from. I'm not even certain that I downloaded everything I paid for. Thank goodness they have defaults so that it doesn't let you buy more than one of the same thing!

I really need to start a project or I will feel really wasteful.

So, here is my project. A Father's Day scrapbook for Mike's gift.
I chose dark brown as a unifying color to tie all the random pages together. Here is the first spread:

Addendum: I found out later that I should be giving credit to each of the page element creators and (where possible) where bought each piece. I didn't keep track because I was only creating these to make a book for my husband; I'm going to try but it was awhile ago, and I don't know my kits yet.

FONTS Handwriting: Andy,

BRUSHES Designer Digitals; Anna Aspnes: Reptiles #1

PAPERS MScraps, Misty Mareda Designs; Jaxson

Layout/Template- Made by Scrapporeia

Scrapbook page uploading HINT

There was a lot that confused me about this new world I was taking baby steps into. How did you upload and how do you know what to do? So, here is a helpful hint that Jenn just shared with me.

I'm writing as if you know Photoshop, so please let me know if I'm skipping ahead for anyone.

The images should be 600 x 600 pixels at 72 dpi. (you can do that in Resize Image)
For some reason, Jenn says you need to Unsharp Mask - I don't visually see a difference, but she claims it must make a difference when its uploaded to the sites. I didn't do it but here are the numbers she gave:

Go to Filer>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask
Amount: 125
Radius: around .5
Threshold: around 15

Then Save for Web. Optimize so that the file size is 150 dpi or under.
We did this by noodling with the 'quality' numbers. Mine generally ranged between 71 and 59.

The reason for this is that some (most?) sites only allow uploads of 200 dpi or less. Some much less. Some don't tell you until you've tried to upload and gotten an error, which can be annoying. Save yourself the hassle, do it now.

Then I made a folder with my Projects folder titled: Web resized.  I drop them all in there.

I still don't quite know how you get to know what sites/pages/links your challenges were on and how to find them again - if they are multiple day ones, but that is a question for another day. :)

Addyson's calendar pages

I love photography, and Jenn had turned me on to this new world that combined my love for the creative and photography. We went to visit Tyler's Godparents, who'd recently had a little girl, Addyson. I snapped away while mommy was cooking in the kitchen and actually got some really cute shots of her, so I thought I'd try my hand at making a calendar page.

My first calendar page. I would make a lot of changes next time, but it was ok for a first shot.

I created this page from scratch, no templates and there are no elements, so no one to credit here- except maybe Addyson... who posed really well for me. :)

My first Digital Scrapbook pages

A few years ago, my friend Jenn showed me her scrapbook that she made for her 'friends vacation'. It was so cool and something I'd always wanted to do.  She had (I think) sand from the trip, tickets, photos, background and all sorts of tactile elements.

Years ago, I'd tried to do something similar. Here are the steps I'd taken:
- about 15 years ago, I cut out silos of my nephews - they were so cute. I still have them somewhere. (aborted)

- hmmm... I guess that was my only attempt.

So I thought, one day, I'm going to see if she'll take like $50 - $75 and make one for me. But I never got around to asking her. Then she got pregnant and already had a 3 year old at home, so ... again, I aborted that mission.

Then last year, Jenn showed me her new hobby, digital scrapbooking. And I thought... I can actually do that. I think. So I went online and looked for free downloads. I came across a site with some themes and elements and started. Below are the pages I made during the Winter of 2009. 

The site was FreeDigitalScrapbooking.com.

I recolored the papers and elements to match so that it would look like a spread that went together. I don't remember what all I did to the pages.

So, now I'd made 6 pages (3 spreads). It wasn't enough to make a Shutterfly book. So these just sat on my hard drive.